With Mexican stuff even if you are a big fan of El Santo if you haven't seen El Santo vs. El Esrangulador check it out. It seems to be overlooked by a lot of people. Hmmm Neutrón el enmascarado negro is pretty good. Tintorera is great staring the always wonderful Hugo Stiglitz. The Black Pit of Dr. M is up there. Or can I lump Álex de la Iglesia into Mexican/Spanish and just recommend Perdita Durango, Day ofthe Beast, 800 bullets, Perfect Crime, etc. Or check out Santiago Segura's Torrente films if you like sleezy cop films.

When I say great, or very good here please remember what we are recommending. I feel sort of odd in a thread where we dissected and discussed the beautiful art that Von Trier creates and there was a Passolini reference I'm now going on about the greatness of El Santo

I hope you also feel a bit silly for not telling any of us you were in London as well

I missed Horseman, HRR was a real weak one for me, I felt it had far too much money thrown at it. I think that had it come out in the 80s it would be the video nasty it wanted so badly to be. It was painfully predictable and while at times there were gems, they weren't enough to save it, I really felt that if it was done on a smaller budget, it would have been much much better.
Except I couldn't tell that to the guy who asked me what I thought of it when I replied "meh.." and he decided to tell me he was the executive producer... smooth, yup, that's me.

I loved TrT, my feeling on DMtH are worthy of thread all on it's own.
House of the Devil was a win from start to finish. I enjoyed Heartless quite alot as well. Did you see that? What'd you think of it?

I haven't watched Santo in years! But I have been watching some Kilink, which is good fun.

Anyone familiar with Michael Haneke's films?

funny games put me through the ringer...

I think that movie is supposed to do that. I've only seen the American version, which I thought was excellent, but I'm told the original is better. That director's movies definitely force you to think.

Don't get me started on Haneke. I was a big fan after seeing Benny's Video for the first time. I must have been 16 or 17 then. When I rewatched it a couple of years later, I was seriously wondering what I ever saw in that film. Very much like von Trier's work, Haneke's films usually seem very contrived and artificial to me - I don't need to be FORCED to think, I'm capable of doing that of my own accord. I found both Funny Games pretty much unbearable, not for their subject matter, but because you can almost sense Haneke standing outside the frame, pointing his finger at you and shouting "Why..? Why are you watching this..?!" The one quote from him that stuck with me regarding FG is something along the lines of "If you walk out of this movie you don't need to see it in the first place." Probably the most self-righteous thing I've ever heard a director say about his own films.

If I want a film to really fuck me up emotionally, subsequently forcing me to think, I turn to Noé. His first short Carne and Seul Contre Tous aka I Stand Alone are absolute masterpieces in my opinion and among the most depressing films I have EVER seen. If you found Funny Games to be harrowing though, proceed with caution.

And just for the record some other films that I feel to be masterpieces of transgressive cinema: C'est arrivé prez de chez vous aka Man Bites Dog (I HATED it when I saw it for the first time and it still remains the only film that ever managed to actually make me sick to my stomach), the aforementioned Clean, Shaven, Villaronga's In A Glass Cage, Kumakiri's Kichiku Dai Enkai, Cronenberg's Videodrome, Buttgereit's Schramm.

There. You made me do that. But since this thread is completely all over the place anyway...

anyone else immediately think of "heart of glass" whenever videodrome gets mentioned? well, that and james woods ripping into his own chest...

Can this get moved to "Whatever" ?

I'm from the UK originally (well till I was 5) so I go back a every month or two for work or United so I tend not to think about it as a 'trip' but I really should catch up with some UK Skullbrainers when I am in town.

I did like Heartless, I knew there was one that I forgot. Man that film came out of nowhere really. Was totally not on my radar but it was rather good.

Kilink is an interesting choice. I've only seen three films and I liked them all very much. (Strip and Kill, Flying Man, and Istanbulda) I really can't seem to find any others but they are definitely something that more people need to see. I need to track down a copy of the documentary they were pushing at SDCC this year. It looked like really interesting viewing. I'm afraid to go get into the Haneke discussion. It's pretty impressive to see such an open discussion of so many interesting genre of film here as odd as it is in the for sale section.

OK I said I was afraid to get into the Haneke discussion and I am. I do like Funny Games. More when he remade the same film in English and people paid him to do it.(Plus who can hate a film with John Zorn on the soundtrack) I found the original Funny Games to be a bit heavy handed. He's another guy who really thinks you should just 'get him' when he makes movies. When they broke the fourth wall and Arno Frisch started talking into the camera I thought the film was too full of itselfand I ended up going and watching his whole film history which is pretty hit and miss. Cache is very good and A White Ribbon is in my opinion his best film yet. I thought it was his most mature film as a director. I really look forward to it's theatrical release so I can see it again and make sure I feel that way about it.

I didn't really want to say that much about Haneke, I was more excited to see you mention Man Bites Dog. I really had a passion for that film when I first saw it. I have only revisited it a few times but I do find it to be a interesting film people need to see. So is Buttgereit the same as the director of Nekromantik 1 and 2? Those were an interesting part of my childhood. I can't say I've ever seen anything else from him but those always stuck in my brain for obvious reasons.

Have to admit I've seen neither Caché nor A White Ribbon yet, I'll definitely give them a try however!

And yes, that very same Buttgereit. I have to say I haven't watched Schramm for years, but it struck me as his most impressive and thought out work when being confronted with his films for the first time. It's sort of his own Henry - Portrait Of A Serial Killer although it delves more "into the mind of a serial killer" which actually is the ancillary title. Just check out that insane trailer!

Oh btw, anybody got some DVDs to sell..?

It's very late and I am very tired, but I vote that this should stay in the for sale section as it seems appropriate to the all overness of the thread itself. We are discussing films that go beyond definition, and yeah, so the thread should follow suit.

So tomorrow Jodorowsky or Godard?

Jodorowsky
And shit, I had had been ignoring this thread thinking it was about cheap used PAL dvd's!
(And with Jodorowsky, we can then dog-leg the thread into French Sci-Fi comics!)

I <3 El Topo!

okay
Here's a trailer for an animated version of the Jodorowsky and Moebius comic El Incal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBktKOQGBYA

too bad it was never finished

Funny - a friend of mine made the Moebius Redux documentary and has just finished filming a documentary episode featuring Jodorowsky and Daniel Pinchbeck roaming through night time Paris. Which all just reminds me I still have to do some catching up on Jodorowsky...

He's been a regular contributor to Heavy Metal over the past 15-20 or so years now. Sometimes in collaboration with Moebius. He's one of the main reasons I continue to buy it.

*corrected for spelling

We've just gone straight outside of my field of knowledge

I sometimes wish I was Kim Jong-il and and could sit around ruling a small country and watching endless films.
I'd be nicer of course.

ohh, man! i've been reading the old 1970's issues of heavy metal.. so classic. Moebius is amazing. Den is a great strip, so primal and and yet meditative. I don't know much about whats going on with it these days.. it kind of jumped the shark, no?

ok, back to film... Godard is amazing. I really like the highly stylized nature of his work. I need to go back and watch some of his earlier films...

also, i kind of liked this in the FS section, as well.. that has to be one of the best part about this forum.. the fact that a DVD sales thread turned into this is amazing and a testament to the quality of the boardies.. similar to when someone tried to sell that stupid buffmonster toy and it quickly turned into a deliciously entertaining "what are you eating" thread...

It was fun to just take two random directors, one totally cult and one the start of a French movement and see how fast everyone has love for them both. It's really a why this thread has been such a great read. I just watched Pierrot le fou on blu-ray and I never get tired of that film. It looks amazing on Blu.

Yes and no, the smut peddles the boat that carries the gems. Like i said Jodorosky is still a regular contributor, as are Serpieri, and once in a while Corben comes back for a Den tale. The stories of genuine artistic merit are fewer and further between nowadays though.

What do you movie-heads think about Tarkovsky?

as far as tarkovsky goes, the only work i'm familiar with is my name is ivan. very bleak, but i suppose that was the point of the film. i think he was a master of capturing and controling a raw and emotive power. similar to felini (although i much different sense), i think tarkovsky was adept at capturing a feeling or emotion and transporting the audience to that place, time, and mental state..

this is all coming from an amature "movie-head"'s perspective, so apologies for somewhat talking out of my ass...

Yeah, excellent observation. (BTW you're not talking out of your ass, that's a really good insight for someone who's only seen one of his movies.) I'd already seen several of his films before recently catching his most personal ... "The Mirror," which completely blew me away. That's what really got the hook in and convinced me to try to see everything he's done. It's very dreamlike but nothing that anyone who can dig David Lynch would find too heady. His most famous is "Solaris" of course, but IMHO the little-seen "Stalker" is the one that really gets the metaphysical thing going in a big way, a real masterpiece of brainiac science fiction. I think it was his only post-Soviet movie ... he had Sven Nyquist on that one, Ingmar Bergmann's famous cinematographer, so in addition to being an intense "ideas movie" it's beautiful to look at. That's also the one I'd recommend first to anyone interested in diving into Tarkovsky's work, which tends to intimidate a lot of people for its non-linear weirdness. It's a shame he didn't live longer and receive due recognition in his lifetime. One of the greatest filmic auteurs. For some reason I prefer Soderbergh's interpretation of "Solaris" even though it's much slicker than Tarkovsky's.