Sinister: hartley

[ian connelly]

i actually think hartley's sense of humor was better
before his film-making skills became so much smoother.
his 'middle-period'  movies (_trust_ is one of my favorite flicks 
(i've got a sad tendency to watch it twice a year whether i 
need it or not), and i'm VERY partial to about 30 minutes or
so of _simple men_) are imho the strongest in terms of 
dialogue and subtly ridiculous plot without being as 
overbearingly didactic as _flirt_ and _henry fool_.

i will concur that _surviving desire_ (the one about the 
professor falling in love/lust with a student that someone 
mentioned  earlier) is a little too contrived and maybe 
a bit silly, too. and that's how i think of more recent
stuff like _flirt_.

but i'm a sucker for martin donovan, and would probably
put the first 20 minutes of _amateur_ up against any
film in christendom, but that's really a matter of personal
taste, isn't it? it's at this point i should stop rambling.

(chris, about your quote about hartley being overbearing:
i semi-agree (could he possibly be more overbearing than
woody allen?), but isn't this sort of clunky posturing 
somehow more interesting than the sort of glossy fluffing
that goes on in all manner of 'mainstream' films? 
*cf _pretty woman_, an admittedly overused example.)

has anyone looked at this recently?
http://www.best.com/~drumz/Hartley/
it's probably the best resource for all things Hartley if
you want to know more.

armchair critic,
ian number five

At 12:12 PM 6/22/99 -0700, McQuain, Chris wrote:
>Also, yesterday somebody asked if any film critics on the list had an
>opinion of Hal Hartley. I have had (he ever-so-modestly and
>self-deprecatingly said) bits and pieces of my film criticism published,
>locally, and my opinion on Hartley is that he's very intelligent, I thought
>The Unbelievable Truth was okay, Henry Fool was quite good, but the Book of
>Life starring featured member of my Idol Parade PJ Harvey was crap. Any
>Hartley film will be more and more crap depending upon the degree of
>smugness he lets in, which at times is unbearably high. His 'humor' is like
>having a loud, foul person standing behind you nudging you and saying, "Get
>it? Get it?". Intolerable. Hartley is good to the degree that he can be
>serious and not let his Bazooka Joe humor invade his otherwise fine films. 

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   +---+  Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list  +---+
  To send to the list mail "sinister at majordomo.net". To unsubscribe
   send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
  "majordomo at majordomo.net".  WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+
 +-+  "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+
 +-+                     "jelly-filled danishes"                   +-+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+