Utilitarian Review 7/23/16

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R.P. Boo at Pitchfork

 
News

After more than 9 years, HU is going on hiatus. Lots of nice memories of the site in comments.

And Heidi at the Beat took a moment to be a jerk in my direction one last time.
 
On HU

Featured Archive Post: Domingos Isabelinho on Geneviève Castrée, who died last week.

mouse interviews Colin Spacetwinks on the history of furry.
 
On Patreon

On Bava’s Wurdulak and devouring your own children.

On Kevin in Ghostbusters, and why it’s men need incompetent, ditzy heroes.

I listed my 12 favorite films.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

I went to Pitchfork and reported back to the Reader on what I found:
Day One.

Day Two

Day Three

On Splice Today I wrote about

Captain America and amnesiac Nazism.

All the King’s Men and Hollywood’s post-racial populism.

23 thoughts on “Utilitarian Review 7/23/16

  1. You do know that Hydra’s a Nazi organisation only in the movies, right?

  2. Interesting to see your favorite dozen films. I like some of what’s there, such as Batman ’66, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Rabbit of Seville.

    My current top 12 films:

    City Lights
    The Rules of the Game
    Brief Encounter
    The Red Shoes
    L’avventura
    Weekend
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller
    The Godfather
    Jaws
    Tootsie
    The Fabulous Baker Boys
    Carlito’s Way

  3. B., I don’t know what that means. Yes, I know Hydra isn’t real, if that’s what you’re asking.

    Robert, I hate Tootsie, and really don’t like Jaws or the Godfather. McCabe and Mrs. Miller is fun…

  4. in no order

    There Will Be Blood
    Sweet Smell of Success
    Seven Samurai
    Gus van Sant’s young death trilogy (especially Elephant)
    Naked

    Beyond 5, for me, there’s too many damn films to rank. Maybe

    Enter the Void
    A Separation
    Alien
    No Country for Old Men
    Hail the Conquering Hero
    Ace in the Hole (hard to pick out one Wilder film)
    Kung Fu Hustle

    But there’s, like, another few dozen I could choose if I remembered. I find with lists like this that I’ve got a few must-picks and then a loosely rotating roster of films I could add to the list, based mostly on whatever I happen to have seen/read/heard/thought about recently…

    baldanders means that Hydra is not a Nazi organisation in the comics, only in the movies.

  5. My top 12 films (in no order – and subject to change)

    Night of the Living Dead
    Dawn of the Dead (original)
    The Empire Strike Back
    Crooklyn
    Princess Mononoke
    Yojimbo
    Saturday Night Fever
    Deliverance
    Do the Right Thing
    Waking Life
    Y Tu Mama Tambien
    Pan’s Labyrinth

    (I hate lists. No matter what I pick I feel like I could different choices that would work just as well).

  6. I thought about Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Do the Right Thing. I don’t like Pan’s Labyrinth much, and I think Waking Life is really a piece of shit. I hate that film.

  7. You mean of my longer list, right? (Surely you’ve seen Alien!) Anyway, do check out A Separation, which is a phenomenal exercise in empathy. The other films, I’m guessing, you could go either way on.

  8. I thought Noah mentioned disliking Hail the Conquering Hero somewhere recently? Or was that a different Preston Sturges film… maybe The Great McGinty?

  9. Oh, right…yes! I’ve seen Alien, and thought about putting it on the list even….

    I haven’t seen Hail the Conquering Hero; I did write about the Great McGinty recently, which I thought was eh.

  10. impossible to reduce that to only 12, so here are 21 in chronological order

    Reed, The Third Man
    Zinnemann, High Noon
    Sirk, Written On The Wind
    Fisher, Dracula
    Hitchcock, Vertigo
    Bergman, The Virgin Spring
    Resnais, Last Year At Marienbad
    Welles, The Trial
    Kubrick, 2001
    Fassbinder, Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?
    Carpenter, Dark Star
    Polanski, The Tenant
    Lynch, Eraserhead
    Romero, Dawn Of The Dead
    Laloux (+ Moebius), Time Masters
    Lisberger, TRON
    Cronenberg, Videodrome
    Rohmer, Pauline At The Beach
    Verhoeven, Robocop
    Haneke, Benny’s Video
    Lynch, Lost Highway

  11. and i didnt even include Blade Runner, Star Wars 4, Terminator 2 and Total Recall …

  12. god dammit how could i forget Hellraiser and Bad Lieutenant (1992)?
    i’ll stop now.

  13. Haven’t seen mcginty but I’ve found the rest of Sturges hit or miss. But Hail and Miracle at Morgan’s Creek are brilliant.

  14. I remember liking Sullivan’s Travels.

    Akira
    The Blade
    Peking Opera Blues
    Freaks
    The Lady From Shanghai
    Prospero’s Books
    Limbo (1999)
    Fallen Angels
    The Muppet Movie
    Repo Man
    Soy Cuba
    Picnic at Hanging Rock

  15. Off the top of my head… In no order:

    Chameleon Street
    Heathers
    They Live
    Crash (Cronenberg)
    Mulholland Drive
    To Live and Die in LA
    Repo Man
    Godzilla (the original)
    Dr. Strangelove
    The Road Warrior
    Henry Fool
    3-Iron

  16. He’s done a couple sequels to Henry Fool in the last 10 years. The most recent one is on Netflix streaming. My favorites were always Amateur and No Such Thing but I have a soft spot for HF since it was my intro to Parker Posey.

  17. No particular order outside of the top two spots:

    Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren)
    Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell)
    Eraserhead (David Lynch)
    Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May)
    Vampyr (Carl Th. Dreyer)
    Umberto D. (Vittorio de Sica)
    The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky)
    To Sleep With Anger (Charles Burnett)
    Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir)
    Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch)
    In A Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
    What Happened Was (Tom Noonan)

    Honorable mentions: Buster Keaton’s solo silent films and Stan Brakhage’s experimental films

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