not writing last night, i left the tv on at ifc where i caught the last half of director alex cox's brilliant study of alienation, destructive love and stupidity sid and nancy. gary oldman is a master actor, he so disappears into his role that he looks and sounds so much sid vicious. it is a great movie, one of my favorites.
after that movie i watched the 1st half of the filth and the fury, a documentary about the sex pistols before going to bed. this film is i hope not the definitive word on the sex pistols since it is so-so, not going terribly deep in its subject. not to say the filmmaker doesn't love his subject, it just seems so contrived in places. esp. using silhouette lighting, hiding the faces, of the principles, lydon, matlock, cook and malcolm mclaren. fucking annoying, really.
at least both movies have great soundtracks. i have never mind the bullocks on cd at my cube at work. my friend b. burned me a copy a couple of years ago, along with some outtakes and so forth. i don't think i've ever owned a copy of any recording by the sex pistols that wasn't either recorded onto cassette tape or cd by a friend.
at any rate, started thinking of my favorite sex pistols songs. like some poets i love, such as thom gunn, i'm rather indiscriminate of their oeuvre and love everything, even the real shitty stuff. however, should i have to choose, the one song that is looped in my head right at this moment is holidays in the sun. i'd go so far and say it is a masterpiece. in it there are brilliant lyrics over the primitive hook and back beat. rotten singing about looking over the berlin wall and they are looking at me! is genius. props must be handed to mclaren who put the band together - i'd also say that arguably mclaren is a genius at promotion and marketing - but it was the punks in the band that dropped the bottom of the tired old cliche of rockstar posturing and made a vital, absolutefuckingly passionate and necessary music. so to choose a favorite of favorites, that is my one.
3 Comments:
Richard – I love the filth and the fury the ending is great
it also reminds us of how evil the sex pistol were portrayed in the press – I mean people were really scary – it sounds funny now – but they blew alice cooper out of the water – I remember it was wild
I would recommend watching it all –
Btw has anyone ever noticed how the DVD case on filth and fury is very similar to Triumph of the Will
Richard,
I came into the middle of "Sid and Nancy" last night as well. Didn't feel like watching it, though I love the movie--and it made Oldman an unignorable actor. Followed immediately by "Prick up Your Ears," which I really enjoyed. I expected Oldman to be the greatest actor of our age after that, but nothing he's done after these two has really captured my imagination.
Also ran into "Dogville" last night, a great and dark (though blindly anti-American) film, but didn't feel like watching through the horror. I can take a horror film better.
Ended up watching "Bats," a B film with Lou Diamond Phillips in it in a starring role. Special effects left room for improvement, but a better film than it should have been. Ended up being only awful.
Watched the remake of "The Hitcher" over the weekend, with lots of family. Unimpressive. The original was more powerful. Rutger Hauer was the better villain, and the tension was real. This film was limp, uncompelling. I like the switch of genders of protagonists (which we don't realize until the draw-and-quartering scene--ruined, by the way, by showing the results).
Thought of you when I saw these last two films, and wondered what you'd think of them.
Geof
daniel: 1st time i saw the sex pistols on tv was probably in '78 on late night. i was 11 and i thought they were terrifying. the documentary captures popular horror and disgust of punks very well. it's hard to imagine a look today that would freak out the masses as punk rock did back in the late '70s and '80s.
there is a kind of vogue about punk music and fashion today, everyone seems to be into it, but i remember when i was 15 and all spikes, torn written on jeans, and very short hair me and my friends walked into a department store. we must've made an impression, because an old lady, soon as she saw us, made the sign of the cross.
i'm gonna give the filth and the fury another chance, and watch it all the way thru.
geof: bats is enjoyable trash. caught it several times on the sci-fi channel. phillips has made a career of b-films lately. i think he's a good actor and enlivens, much like the great lance henriksen, whatever movie he is in. plus, monster movies, like bats, reminds me so much of being in a matinee theater on saturday as a kid and watching whatever trash is onscreen. in other words, movies like bats, and also tremors, gives me the down-home good timey feeling.
i've not seen the remake of the hitcher. couldn't bear it, really. i've been pleasantly surprised by some of the recent remakes, such as the texas chainsaw massacre starring jessica biel. that one was not too bad, and pretty good in certain parts.
and i've been blown away by other remakes such as dawn of the dead which adds to the classic romero film. zack snyder's revisionist zombie film lacks the cynisism of romero, nor the great old filmmaker's satirical edge, but it amply repays by a constant surge of adrenaline mixed with misanthropy.
but for the most part, remakes bastardize their source material, and spit on the originating films. so i tend to avoide them. there are always the exception. looking forward to rob zombie's halloween. not that i think zombie can outdo carpenter at work in the master's field of fright. zombie has surprised me with house of a 1000 corpses, which is a lot better than i expected even tho it is far from being a coherent film. what sold me on zombie's talent is the devil's rejects. that is a masterpiece.
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