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edthewalleyedhyena
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My Favourite Movies:
Night of the Hunter
Wings of Desire
The Long Goodbye (with Elliot Gould, '70's version)
Harold and Maude
Das Expirement
Stalag 17
Goodbye Lenin!
Ghostdog: Way of the Samurai
The Royal Tenenbaums
Double Indemnity
Film Noir is probably my favourite genre, and I am really into German film right now.
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Some of my favourite actors & actresses:
Robert Mitchum
Dustin Hoffman
Joan Crawford
Joaquin Phoenix
Bruno Ganz
William Holden
Bette Davis
Liam Neeson
Val Kilmer
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Some of my favourite music:
-Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds/ The Birthday Party
-Velvet Underground
-Sisters of Mercy
-Erasure
-Bob Dylan
-The Clash
-Belle & Sebastian
-Tom Waits
-David Bowie
-Einstuerzende Neubauten
-Leonard Cohen
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And I have a profile on yahoo....
http://ca.profiles.yahoo.com/mock_ewok
...there's a pic on there if you're curious, but I'm not making it a link because I'm assuming you're not.
Reviews
Querelle (1982)
High Art or High Camp?? Only Fassbinder knows...
Perhaps 'Querelle' is a film that demands a more cultured and broad-minded viewer than I have proved myself to be, or perhaps it is pure enigmatic, overwrought drivel. I will likely never know the absolute answer to that, but I am willing to bet that past and future viewers will fall into these two groups: Those who feel that unclear character motivations, loosely constructed plot-structure and melodramatically poetic theatrics bespeak a larger sentiment, one not blatantly stated in this film; And the second group, who will leave this viewing experience raising their eye-brows in confusion, and possibly having a good laugh.
This film, though wordy, probably operates most effectively in its nonverbal trappings. The sets have a bourgeois richness that is almost tactile, the direction of movement is staged and coordinated like dance in some scenes, and the lighting is one of the best uses of expressionism out side of the American film noir idiom I've ever seen.
The script is an abstract exploration of people's motivations, specifically as they relate to the more carnal side of love, and there is also an underlying, equally abstract, message about the methods and means of self-exploration. All of this is told from the unique perspective of a naive, amoral young man who is, at the time that this film is set, exploring and learning about himself largely through acts of violence, sex and betrayal. Brad Davis' acting in the lead role is a strange mixture of stoic detach and reined-in anger/passion and I can not begin to describe it to someone who has not seen the film.
This film, in my opinion, can not escape the onus of its "high camp factor", One gets the feeling that this is the stuff that John Waters may have cackled at in his formative years. This is not to say it's without artistic merit; it will make a glutton of your eyes with its decadent colours and rich set dressings. Chances are you will love it, or you will laugh at it, but you will surely remember having seen it.