Musical!

TOPSY-TURVY, Mike Leigh, 1999.



Mike Leigh is the British filmmaker probably best known in America for Secrets & Lies. He makes films in a completely unique way: he doesn't write a script; instead, he creates characters through improvisation with his actors and then creates scenes based on that. Then, he films it. A lot of the time, the actors in a given scene will not know anything about what's going on in the scene or what motivations the other characters might have. They only have to react to the situation the way his or her own character would.

Leigh goes through months of rehearsals leading up to filming; his style and process are so completely original that no one else has really come close to the realism you see in his films.



Topsy-Turvy is about musucal playwrites Gilbert & Sullivan, and their creation of their most famous production, The Mikado. Now, I have never been a huge Gilbert & Sullivan fan, as I usually despise those kinds of musicals, but this film by Leigh is remarkable.

Through his actors and production design, one gets as close to how life might have been like 100 years ago in Britain as one can imagine. Not only what life was like, but how a married couple would respond to one another, how actors and writers worked, how England itself was...and how utterly foreign the opening of Japan must have been back then.

It's also one of the few movies I can think of that leads you through the creative process step by step, as Gilbert & Sullivan write and rewrite and rehearse and finally premier their masterpiece.



The actors are all engaging pros you've seen before, led by the incomparable Jim Broadbent.

This is not an easy movie; it is slow and talky and a complete immersion in all things British and period. But it's worth every minute.



****

Drama - Fat City
Crime - White Mischief
Sci-Fi - Coherence
Romance - Truly, Madly, Deeply
Horror - The Addiction
Comedy - Victor Victoria
Adventure - The Man Who Would Be King
Topsy-Turvy

Nice pick, Dom. I love Mike Leigh, but I didn't think this one would be as good as it is.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

I saw this one at Brown. If you know the movie well, you know why it's a hit there.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

I have always found this an interesting subject. When we were growing up we had 3 TV channels and the movie theater as our only options. I used to relish the late show and Saturday afternoon matinees on TV. If we wanted to see movies we had few options.

Nowadays I can click on something on my TV or computer and watch pretty much any movie ever made immediately. But there are also about a zillion viewing options these days. 100's of TV channels and all sorts of streaming services not to mention DvDs and theaters and YouTube channels and video games and internet surfing to occupy eyeballs.

So the question is this. With so many viewing options coupled with the enormous amount of new content in all forms coming out practically daily will more movies end up being forgotten or ignored? Growing up I wanted to watch every movie I could with few options to see them. Now the opportunity is there to see anything but there are so many options it is impossible to keep up.

I believe that more will be lost or forgotten and left undiscovered than ever before even though almost everything is easily available.

We had the same three channels, plus a couple uhf stations, but all these channels bought movie packages and showed movies every weekend to fill time. By the time I had graduated from high school, I had seen countless sci-fi movies, but had also seen many films by Bergman, Hitchcock, Powell and Pressburger, and other great directors. Of course, the local movie theaters supplied everything else. We had fewer options, so I guessed we watched what was available. Fortunately, there was a lot of good stuff available.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

I'll take the Documentary Crumb.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109508/

I am going to bow out only because I am running out of films for the remaining categories that meet the criteria... realizing I mainly watch dramas and documentaries.

Will continue to follow, a lot of great recommendations itt.

Phat Mack pmd

For romance, I pick Double Wedding. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028804/

Will write up if or when this plo game ends.

Sorry just saw this and it’s almost 1am for me so Shuffle take your two, and everyone can keep going to keep it moving whilst I sleep. I’ll put my two in when I’m alive.

Round 8. Category: Romance. Double Wedding 1984

This film pairs William Powell and Myrna Loy, the couple who made the Thin Man series famous, but is not as well known. If America were to have a perfect woman from that era, it would have to be Myrna Loy. This is screwball comedy, but here the roles are reversed -- Myrna Loy plays a business executive and William Powell plays the screwball.

Well worth checking out.

Do you take dope?

9th Pick. Category: Adventure. High Sierra.

Writeup to follow.

Will PM Dom.

what's even more amazing is Powell died in 1984 at the age of 92 and Loy was 79 at the time. they look so much younger in that clip...it's amazing what makeup can do

I don't know where I got 1984 from. Maybe I was thinking of 1Q84 for some strange reason.

Should be 1937.

I want to say that I'm loving this draft so far.

Poster A: I have this film I'm sure no one here has seen...

Poster B: damn it! Sniped! ugh!

Only in the Lounge.

I'm sure I'll save this thread for future use. I haven't seen any of these movies and maybe take a day off to check them out.

Shuffle:

Perhaps in another thread I can joyously tell you about some damn good horror films that will cause you to lose some sleep. The ones I have are all rare gems. It sounds like you have been poorly exposed to the genre.

Fantasy!

ARIZONA DREAMS, Emir Kusterica, 1993.



Magic Realism does not work in films. And it shouldn't. It's about literary allusions that help interpret an artist's themes through unreality. This works in books, or short stories. Not in a medium as obviously literal as film.

But Arizona Dreams is the one exception to that rule. It is perfectly preposterous. As Magic Realism should be...and yet...it still works wonderfully.

I won't bore you with the details of the story, because story doesn't really matter in this film. If you know anything about Magic Realism, a synopsis won't mean bupkus to you.



I will tell you that it has one of the most ecclectic and fun casts in recent memory: Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway, Lili Taylor, Vincent Gallo, Paulina Porizkova, Michael J. Pollard and Jerry Lewis. (Did you catch that? Jerry Freakin' Lewis.)

It has Inuit Indians in the Arctic chasing after a halibut that flys away. This same halibut pervades the whole film, flying around in the sky as the characters either notice it or don't...but if they do, a flying halibut seems to be about as remarkable as a blade of grass.



It also has one of my all-time favorite scenes in any movie.

Vincent Gallo's character is a wanna-be actor. He's very serious about it, as only Vincent Gallo can be. He enters into a talent show and performs a scene from Hitchcock's North By Northwest. Not bad, right? Except the scene he chooses to re-enact is the famous crop-duster scene. You know, the one where Carey Grant gets chased by the bi-plane. There's no dialogue. Gallo does Carey Grant - silent - as he's being chased through a field by a plane. Running in place, ducking, falling to the ground, getting up, running again...it's completely ridiculous. And one of the funniest scenes (and performances) in any movie I have ever seen.



The end, as Jerry Lewis gets in a car and flies away (yes, you read that right) is also suprisingly moving.

You probably have never even heard of this film...but it's a don't miss kind of movie. A one-of-a-kind treat by Eastern European master Emir Kusterica. This is a guy whose films have won two Golden Palmes at Cannes, and Arizona Dreams was his first English-language film. Check it out.



****

Drama - Fat City
Crime - White Mischief
Sci-Fi - Coherence
Romance - Truly, Madly, Deeply
Horror - The Addiction
Comedy - Victor Victoria
Adventure - The Man Who Would Be King
Musical - Topsy-Turvy
Fantasy - Arizona Dreams

Round 9

Serial (1980)

category: comedy 792 IMDB ratings





I love this movie! With only 792 IMDB ratings I am probably one of the few I couldn't even find a good trailer.

Martin Mull and Tuesday Weld head up a very large and talented ensemble cast. This is a look at those crazy Californians in the late 70's. Martin Mull is basically the sole sane survivor in a world gone mad. Lots of this movie really works and parts of it miss but all in all I find it extremely entertaining.

Christopher Lee said this was one of his favorite movies because they let him use his American accent and because he was cast against type (he plays the leader of a gay motorcycle gang).

so far:

Mister Roberts (drama)
Vibes (adventure)
The Bedford Incident (thriller)
The Flim Flam Man (crime)
Born Losers (action)
The Purple Rose of Cairo (fantasy)
The Bridge (documentary)
Where the Boys Are (romance)
Serial (comedy)

Continuing with stellar write-ups, I'll pick Bound in the Romance category. Feel bad picking this because I'm sure it's pretty well-known but it qualifies and I'm running out of ideas.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115736/

I would just like to say that I have seen Shanghai Express in a theater. It's wonderful. I've wanted to see Arizona Dream ever since Dom wrote about it years ago, but so far I've only been able to see Kursturica's Underground, a great film.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

Talking about Myrna Loy got me thinking about Ida Lupino. I was playing at one of those weird Golden Nugget tournaments last summer when I pointed out a young lady to the table and remarked that it was uncanny how much she looked like Ida Lupino. I was speculating as to who was taller, who had darker eyes, etc., when one of the players asked who Ida Lupino was.



I never imagined that there were people who didn't who Ida Lupino was, but I said she was a film star and the table, en masse, pulled out their smartphones and googled her. When they had looked at her picture, they said, as one, "Oh."

So I told them that she was famous for being one of the first female directors of film and screen, and also was an excellent actress. She was also extremely attractive to watch.

So, in case there are any Loungers who don't know who Ida Lupino is, I give you High Sierra. It also has Humphrey Bogart when he was right on the cusp of becoming Bogie, a cute dog, great scenery, racial stereotypes, a crippled girl and all sorts of other cool stuff.




Phantom Lady - Noir
Tapeheads - Comedy
Bamboozled - Musical
Le Jetee - Sci-Fi
Pale Flower - Crime
Dogtown and Z-Boys - Documentary
Woman in the Dunes - Thriller
Double Wedding - Romance
High Sierra - Adventure

Write ups to follow but just clearing the way for everyone else to make their picks:

Round 9 - Horror - Kill List (2011)
Round 10 - Action - Pootie Tang (2001)

Round 9 - Horror - Kill List (2011)

IMDb Page



This has 30,370 ratings which doesn't really make this movie too obscure, but it would be easy to miss this one among all the other movies released in 2011.

Ben Wheatley has done a bunch of great movies that don't seem to get the public acclaim that I think they deserve.

This movie is brutal. It's well acted, well directed, very dark and very tense. This isn't a supernatural horror movie, it just shows the horror of what can and possibly does happen.

Fun Fact: This movie is "Not Rated" in the USA so only watch it if you think you can handle it!

Round 10 - Action - Pootie Tang (2001)

IMDb Page


12,382 ratings is way too low. I don't expect people to love this but with Louis C.K. writing and directing and Chris Rock starring I'd expect a lot more people to have been exposed to this (pun intended).

I love how surreal and fun this is. It's packed full of off the wall jokes with huge density. The only other movie I can think of with a greater joke density is [REDACTED] which I almost drafted. I'll certainly let you know about it after the draft though. Not much more needs to be said about it. Summary tells you the basic plot and now you know it's joke dense and they're surreal.

Fun Fact: Louis C.K. didn't want to have any narration to fill in the blanks for the audience but he was forced to.

xander biscuits

Round 1 - Film Noir - Ace in the Hole (1951)
Round 2 - Fantasy - Ordet (1955)
Round 3 - Crime - Happy End (1967)
Round 4 - Thriller - Dead Man's Shoes (2004)
Round 5 - Western - Yellow Sky (1948)
Round 6 - Comedy - The Castle (1997)
Round 7 - Drama - Calvary (2014)
Round 8 - Adventure - Gerry (2002)
Round 9 - Horror - Kill List (2011)
Round 10 - Action - Pootie Tang (2001)