Topic: Poor Jon

[samuelrichardscott]

So,

Jon has been on my UK review team for www.dvdcompare.net for a while now and I tend to send discs to people I know will like them. I pass on an unbelievable amount of crap but got offered something earlier this week and thought it would be funny to get Jon to cover it. So... Jon needs to review....


 

To be fair though, I'm not that mean and he has got a whole heap of awesome in his pile like Maniac Cop Blu-ray.

[Jimmy]

Jon I hope you will post part of your review here too. This film look so awesome

[Najemikon]

Oh yeah. I'll post it alright! 

At least I can fake that! "Sequins, fit women and the dancing is good. If you like that sort of thing.", but I thought you were talking about Red Psalm in your PM which seriously, I haven't got a frickin' clue. 

EDIT: Ah, my mistake. I hadn't hit "send" on a second PM where I was warning you my review of Red Psalm would be short. Because it was rubbish and my appreciation of 19th century peasant revolts in Hungary is a bit thin...

[samuelrichardscott]

but I thought you were talking about Red Psalm in your PM which seriously, I haven't got a frickin' clue. 

Oh right. The interview with Second Run I did will be online in the next few days. They released this and it does look bizarre. What did you think of it?

[Najemikon]

I can appreciate that it was brilliantly put together. The shots are fluid, edits rare and the set-ups staggering for that very reason. But I didn't understand a word of it! It's some sort of open air pageant where soldiers are threatening workers, who sing political songs about their rights. It's full of meaning and is all very serious, but incredibly boring, arty and impenetrable.

Observe:



It's like that all the way through! I wonder if Matthias could untangle it? 

[goodguy]

I have my own reservations about Red Psalm, but I certainly didn't find it boring for a second.
As for impenetrable, this might help: http://www.rouge.com.au/8/red_psalm.html

After "fascinating" and "gorgeous", I take note that "brilliant" and "staggering" also describe things you don't care for.

Btw, did you get the Szindbád DVD as well? Huszárik is an interesting counterpoint to Jancsó in Hungarian cinema. Made roughly at the same time, both films are formally incredibly ambitious, but where Jancsó is majestic and abstract, Huszárik is intimate and impressionistic and probably much more approachable for western audiences, without being as conventional as István Szabó and the likes.

[Najemikon]

Both this and Our Beloved Month of August were Second Run releases and had a consistent case design implying there are or will be more. Maybe Sam could ask them if the other titles are coming, as he's doing an Q&A with them!

Whenever I review anything I think its important to put aside your own basic reaction, the one that dictates whether you actually enjoy the thing, and make an effort to distinguish what is good despite your own reservations so that others can read between the lines and spot that they might enjoy it. In that sense, Red Psalm is easy. I don't like the story, I don't like the style, I don't like that its basically a musical and a rather smug one at that, and the rather obtuse, pretentious nature infuriates me! That said, I can honestly say that the staging and flow of the film is "brilliant" and occasionally "staggering"! I suppose you can split any film into three broad parts that can be distinct to some degree: narrative, story and mise en scene. In Red Psalm's case, I hated the first two and loved the last.

Thanks for the link. It starts with the mise en scene, so that will certainly help!

[samuelrichardscott]

We missed out on Szinbad (when I'm away working we sometime miss stuff because I'm to late to reply).

I'll post a link to the Q&A (which has already happened) when it's online.