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Schmeerguntz 1965
The montage here is so rapid that I'm just now noticing this may be history's first ironic use of women laughing alone with salad.
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At Berkeley 2013
I'm constantly amazed how Frederick Wiseman is able to find a single scene that outlines an entire documentary, in someone else's word. In Belfast, Maine, which I first saw last month, it was a teacher discussing Moby Dick. He brings up Melville's focus on working class figures in an uncannily fitting description of Wiseman's career. Here in At Berkeley Wiseman shows the same keen eye right away with three scenes during the opening—a talk about the founding of UC Berkeley,…
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The Women of Pinochet 2005
Eduardo Menz combines the image of Cecilia Bolocco receiving a medal from Pinochet with audio and subtitles of Carmen Gloria Quintana's account of being set on fire by soldiers. The image is photographed closer each time until it's indecipherable, as the audio grows louder and the subtitles shrink until the compression renders them illegible. Then the two clips switch places and the trajectory is reversed.
The reversal of the second half worked really well for me. Instead of establishing a…
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Apoohcalypse Now 2002
Winnie the Pooh as Colonel Kurtz, Marlon Brando's iconically camp role from Apocalypse Now. File next to Walt Disney's Taxi Driver, Mickey Mouse in Vietnam, and that weird-ass Kumamon meme.
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Cowboy and "Indian" Film 1958
This is kind of like Kenneth Anger conjuring up the first act of A Movie. It's kind of anti-technique, so your experience may vary based on your appreciation for the magick that made it, but I'm a firm proponent of more axes in the editing room.
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Let the Corpses Tan 2017
I think Cattet–Forzani put it best when they said "[wood creaking] [rubber squeaking] [sizzling meat] [leather scrunching] [audible gleam] [gunshot] [sandpaper scratching] [exhaling quickly] [another gunshot] [hand rubbing the barrel of a rifle up and down] [snap crackle pop] [punching a melon] [just full on fellating the microphone]."
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Non-Fiction 2018
A lot of people are going to find something to love in this, but this dialogue-heavy Rohmerian format usually doesn't work for me. A lot of the writing is interesting, but translating it to the screen or even into a performance comes off like an afterthought.
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