The All Purpose Rainer Werner Fassbinder thread

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Solaris, Jul 2, 2018.

  1. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    Thanks. I'll have to check out the Clarke film.

    The Ethan Hawke/Jonathan Marc Sherman discussion on the VC edition is interesting, too. When Hawke was doing Sherman's play in New York back in 2013 I had no idea that it was, essentially, an updated version of Baal. The press touted it as a kind of Billy Idol/punk rock revisit without the Brecht influence. But what Brecht had to say is key.
     
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  2. stepeanut

    stepeanut The gloves are off

    Just ordered Fassbinder’s final acting role, Kamikaze ’89, on BD. Never seen it. Heard mixed things, but it sounds interesting to me.

    Anyone familiar with the film?
     
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  3. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    Probably posted elsewhere but the Criterion Collection will be releasing a three part Fassbinder set in July titled, The BRD Trilogy.

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    I've deliberately avoided these Fassbinder titles but this set looks enticing enough to warrant a viewing. Also, the new Criterion Channel has a dozen or so Fassbinder titles (including these three) for streaming/downloading with extras found on the DVD/Blu-ray editions.
     
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  4. 93curr

    93curr Senior Member

    I'm torn. Part of me is happy we're finally getting BD upgrades for BRD and 'Berlin Alexanderplatz' and part of me is a-feared that it's just wasted money if this year's big box set turns out to be Fassbinder instead of Kurosawa. (Or even next year) Just waiting to see if the other shoe drops kind of takes the fun out of it all.

    I wasted so much money buying individual Bergman titles on Blu that just ended up being sold off for pennies when the big box set was announced. And Criterion certainly seem to be pretty enthusiastic about Fassbinder lately. A wiser man than me might be inclined to wait patiently.
     
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  5. 93curr

    93curr Senior Member

    Good lord, why??
     
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  6. stepeanut

    stepeanut The gloves are off

    Tough one, for me, as the only one of the three that I don’t already own on BD is Veronika Voss. If this doesn’t get announced for the U.K. then I’ll most likely pick it up.
     
  7. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    Well, Fassbinder can be somewhat of an acquired taste.
     
  8. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    They're loaded. I need to watch prepared. Jaundiced eye, so to speak. The triptic seems full of the kind of mythology and lore of which I'm not familiar and deeply skeptical. Defense, I suppose. But there it is.
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2019
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  9. ralphb

    ralphb "First they came for..."

    Location:
    Brooklyn, New York
    Are there any solid plans for a Fassbinder big box? I'm in for that if it happens. Makes me wonder if I should wait on purchasing the Braun/Voss/Lola set.
     
  10. 93curr

    93curr Senior Member

    Nope. Just the expectation that, after the success of last year's Bergman Cinema box set, they'll be likely to want to put out another big box this year. Online guesswork as to which director might make the cut is all we have at the moment. This time last year, no one outside of Criterion's offices had any news of solid plans for the Bergman set.
     
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  11. ralphb

    ralphb "First they came for..."

    Location:
    Brooklyn, New York
    Fassbinder certainly deserves it, but it will cost a bloody fortune. :laugh:
     
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  12. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    For anyone living or visiting New York City on May 10th & 11th: The Film Forum will be screening Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy as a part of their great director Trilogies series.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2019
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  13. stepeanut

    stepeanut The gloves are off

    ^
    So many good trilogies on that programme.

    I’d love to see The Human Condition on the big screen.
     
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  14. Graham

    Graham Senior Member

    Location:
    Perth, Australia
    There are some Fassbender titles in the current Arrow UK sale. I picked up Fox & His Friends / Chinese Roulette and The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant.
     
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  15. stepeanut

    stepeanut The gloves are off

    Good choices. All excellent films.
     
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  16. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    That trilogy alone is an event. The single viewing (at home) made such an impression on me; the images were so searing and the situations so vivid that I really can't return to it for a long time. But it is one of standouts among the screenings.
     
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  17. 93curr

    93curr Senior Member

    I'd love to see 'The Human Condition' on BluRay in Region A! Arrow did it in Region B AGES ago!! What's taking Criterion so dang long???
     
  18. stepeanut

    stepeanut The gloves are off

    I’m of the opinion that, if you have an interest in world cinema, you really need a region-free player.

    The Arrow box set of The Human Condition is one of my favourites of all their releases. The original edition is now OOP, but it’s recently been reissued in lesser packaging; still the same great films, though.
     
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  19. 93curr

    93curr Senior Member

    More than anything else, it's just financial exhaustion. There's about three hundred or so Region A BluRays that I want and can't afford right now. If I expand to multi-region, that just about doubles.

    Besides, I just know that the day after I give in and buy the Arrow 'Human Condition' and upgrade my Oppo to multiregion, Criterion will announce that it will be their first of their 4K UHD releases.
     
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  20. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    Arrow's Region B box set is a thing of beauty, but it's been out of print for quite some time and obviously wasn't intended to be complete. The mind reels at what a Fassbinder set comparable to Criterion's Bergman one could look like...

    The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Collection Blu-ray
     
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  21. stepeanut

    stepeanut The gloves are off

    Finally received, and watched, Kamikaze ’89 at the weekend, after having to send my first copy back, as it arrived smashed to pieces.

    Fassbinder looks terrible in this, his final acting role; bloated and worn out beyond his years. It’s with no small degree of irony that he speaks his first words of the film: “You’re in poor shape.” But he puts in a compelling performance nonetheless in this paranoid, dystopian thriller about a detective chasing a crime that no one wants solved, in a near-future German society dominated by a single media giant. The film is closest in feel to something like World on a Wire, and I would recommend it to fans of that film.

    Regular Fassbinder collaborators Günther Kaufmann and Brigitte Mira also have significant roles.
     
  22. LeBon Bush

    LeBon Bush Hound of Love

    Location:
    Austria
    Getting back into this thread, I've now also finally seen Whity and The Third Generation. What I loved about Whity was the way the slavemasters were presented, in a pale white, zombie-like makeup. They also talked in this very off, enormously slow manner which perfectly made sense. Also amazing is Hanna Shygulla as the prostitute who gets visited by Günther Kaufmann's titular character. Oh yes, and Fassbinder's cameo as a rowdy in the saloon was great.

    The Third Generation feels very weird to me, but upon thinking about it, it all comes into place. The terrorists with no real motivation in life, hanging around their apartment, doing stuff like "whatever", taking drugs, etc. And when they come into action, they're so clumsy and hilarious - like children playing in the field. There are many parallels to the story of the R.A.F. (which is why this film was torn apart at the time by the german press, they found it all to be in bad taste) which makes it the more interesting if you have some knowledge about them.

    I also borrowed out "Effi Briest", "Merchant of the Four Seasons", "Katzelmacher" and "The Marriage of Maria Braun" today and am very much looking forward to check them out :agree:
     
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  23. LeBon Bush

    LeBon Bush Hound of Love

    Location:
    Austria
    I finally got round to some more Fassbinder.

    Katzelmacher starts off interestingly enough. A bunch of couples have sex in their tiny apartments. They meet in the yard of the apartment complex, talk gossip, drink beer, smoke cigarettes and basically just annoy each other. When a greek worker arrives (portrayed by Fassbinder) and starts an affair with Hanna Schygulla's Marie, the other guys want to teach the greek a violent lesson...

    Little happens in here, and while this doesn't make a movie bad, this one here drags after a promising first third. It really goes nowhere in particular, and while the ambiguous ending is very interesting to think about for a while, the movie as a whole is probably the weakest Fassbinder I've seen to date. Still, I am not disappointed at all, because the DVD has the short film The Little Chaos from 1966 as a bonus and here Fassbinder's film noir and nouvelle vague inspirations are very much visible. The three crooks act like in a Godard movie, the poster to Raoul Walsh's White Heat can be seen and one of the central sequences quotes Godard's vivre sa vie quite obviously. And there's even music by The Troggs in it! A very cool early short by Fassbinder :righton:

    And tonight, I watched The Marriage of Maria Braun. I'll quote my posting from the "Last movie you watched..." thread:

     
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  24. LeBon Bush

    LeBon Bush Hound of Love

    Location:
    Austria
    So, some more Fassbinder news from me :) yesterday night, I found "The City Tramp" on YouTube, one of his earliest shorts (I think it's the oldest one still surviving). What I loved about it was how little dialogue the movie featured, instead purely focussing on facial expressions, surrounding sounds, and images in general. The editing of the film is a rather sloppy affair, especially when thinking of RWF's artistic masterworks like "World On A Wire" or "Chinese Roulette" - while the cutting was good in my opinion, music and dialogue sounded a bit off. And that's a bit distracting. But the ambiguous character of the short, the amount of ambivalent scenes and the symbolism featured in no more than 10 minutes is amazing. I'm sure that, if one were about to trace the motifs of Fassbinder's output, most of them can already be observed in "The City Tramp". An intense, multi-layered affair held back by its technical limitations. Still, of course, very recommended for the Fassbinder fans :agree:

    On the other hand, this came in the mail today:

    [​IMG]

    The german DVD of "Chinese Roulette". It's one of the rarest Fassbinder DVDs around here and I missed the chance to grab the UK blu ray while it was still available, so when I saw it for a mere four bucks online, I went for it. One of the most memorable, dark, aesthetically amazing movies I have EVER seen. So great to have it in my collection now :wiggle:
     
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  25. stepeanut

    stepeanut The gloves are off

    The Arrow BD is still available, albeit with limited availability:

    Fox And His Friends (+ Chinese Roulette) Blu-ray | Arrow Films

    The rest of the Arrow Fassbinders are also still available, with most showing the same limited availability status, so grab them while you can.

    No new Fassbinder news for me — waiting patiently for more English-friendly releases — but I’m enjoying reading your posts.
     
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