jla@usl.UUCP (Joseph L Arceneaux) (02/19/85)
'HIGH HEELS' (not the original title, which is French) With Jean-Paul Belmondo, and if I am not mistaken, Mia Farrow. A very good movie in which Belmondo, as a doctor, profits through his affairs with less- than-beautiful women, until the one he marries discovers his affair with her ravishing sister (none other than Laura Antonelli). Truly a hilarious movie, with many fine touches. Amazingly, I saw this at a friend's who had picked it up out of interst through his video club. 3.5 * (out of 4) 'LE CHOIX DES ARMES' With Gerard Depardieu, Yves Montand, and Catherine Deneuve. Depardieu is an escaped criminal who gets entangles with ex-big time gangster Montand and wife Deneuve. A very good film with Depardieu at his best. 3.5 * (out of 4) 'IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES' (maybe not so obscure...?) By a Japanese director, whose name I forgot, but who recently did 'Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.' The (true) story of a young prostitute who falls in love with a young man and together search for the perfect orgasm. Not, in my opinion, pornographic, though some consider it such. I don't know much of the original incident, except that it occurred in the 30's and that the Japanese public fell in love with the woman... -- Joseph Arceneaux USL Computer Science Department {akgua, ut-sally}!usl!jla "I'm sorry, but my kharma just ran over your dogma."
reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (02/24/85)
In article <319@usl.UUCP> jla@usl.UUCP (Joseph L Arceneaux) writes: >'IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES' (maybe not so obscure...?) >By a Japanese director, whose name I forgot.... Nagisa Oshima. >The (true) story of a young prostitute who falls >in love with a young man and together search for the perfect orgasm. Not, >in my opinion, pornographic, though some consider it such. I don't know >much of the original incident, except that it occurred in the 30's and that >the Japanese public fell in love with the woman... Pornography is in the eye of the beholder, but it's worth mentioning that the film is much more sexually explicit than anything produced by Hollywood (unless you consider the hard core porn industry to be Hollywood). It should also be mentioned that there is an extremely disquieting and fairly explicit act of violence in the film which has been known to offend people (I've got my understatement cap on for that one). The true story is apparently very well known in Japan. A different version was just made by Noboru Tanaka (called "The True Story of Abe Sada") which makes Oshima's version look tame, by all reports. "In the Realm of the Senses" is a very fine film, but decidedly not for the easily offended. -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher
marty@boulder.UUCP (Marty Kent) (02/28/85)
Speaking of obscure films, what about the work of Robert Downey? He made a fairly well-known film about a Madison Ave. advertising agency called "Putney Swope"; the film started as a rather far-fetched comedy and became increasingly surreal as it progressed. He also had a film called "Greaser's Palace" in which Alan Arbus played a kind of Jesus-like character who appears in the old west, dancing through the chapparal with Fred Astaire moves, dressed in a zoot suit ... I've heard that Downey also made a movie during the late Sixties which was advertised as having been made specifically to be seen by stoned people: it was supposed to have a bunch of people playing *dogs* and was called, aptly enough, "Pound." Has anybody seen this film, or even heard of it? Or was I being thoroughly bullshat? By the way, I understand Downey was himself an advertising man for a while: supposedly he made a television commercial, never aired, for Preparation H. The commercial featured a pretty Japanese girl holding up a tube and saying "Use Preparation H and you can kiss your hemmorhoids goodbye!" Marty Kent uucp: {ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | decvax!kpno | harpo!seismo | ihnp4!kpno} !hao!boulder!marty arpa: MKent @ SUMEX-AIM