timschochet
Footballguy
I've never watched Top Gear; now I'm intrigued.
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Official Great Works Draft (7 Viewers)
- Thread starter timschochet
- Start date
Postradamus
Footballguy
42.18 THE SECOND WORLD WAR Sir Winston S. ChurchillNonfiction
The 6 volume history of WWII per Mr. Churchill which helped him earn the Nobel Prize for Literature. I've only read parts, which were great.
Vol. 1: The Gathering Storm
Vol. 2: Their Finest Hour
Vol. 3: The Grand Alliance
Vol. 4: The Hinge of Fate
Vol. 5: Closing the Ring
Vol. 6: Triumph and Tragedy
wiki
The 6 volume history of WWII per Mr. Churchill which helped him earn the Nobel Prize for Literature. I've only read parts, which were great.
Vol. 1: The Gathering Storm
Vol. 2: Their Finest Hour
Vol. 3: The Grand Alliance
Vol. 4: The Hinge of Fate
Vol. 5: Closing the Ring
Vol. 6: Triumph and Tragedy
wiki
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Fennis
Footballguy
I have my pick in between yours, but happy to do so.
rodg12
Footballguy
PM sent. Thanks man.
thatguy
Footballguy
Sure you want to go down that road pal? Your partner did it too.
Bob Lee Swagger
Footballguy
You should check it out sometime. I think it's only on BBC America here in the states, but I'm sure you'd be able to get a season or two on DVD. It's actually got very high quality production and editing, it's one of the funniest shows on TV, and they normally do some awesome tests/challenges. For instance, once they had to build a rocket car that would achieve flight, once they had to get all the way across one of the African countries in cars that they bought for less than 1000 quid each, etc.Plus, you don't have to like cars at all to enjoy the show.
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krista4
Footballguy
I really wanted to take a movie that's in English, but when Some Like It Hot was snatched from me, I had to go back to my "all black-and-white foreign films" strategy.
Let's even up those director numbers a little:
42.20 Rashomon - Akira Kurosawa (movie)
I go back and forth, as I think most critics do as well, on whether Seven Samurai or Rashomon is the superior movie. But why even bother? They're both phenomenal. Currently ranked at #9 on the Sight & Sound directors' poll and #13 on their critics' poll, Rashomon has been hailed as a masterpiece since its release. The movie masterfully addresses issues of truth and lies, the influence of one's individual perspective, and good and evil, and the use of light in the movie was groundbreaking. A little Wiki:
Roger Ebert / May 26, 2002
Shortly before filming was to begin on "Rashomon," Akira Kurosawa's three assistant directors came to see him. They were unhappy. They didn't understand the story. "If you read it diligently," he told them, "you should be able to understand it, because it was written with the intention of being comprehensible." They would not leave: "We believe we have read it carefully, and we still don't understand it at all."
Recalling this day in Something Like an Autobiography, Kurosawa explains the movie to them. The explanation is reprinted in the booklet that comes with the new Criterion DVD of "Rashomon." Two of the assistants are satisfied with his explanation, but the third leaves looking puzzled. What he doesn't understand is that while there is an explanation of the film's four eyewitness accounts of a murder, there is not a solution.
Kurosawa is correct that the screenplay is comprehensible as exactly what it is: Four testimonies that do not match. It is human nature to listen to witnesses and decide who is telling the truth, but the first words of the screenplay, spoken by the woodcutter, are "I just don't understand." His problem is that he has heard the same events described by all three participants in three different ways--and all three claim to be the killer.
"Rashomon" (1950) struck the world of film like a thunderbolt. Directed by Kurosawa in the early years of his career, before he was hailed as a grandmaster, it was made reluctantly by a minor Japanese studio, and the studio head so disliked it that he removed his name from the credits. Then it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, effectively opening the world of Japanese cinema to the West. It won the Academy Award as best foreign film. It set box office records for a subtitled film. Its very title has entered the English language, because, like "Catch-22," it expresses something for which there is no better substitute.
In a sense, "Rashomon" is a victim of its success, as Stuart Galbraith IV writes in The Emperor and the Wolf, his comprehensive new study of the lives and films of Kurosawa and his favorite actor, Toshiro Mifune. When it was released, he observes, nobody had ever seen anything like it. It was the first use of flashbacks that disagreed about the action they were flashing back to. It supplied first-person eyewitness accounts that differed radically--one of them coming from beyond the grave. It ended with three self-confessed killers and no solution.
Since 1950 the story device of "Rashomon" has been borrowed repeatedly; Galbraith cites "Courage Under Fire," and certainly "The Usual Suspects" was also influenced, in the way it shows us flashbacks that do not agree with any objective reality. Because we see the events in flashbacks, we assume they reflect truth. But all they reflect is a point of view, sometimes lied about. Smart films know this, less ambitious films do not. Many films that use a flashback only to fill in information are lazy.
The genius of "Rashomon" is that all of the flashbacks are both true and false. True, in that they present an accurate portrait of what each witness thinks happened. False, because as Kurosawa observes in his autobiography, "Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing."
The wonder of "Rashomon" is that while the shadowplay of truth and memory is going on, we are absorbed by what we trust is an unfolding story. The film's engine is our faith that we'll get to the bottom of things--even though the woodcutter tells us at the outset he doesn't understand, and if an eyewitness who has heard the testimony of the other three participants doesn't understand, why should we expect to?
The film opens in torrential rain, and five shots move from long shot to closeup to reveal two men sitting in the shelter of Kyoto's Rashomon Gate. The rain will be a useful device, unmistakably setting apart the present from the past. The two men are a priest and a woodcutter, and when a commoner runs in out of the rain and engages them in conversation, he learns that a samurai has been murdered and his wife raped and a local bandit is suspected. In the course of telling the commoner what they know, the woodcutter and the priest will introduce flashbacks in which the bandit, the wife and the woodcutter say what they saw, or think they saw--and then a medium turns up to channel the ghost of the dead samurai. Although the stories are in radical disagreement, it is unlike any of the original participants are lying for their own advantage, since each claims to be the murderer.
Kurosawa's screenplay is only the ground which the film travels, however. The real gift of "Rashomon" is in its emotions and visuals. The cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa evokes the heat, light and shade of a semi-tropical forest. (Slugs dropped from trees onto the cast and crew, Kurosawa recalled, and they slathered themselves with salt to repel them.)
The woodcutter's opening journey into the woods is famous as a silent sequence which suggests he is traveling into another realm of reality. Miyagawa shoots directly into the sun (then a taboo) and there are shots where the sharply-contrasted shadows of overhead leaves cast a web upon the characters, making them half-disappear into the ground beneath.
In one long sustained struggle between the bandit (Mifune) and the samurai (Masayuki Mori), their exhaustion, fear and shortness of breath becomes palpable. In a sequence where the woman (Machiko Kyo) taunts both men, there is a silence in which thoughts form that will decide life or death. Perhaps the emotions evolved in that forest clearing are so strong and fearful that they cannot be translated into rational explanation.
The first time I saw the film, I knew hardly a thing about Japanese cinema, and what struck me was the elevated emotional level of the actors. Do all Japanese shout and posture so? Having now seen a great many Japanese films, I know that in most of them the Japanese talk in more or less the same way we do (Ozu's films are a model of conversational realism). But Kurosawa was not looking for realism. From his autobiography, we learn he was struck by the honesty of emotion in silent films, where dialog could not carry the weight and actors used their faces, eyes and gestures to express emotion. That heightened acting style, also to be seen in Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and several other period pictures, plays well here because many of the sequences are, essentially, silent.
Film cameras are admirably literal, and faithfully record everything they are pointed at. Because they are usually pointed at real things, we usually think we can believe what we see. The message of "Rashomon" is that we should suspect even what we think we have seen. This insight is central to Kurosawa's philosophy. The old clerk's family and friends think they've witnessed his decline and fall in "Ikiru" (1952), but we have seen a process of self-discovery and redemption. The seven samurai are heroes when they save the village, but thugs when they demand payment after the threat has passed. The old king in "Ran" (1985) places his trust in the literal meaning of words, and talks himself out of his kingdom and life itself.
Kurosawa's last film, "Madadayo" made in 1993 when he was 83, was about an old master teacher who is visited once a year by his students. At the end of the annual party, he lifts a beer and shouts out the ritual cry "Not yet!" Death is near, but not yet--so life goes on. The film's hero is in some sense Kurosawa. He is a reliable witness that he is not yet dead, but when he dies no one will know less about it than he will.*** SPOILER ALERT! Click this link to display the potential spoiler text in this box. ***");document.close();
Let's even up those director numbers a little:
42.20 Rashomon - Akira Kurosawa (movie)
I go back and forth, as I think most critics do as well, on whether Seven Samurai or Rashomon is the superior movie. But why even bother? They're both phenomenal. Currently ranked at #9 on the Sight & Sound directors' poll and #13 on their critics' poll, Rashomon has been hailed as a masterpiece since its release. The movie masterfully addresses issues of truth and lies, the influence of one's individual perspective, and good and evil, and the use of light in the movie was groundbreaking. A little Wiki:
Though it kills me, the best on-line description and review of the movie I could find was from Roger Ebert. I guess he gets it right sometimes.mytagid = Math.floor( Math.random() * 100 );document.write("
Roger Ebert / May 26, 2002
Shortly before filming was to begin on "Rashomon," Akira Kurosawa's three assistant directors came to see him. They were unhappy. They didn't understand the story. "If you read it diligently," he told them, "you should be able to understand it, because it was written with the intention of being comprehensible." They would not leave: "We believe we have read it carefully, and we still don't understand it at all."
Recalling this day in Something Like an Autobiography, Kurosawa explains the movie to them. The explanation is reprinted in the booklet that comes with the new Criterion DVD of "Rashomon." Two of the assistants are satisfied with his explanation, but the third leaves looking puzzled. What he doesn't understand is that while there is an explanation of the film's four eyewitness accounts of a murder, there is not a solution.
Kurosawa is correct that the screenplay is comprehensible as exactly what it is: Four testimonies that do not match. It is human nature to listen to witnesses and decide who is telling the truth, but the first words of the screenplay, spoken by the woodcutter, are "I just don't understand." His problem is that he has heard the same events described by all three participants in three different ways--and all three claim to be the killer.
"Rashomon" (1950) struck the world of film like a thunderbolt. Directed by Kurosawa in the early years of his career, before he was hailed as a grandmaster, it was made reluctantly by a minor Japanese studio, and the studio head so disliked it that he removed his name from the credits. Then it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, effectively opening the world of Japanese cinema to the West. It won the Academy Award as best foreign film. It set box office records for a subtitled film. Its very title has entered the English language, because, like "Catch-22," it expresses something for which there is no better substitute.
In a sense, "Rashomon" is a victim of its success, as Stuart Galbraith IV writes in The Emperor and the Wolf, his comprehensive new study of the lives and films of Kurosawa and his favorite actor, Toshiro Mifune. When it was released, he observes, nobody had ever seen anything like it. It was the first use of flashbacks that disagreed about the action they were flashing back to. It supplied first-person eyewitness accounts that differed radically--one of them coming from beyond the grave. It ended with three self-confessed killers and no solution.
Since 1950 the story device of "Rashomon" has been borrowed repeatedly; Galbraith cites "Courage Under Fire," and certainly "The Usual Suspects" was also influenced, in the way it shows us flashbacks that do not agree with any objective reality. Because we see the events in flashbacks, we assume they reflect truth. But all they reflect is a point of view, sometimes lied about. Smart films know this, less ambitious films do not. Many films that use a flashback only to fill in information are lazy.
The genius of "Rashomon" is that all of the flashbacks are both true and false. True, in that they present an accurate portrait of what each witness thinks happened. False, because as Kurosawa observes in his autobiography, "Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing."
The wonder of "Rashomon" is that while the shadowplay of truth and memory is going on, we are absorbed by what we trust is an unfolding story. The film's engine is our faith that we'll get to the bottom of things--even though the woodcutter tells us at the outset he doesn't understand, and if an eyewitness who has heard the testimony of the other three participants doesn't understand, why should we expect to?
The film opens in torrential rain, and five shots move from long shot to closeup to reveal two men sitting in the shelter of Kyoto's Rashomon Gate. The rain will be a useful device, unmistakably setting apart the present from the past. The two men are a priest and a woodcutter, and when a commoner runs in out of the rain and engages them in conversation, he learns that a samurai has been murdered and his wife raped and a local bandit is suspected. In the course of telling the commoner what they know, the woodcutter and the priest will introduce flashbacks in which the bandit, the wife and the woodcutter say what they saw, or think they saw--and then a medium turns up to channel the ghost of the dead samurai. Although the stories are in radical disagreement, it is unlike any of the original participants are lying for their own advantage, since each claims to be the murderer.
Kurosawa's screenplay is only the ground which the film travels, however. The real gift of "Rashomon" is in its emotions and visuals. The cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa evokes the heat, light and shade of a semi-tropical forest. (Slugs dropped from trees onto the cast and crew, Kurosawa recalled, and they slathered themselves with salt to repel them.)
The woodcutter's opening journey into the woods is famous as a silent sequence which suggests he is traveling into another realm of reality. Miyagawa shoots directly into the sun (then a taboo) and there are shots where the sharply-contrasted shadows of overhead leaves cast a web upon the characters, making them half-disappear into the ground beneath.
In one long sustained struggle between the bandit (Mifune) and the samurai (Masayuki Mori), their exhaustion, fear and shortness of breath becomes palpable. In a sequence where the woman (Machiko Kyo) taunts both men, there is a silence in which thoughts form that will decide life or death. Perhaps the emotions evolved in that forest clearing are so strong and fearful that they cannot be translated into rational explanation.
The first time I saw the film, I knew hardly a thing about Japanese cinema, and what struck me was the elevated emotional level of the actors. Do all Japanese shout and posture so? Having now seen a great many Japanese films, I know that in most of them the Japanese talk in more or less the same way we do (Ozu's films are a model of conversational realism). But Kurosawa was not looking for realism. From his autobiography, we learn he was struck by the honesty of emotion in silent films, where dialog could not carry the weight and actors used their faces, eyes and gestures to express emotion. That heightened acting style, also to be seen in Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and several other period pictures, plays well here because many of the sequences are, essentially, silent.
Film cameras are admirably literal, and faithfully record everything they are pointed at. Because they are usually pointed at real things, we usually think we can believe what we see. The message of "Rashomon" is that we should suspect even what we think we have seen. This insight is central to Kurosawa's philosophy. The old clerk's family and friends think they've witnessed his decline and fall in "Ikiru" (1952), but we have seen a process of self-discovery and redemption. The seven samurai are heroes when they save the village, but thugs when they demand payment after the threat has passed. The old king in "Ran" (1985) places his trust in the literal meaning of words, and talks himself out of his kingdom and life itself.
Kurosawa's last film, "Madadayo" made in 1993 when he was 83, was about an old master teacher who is visited once a year by his students. At the end of the annual party, he lifts a beer and shouts out the ritual cry "Not yet!" Death is near, but not yet--so life goes on. The film's hero is in some sense Kurosawa. He is a reliable witness that he is not yet dead, but when he dies no one will know less about it than he will.*** SPOILER ALERT! Click this link to display the potential spoiler text in this box. ***");document.close();
Postradamus
Footballguy
very nice pick krista. Love this film.
ETA: Did I say pick? I meant picl.
ETA: Did I say pick? I meant picl.
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El Floppo
Footballguy
I can't believe that it took 30 or so rounds after I took Seven Samurai for Rashomon to finally fall.To paraphrase Ms Moore in Boogie Nights- That is a big picl.
Fennis
Footballguy
krista4
Footballguy
I just yelled, "Oh, a great pick by my partner!", and when I told Mr. krista4 what you took, he said, "F'n A, that's a great pick. One of my five favorite plays."
El Floppo, I'm surprised, too. It was only when I saw the other Kurosawa movies go that I realized this one hadn't been taken. 
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Fennis
Footballguy
I noticed Rodg has the novel AND the movie. Next up: The Ring.
timschochet
Footballguy
Another incredibly gifted playwright.
Fennis
Footballguy
Postradamus
Footballguy
43.03 TEMPLE of ARTEMIS at EPHESUS building/structure
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Pic
Ruins
The Temple of Artemis, also known less precisely as Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to Artemis completed— in its most famous phase— around 550 BC at Ephesus (in present-day Turkey). Only foundations and sculptural fragments of the temple remain, the monument being one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. There were previous temples on its site, where evidence of a sanctuary dates as early as the Bronze Age.
The new temple antedated the Ionic immigration by many years. Callimachus, in his Hymn to Artemis, attributed the origin of the temenos at Ephesus to the Amazons, whose worship he imagines already centered upon an image (bretas). In the seventh century the old temple was destroyed by a flood. Around 550 BC, they started to build the "new" temple, known as one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was a 120-year project, initially designed and constructed by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes, at the expense of Croesus of Lydia.
It was described by Antipater of Sidon, who compiled the list of the Seven Wonders:
"I have set eyes on the wall of lofty##### on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and ########, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the ##########; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, "Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand". /wiki
removed spotlighting.
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Pic
Ruins
The Temple of Artemis, also known less precisely as Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to Artemis completed— in its most famous phase— around 550 BC at Ephesus (in present-day Turkey). Only foundations and sculptural fragments of the temple remain, the monument being one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. There were previous temples on its site, where evidence of a sanctuary dates as early as the Bronze Age.
The new temple antedated the Ionic immigration by many years. Callimachus, in his Hymn to Artemis, attributed the origin of the temenos at Ephesus to the Amazons, whose worship he imagines already centered upon an image (bretas). In the seventh century the old temple was destroyed by a flood. Around 550 BC, they started to build the "new" temple, known as one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was a 120-year project, initially designed and constructed by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes, at the expense of Croesus of Lydia.
It was described by Antipater of Sidon, who compiled the list of the Seven Wonders:
"I have set eyes on the wall of lofty##### on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and ########, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the ##########; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, "Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand". /wiki
removed spotlighting.
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Fennis
Footballguy
When you get to page 179 we can talk
Fennis
Footballguy
errr. I mean
hagmania
Footballguy
Be back in a couple of days.:burrows back into the thread:
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Postradamus
Footballguy
you *******.
Uncle Humuna
Footballguy
Thought this would go sooner.But then again, Rubber Soul lasted until the 40th.
What do I know?
timschochet
Footballguy
Going to choose another play here, before it gets sniped from me:
43.04 Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh
IMO, this is his best work, and I also believe it to be one of the handful of great masterpieces of 20th century theatre, and perhaps the greatest modern tragedy. It's a great regret of mine that I have never had the chance to see this play perfomed live, only read it.
43.04 Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh
IMO, this is his best work, and I also believe it to be one of the handful of great masterpieces of 20th century theatre, and perhaps the greatest modern tragedy. It's a great regret of mine that I have never had the chance to see this play perfomed live, only read it.
Uncle Humuna
Footballguy
El Floppo
Footballguy
I'll obviously disagree with you about whether this is his best work- but it's a fantastic piece. I know I saw it somewhere when I was much too young... heavy ####. A definite "1B" behind Long Day's Journey for me- had it lined up just in case I didn't get my 1A.Two great, great late-value picks Tim.
timschochet
Footballguy
I'm very lucky. Not that I don't love musicals, I do. But there are so many classic dramas still out there as well.I'll obviously disagree with you about whether this is his best work- but it's a fantastic piece. I know I saw it somewhere when I was much too young... heavy ####. A definite "1B" behind Long Day's Journey for me- had it lined up just in case I didn't get my 1A.Two great, great late-value picks Tim.
TidesofWar
Footballguy
Send me a PM, Commodore
Abrantes
Footballguy
'Bout ####### time.
TidesofWar
Footballguy
41.08 - The Torah - Non-Fiction - Moses, with help from Jehovah
TidesofWar
Footballguy
Beer, Wine, and Caviar Popcorn do not make most black and white foreign films watchable for me
Doug B
Footballguy
This was tried sometime ago, and overruled.
TidesofWar
Footballguy
Over-ruled on what basisI think this is a sound pick, considering the differing paths Judaism and Christianity have take over the centuries.
If it is ruled the Old Testament pick owns The Torah as well, that is not far from saying one could draft The Louvre and own the Mona Lisa
El Floppo
Footballguy
wat.no.
eta: sorry, gb- not a good analogy. If somebody had drafted the book-cover of the Old Testament, then maybe you'd be on to something.
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This was the ruling some 170 pages ago.
TidesofWar
Footballguy
Hell Fire and Damnation, so it wasI do not really agree, but no need to hit the Wailing Wall Head On, I guess
TidesofWar
Footballguy
Chiwawa
Footballguy
then you have read more than many of the participants.
El Floppo
Footballguy
Also already taken, so don't get any ideas.
El Floppo
Footballguy
Thing is, I don't remember everything.
