End Of The Week Month Post

I'm back! This post marks my triumphant return to blogging.
Due to my massive move, I haven't been able to see as many films as usual, and have not been very active on the internet at all. However I did manage to see these few films over the last month or so, since my last post which was on the 19th of June. 
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get much written during this break, mainly because I've been busier than usual and have had a terrible but thankfully temporary internet connection. 
Now my connection is considerably better and I've started putting together my various ideas for posts.

Films seen:

Touch Of Evil - 1958 directed by Orson Welles
8/10
Yet another Classic I had never seen. I like Orson Welles very much as both an actor and a director, and I'm glad I saw this fully restored version which was as close to Welles original vision as possible.
The directing and cinematography were extraordinary, I'll never forget that dolly shot that opens the film. Overall the film is a technical marvel, and Welles gives a fantastic performance. The story was rather interesting, but I thought it felt rather incomplete, like a rough draft rather than a fully finished script. This, combined with the strange attitudes and performances from the rest of the cast and the unnatural stilted dialogue, took away from my enjoyment of the film somewhat. But nonetheless it remains a great cinematical achievement.   

End Of The Week Post

A pretty poor week for viewing I'm afraid to say, for reasons made clear below...

Films Seen This Week:


The Phenix City Story - 1955 directed by Phil Karlson
8/10

I was urged to watch this by Nathanael Hood and I'm very glad I did so.
This was quite a powerful, if poorly made film, that showed the darker side of America. I can't say I loved it, but I was impressed by the brutal honesty of it all, very realistic and very convincing. However I did find it overly preachy.
Definitely a memorable viewing experience though, if only for a certain very horrifying scene that I will long remember. In fact, the film reminded me in a way of The Intruder that I reviewed not long ago, there may not seem to be much ground for comparison at first, but the fashion in which it was made, combined with the horrifying yet honest look at the darker side of America reminded me of that film at times... 

Roger Corman Blogathon: The Intruder - 1962

What is it that makes a film truly horrifying?

Is it the cheap shocks, over dramatic sound effects and over abundance of gore that plague the majority of recent horror films? I don't think so; I believe it is either achieved through complete mastery of the films atmosphere, thus making it perfectly unsettling as is the case with the masterful The Shining.

Or is it achieved when a film takes a look at the ugly side of human nature, the darker side, but the side we all know exists.

The Intruder is a film that shows the darker side of human nature, the mob mentality, the ignorance fuelled prejudice, the fear which eventually leads to violence.

There are few characters that can be called "good", some are just less racist than others, and the film does not have a particularly "happy" conclusion, but more on that later.

It is a slightly depressing film, but a powerful one that is brutally honest in it's depiction of the prevalent attitudes towards racial integration in the South at the time.

Guest Post: FRC World Icon Tour

I really should have posted this earlier, but I'm very busy at the moment.

Anyway, Custard at the great Front Room Cinema has come up with the most interesting idea i've heard in a while. A World Icon Tour, this involves posting an entry on a person that has left a mark in his/her's respective counties Cinema. Entries are to be submitted weekly by his readers from many different countries and by the end of the series it should be a brilliant look at World Cinema.

As I live in France, and Custard lives in the UK, I was the first one he asked to prepare a post for this most intriguing series.
For my Icon, I chose French director Henri Georges Clouzot. Mainly because I've been fascinated with him ever since I saw Le Salaire De La Peur, but also because my interest in him and his work was recently revived causing me to watch 3 more of his films, thus I consider myself rather knowledgeable on this subject in particularly and thought it would be fitting to write about him. 

David Lynch, 1946 - Present

This may sound cliche, but it's true. David Lynch is a director you either love or hate. You can either see him as a wild genius and one of the most creative figures in Cinema or as a pretentious charlatan who makes meaningless films.

I personally think he's a great film maker, who has fully grasped exactly what film making means. Of course he applies this skill in a way that will not appeal to everyone, as he clearly makes films as some kind of art form rather than telling a usual narrative tale. However this does not mean that I worship his every film. In fact I find much of his work to be quite bad, sometimes downright terrible.

He's the kind of director that has created his own genre, his films are in a class of their own and I often find them hard to review mainly due to the lack of any other works to compare them to.
But as he is in this month Director's Chair over at the LAMB, I though it would be a good opportunity to catch up on the few films of his I hadn't seen and write a post reviewign them all. However I did leave out Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, mainly because I haven't seen the TV series not do I want to, so that film remains the only feature length film of David Lynch I haven't seen.

Now I shall share my thoughts on each of his other 9 feature length films:

Day Of The Samurai 1: The Sword Of Doom

So, I've recently come up with a new idea for a series of reviews. I will be reviewing a single Samurai film every week, there is no specific day for the review, it can be any random day of the week.
This will help me work my way through the very large collection of Samurai films I've gathered, and will perhaps get some of you readers interested in this most entertaining of genres.

There is no real order to the films chosen, they will be from many different directors and from the period between the late 50's and early 70's, the Golden Age of Samurai cinema. The films chosen will range from classic Kurosawa such as The Hidden Fortress to Lady Snowblood and Zatoichi. However, I won't be including any Western Samurai themed films, such as The Last Samurai, but I may review some recent Samurai films such as 13 Assassins or Twilight Samurai occasionally.
Basically this is just an small outlet for me to express my love of this genre.

For this first day I have chosen one of the very best Samurai films to have come out of the 60's.  
The Sword Of Doom - 1966 directed by Kihachi Okamoto