I saw Trainspotting 2 last week. I enjoyed it. Is it going to change how you feel about the first Trainspotting? Or did it NEED to be made? Simply put no, but is it a fun ride while you're watching it? I would say it is. Its an enjoyable movie. Its not the needle in the arm of adrenaline the first one is, of course not, and I think the movie itself acknowledges that.

So. I've read more than enough books about the whole French new wave movement, seen enough films to know who was doing what and why. That doesn't mean I'm going to like somebody just cos I'm meant to.

Give me and Agnes Varda film over both those guys if you wanna talk about the new wave scene. I've also gotten more out of any Renoir film than I have from both Godard's and Truffaut's films

right i mentioned i wasn’t gonna discuss tastes because if you just don’t like the people you don’t like it.

so i’m not addressing what you like or don’t like but your use of the adjective overrated. which is not about your tastes but the rating people give it.

if you read all these books you said then you know all the innovations that jules et jim brought to film and what it meant to for its time and for filmmaking history then you can admit it’s an important film but you don’t like the characters.

i have the same problem with leni riefenstahl btw. super important innovator, bores me to tears, hate her main character.

Aye, I'm well aware of what they did for cinema and I think I mentioned that before. Problem is, were they doing anything decent with it? It's all well and good using techniques and pushing the auteur theory but if you aren't doing anything interesting with it then it's just masturbation.

“I’ve never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt constructed, faux intellectual, and completely dead. Cinematographically uninteresting and infinitely boring. Godard is a fucking bore. He’s made his films for the critics. One of the movies, Masculin, Féminin, was shot here in Sweden. It was mind-numbingly boring.”

Bergman said that. Whilst I'm not holding him as the fountain of knowledge it goes someway to explaining that just cos they were the critics darlings doesn't mean I'm going to like them.

ha ha ha ha

i agree with bergman! godard is fucking boring. he just lectures and lectures. i did like masculin féminin some though, mostly due to anna karina, but he’s more intellectual than an artist. couldn’t stand le weekend or pierrot le fou and don’t plan to see much of his stuff any further. film socialisme— spare me the lectures, thanks.

but truffault wasn’t godard and he was actually entertaining, and his innovations did serve a narrative and dramatic purpose, plus they made it possible for generations of independent filmmakers to tell their own stories, AND for hollywood to be reborn by a crop of fresh people like scorsese or coppola who commanded its industrial resources to great success.

look, i just googled “scorsese jules et jim” and blam, see:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/n...ese-influences

no books required (but there’s a book mentioned as a reference if you wanna read it)

in any case i (personally) did like jules et jim. and i fell in love with jeanne moreau when i saw her in this— who wouldn’t?— and so it was jules et jim et moi (le voyeur). i haven’t seen it in a long time though. but a story of how the idylls and idealism of youth can’t survive cynical old age and a rotting historical time? and told in such a refreshing way? sure, why not. and i love french endings. fuck happiness, ha ha ha.

I totally agree and can't rep you ("You must spread some Reputation around..." blah blah blah).

There are individual scenes in most of Godard's films that I love. It's trying to take a full movie that I struggle with. I still haven't got through the whole of Weekend in one sitting but that infamous traffic jam tracking shot is just brilliant. You can go through most of his films and find the same thing. There are 'slow' directors, who people often consider boring because of the pace of their storytelling (Bergman, Tarkovsky, Antonioni, Fellini, Ford, etc) but who, so long as you can deal with that pace, are fine. Godard's films seem quick, because they're hectic, but they just always seem to feel 3x longer than they actually are. Tarkovsky, Antonioni, etc, are slow, no getting away from it, but they can somehow entrance me in a way Godard never really does.

A slow pace is at least pacing, and I think it's fine that, say, Bergman films unfold leisurely. You feel you're in the hands of an artist who is in control. The metronome may be set a certain way, but it's deliberate.

Godard's films seem slow because they are fucking boring. (Dear lord, good luck with anything he made post-70s, with maybe two or three exceptions. Even the trailers are snooze-fests.)

Big difference, I think.

i think we all agree we hate godard

but why lump truffaut with his mess?

Let's compromise then. Godard is shit and Truffaut only made one great film ... which probably had more to do with Jean-Pierre Leaud's performance than Truffaut's direction.

I did like him in Close Encounters though.

i keep reading that as why lump truffaut with messi?

haa haa haa haaa

i like most of his moobys. the whole antoine doinel cycle.

as for “greatness” i think both jules et jim and 400 blows are candidates, but i’d have to mull it over and probably rewatch to make any sort of well-founded claims (apart from historical evidence).

I don't know if it counts as "great," but I really like Shoot the Piano Player.

And although not "art," Wild Child and Small Change have always pleased me.

Every Godard film I have ever seen is a piece of shit aimed at fucking soft-ass people who have no real problems in their lives, except to whine and cry about their fucking bullshit relationships. fucking forget that fuck for good. master of the dull, the interminable pointlessness, the fucking creme de la creme of poser art wanna be's who claim his greatness.

Yeah, I don't think he's a bad director, but I do think his reputation may be a little inflated. He's not a director I have strong opinions about in either direction. Which might be the problem. I mean at least Godard's almost guaranteed to provoke a response.

EDIT: As demonstrated by Rob.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Godard film, actually. Not thinking of any off hand anyway.

I just watched Silence of the Lambs for some reason. Still good, in case you were wondering.

Well I'm glad I'm not the only one to have the same feelings regarding Truffaut and Godard.

Anyway, I'm currently in the process of moving house and whilst doing all that I've been on Harrison Ford fix. So here's my FORD FIX MIX!

Just finished this one tonight. Honestly, I didn't even know about this and yet supposedly it was a MASSIVE hit when it came out. I really enjoyed it, plus I'm a total sucker for court room dramas. When a film does it well and doesn't feel like it's having to spoon feed everything to you I'm a happy man and this is no exception. Pus it shows that Harrison Ford is actually a decent actor.



#As I walk through the Amish paradise#

It's a real weird idea for a story tbh and one that shouldn't work, but again ol' Harrison helps makes it work. Anyway, makes me feel there should be more Amish people in films.



ACTION FORD! I remember I kept seeing this in Blockbusters when i first came out and wanting to watch it. 20 years later I finally have. Basically you know what you're gonna get before you even start the film. Also, I didn't realise Gary Oldman was in this stealing every scene as he does.



Fucking love this film. Seen it so many times and it never gets boring.

"I didn't do it!"
"I don't care"

Ace.

can't say I've seen much, but Breathless and Alphaville are pretty great.

contempt too, but that was all before he turned full egghead

with masculin-feminin he started getting into “theory” and i think by may 68 he was full maoist or something, and thus pursued his own version of the cultural revolution, attempting to lecture and indoctrinate everyone.