Yesterday my wonderful girlfriend said that she had a big surprise for me. Previous surprises include showings of Vertigo and Breathless at local cinemas....

We journeyed into the Castro area of San Francisco where they are having the 15th year of the SF Silent Film Festival. She had bought tickets for us to see:

Le Voyage Dans la Lune (1902) Georges Mellies. At 14 minutes this is generally considered to be the first science fiction film and sits just below 500 in the top 1000. It is totally charming and a wonder ful way to get you into the mood of silent films. there are a pianist providing music and the cinema was packed because next up was....

The Alloy Orchestra playing live accompanying Man With A Movie Camera (1929). The film was created, photographed and directed by Dziga Vertov and is an amazing display of stop motion, tracking shots and slow motion, fast motion and stills to tell the story of a day in a Russian city (actually three cities) from 81 years ago. Think Koyaanisqatsi on steroids for nearly a century ago.

The accompaniment by the Alloy orchestra was sensational and built the momentum of the film into this delirious, almost drug induced cacophony that I have now seen three times.

How many of you have partners who do this type of stuff for you? She bought me an iPad for my birthday and we rip movies onto this and watch them at the kitchen table over dinner. We're watching the great romances of the movies at the moment. We are off to Inception on Thursday.

We left convinced more than ever that silent film is art form we need to explore further.

Lucky me!
Rob

My girlfriend's the one who gave me the heads-up that 2001 was showing in Detroit in 70mm, knowing that it's basically the number one item on my movie bucket list. She went with me to see it, sight unseen, knowing that it has a reputation as a difficult movie. That's love.

You are lucky. My love for classic movies, if anything, alienated my girlfriend, who preferred to drag me to see Twilight.

My GF hates the fact that I say she looks like KS - so Twilight Eclipse is not going to happen. Not that I even want to see it! We have remarkably similar taste in movies until it comes to horror.

Rob

Luckily for me my GF HATES Twilight with a passion(she's also not big on Sex And THe City for that big on Sex And The City), so I can easily go my entire life without ever seeing a single Twilight film, her tastes in films are actually pretty close to mine, she's pretty much always up for seeing a mindless action film over a rom-com or a tearjerker, last film I saw with her was Kick Ass.

My wife and I differ pretty greatly on movies but we're in general, mostly enthusiastic agreement on lit, music and the rest. But since we're here for movies...

She's a sucker for "cute" or the general threat of "cute". This has ruled out my love of Bergman (beloved Fanny and Alexander reduced to creepy?!) and virtually everything that has strong violence (she abandoned No Country For Old Men, walked out of The Dark Knight (that damned Joker and his prevarications about facial scarring)). Then there's "experimental" like Adaptation., Lost in Translation, recent film club pick American Splendor and anything that David Lynch has ever directed or had anything to do with.

But she's game for virtually every foreign language film that comes into town -- her logic, the logic of so many including myself, being that American distributors seldom pick the horrible foreign language films for the US market. So, if they don't have violence, we're usually in line. Everything with Sergi López (her top actor) is seen no matter the violence (hands make a good shield). That's how An Affair of Love came to be so damned watched around here. Really good movie!

On her end there's a love for fantasy-ish stuff (Those Harry Potter movies and others) that I don't really appreciate and an undying enthusiasm for virtually any 40s/50s chaste comedy. Not that those movies are bad, exactly, but they rarely seem to be great.

But we both love family films (Pixar, at any rate) and have found sincere appreciation of what Judd Apatow and his knock-offs are doing with likeable, goofy characters in relatively normal circumstances. She hates mawkish romantic comedy and that's a great gift.

Sometimes I wish she'd be game for Au hasard Balthazar or Persona or High and Low just as she wishes I wouldn't observe that Doris Day is far creepier than Fanny and Alexander and the dreadful movies she made with Rock Hudson are, in my words, "time machines back to the joy of McCarthyism." We make it work in other, more valuable ways.

Major

Last night at dinner she said that "I guess you'll be finally wanting me to watch your donkey movie next?"

of course she was not referring to some odd piece of porn locked in the closet

...she was of course alluding to one of my fave movies of all time - Au hasard Balthazar.

and if anyone can get to see them, Alloy are simply amazing live. they are also doing a gig with the restored Metropolis.

Rob

I'm sure anyone who likes movies can appreciate Au Hasard Balthazar on some level. As for Persona...I wouldn't bet on it. And Rob, speaking of the Alloy orchestra doing Metropolis, I was actually fairly disappointed with their accompaniment at the premiere. It was standard and average as far as silent bgm goes; a lot of boring electronic stuff. It didn't even include the famous melody from the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvNipWws-so

Honestly though, Metropolis is a frustrating film for me whatever the accompanying score. Paradoxically, it's both overlong and too short due to the eternally missing scenes. The restored footage was substantial, but poor in quality. I consider Metropolis to be a grand visual treat, but inferior to the best silent cinema has to offer.

Sounds great. Thanks for the heads-up on this.

Hey there MGC

I was sad to realize i missed Metropolis. I did not even know the festival was on, so Angelique really surprised me.

I cannot comment on Alloy with Metropolis. However, their MWAMC effort was mesmerizing. It is also on the DVD.

Rob

DylnFan96818
You're very welcome. i hope this comes your way. if you are really interested, the DVD of the film can also be found with their soundtrack

Rob

I'm a big fan pf the "Qatsi" trilogy, as well as Baraka, and if this is along the same veins, methinks I'll enjoy it highly.

I'm lucky in that the wife can go to a movie by herself. She left me at home to watch infomercials instead of dragging me to see "Twilight: Eclipse".

There's this deal for cooking pasta... Man, it rocks!

Seriously though, attaboy Robert!!

My lady friend takes it in the ass when she's bleeding. I feel lucky about that. If I can somehow convince her to watch Inception with me when it comes out here on Thursday, I'll agree to put down some extra sheets.

There aren't enough words or smilies to accurately convey just how funny wisey's post is.

The woman in my life, who surprisingly isn't a rubber doll, loves movies as much as I do. Sure, there's an occasional romantic comedy I'll have to sit through, but for the most part she has great taste. Even when we watch a romantic comedy it's usually something great like When Harry Met Sally, or something tolerable like Intolerable Cruelty (see what I did there?). We actually hit it off 3 years ago because I randomly quoted The Big Lebowski. When we first started talking we went down the list of our favorite films and those lists matched up pretty closely. She's down for foreign films, art films, experimental films, pretty much anything.

It's a good thing too, because aside from the guys on this forum, I don't have too many real-life friends that I can talk movies with. She even gets a little angry when I watch something she's interested in without her (example: Le Doulos yesterday). She feels like she falls "behind" as if we're in a competition or something. It's pretty cute.

Yeah, Wisey's post is hilarious.

My GF is the same, if I watch a movie without her, and say I liked it she gets mad that she missed out. She's also working her way through the top 200 films of all time and loved le Doulos.

She's also a very keen and good photographer!

Rob