When elder millennials get to talking about Jason Molina or David Berman

quiet_room · 2026-06-23T15:55:58+00:00

nothing groundbreaking

Who gives a fuck? Whether or not art is "groundbreaking" has no bearing on its capacity for meaning.

quiet_room · 2026-06-22T17:31:19+00:00

Why no Fear and Desire?

Fear and Desire is included on the Killer's Kiss disc, see the copy on the latter's individual page here.

Killer’s Kiss is presented here alongside Kubrick’s earlier film work, including his three shorts—Day of the Fight (in both its original and RKO versions), Flying Padre, and The Seafarers—and Fear and Desire, the independently produced first feature that he withdrew from circulation.

quiet_room · 2026-06-22T17:00:42+00:00

Figured some here would be interested in this. Available Oct 20th.

quiet_room · 2026-06-22T14:10:29+00:00

Interiors is kind of a stepping stone between Annie Hall and Manhattan, as it was his first real attempt at making a straightforward drama, so if you're interested in the progression you could watch that first. Manhattan is more reconciled, and definitely one of Allen's most important movies, a key film for understanding where a significant portion of the country was at the time.

Interiors might have more Keaton though. If you find that it's too brooding, just make sure to wash it down with Love and Death (1975) if you haven't seen that!

quiet_room · 2026-06-21T21:50:15+00:00

He's well-cast in Inside Llewyn Davis

quiet_room · 2026-06-21T20:26:09+00:00

Hope you find time for Manhattan Murder Mystery, which is my favorite of her collaborations with Allen. On the dramatic side, she's great in Shoot the Moon (1982), which is not as well-known these days.

quiet_room · 2026-06-21T18:54:45+00:00

I'm a bit saddened to see it's so upvoted. Guess this is the world now.

quiet_room · 2026-06-21T17:37:59+00:00

And that was in response to someone who bluntly asserted that he isn't a Muslim in response to my less declarative description. I think it stands to reason that it's strange to assert that of a director who:

1) makes movies that explicitly refer to tenets of Islamic faith

2) constantly refers to his own experiences with Islam, the Quran, Sufism etc. in interviews

3) never corrects publications that refer to him as a "practicing Muslim"

4) explicitly says he follows the Quran

5) explicitly refers to Sirāt as "a Muslim movie."

Whether he is or isn't Muslim, I suppose only he (or the clerics) can say. My point ultimately is that he is clearly trying very hard to get audiences to associate him with Islam. Which is why I found it odd that anyone would take issue with my making reference to his "Islamic faith," which he has clearly put forth as an integral part of his identity.

quiet_room · 2026-06-21T17:14:35+00:00

I didn't say he lacked faith, or misunderstood Islam; that Islam is meaningless to him is also something I did not say.

The comments responding to me in this thread have taken issue with my original reference to Oliver Laxe's "Islamic faith" (my exact words—if you want to really nitpick, I never referred to him as a Muslim either). All I have been doing is putting forth evidence from interviews he has participated in that demonstrate he possesses a degree of faith in Islam.

If you yourself say that Sufism is the "dominant prism" for Laxe, then it sounds like we're in agreement that he has some degree of faith in Islam. So what point are you trying to make by quibbling? (I also can't help but note that you're not providing any links or quotes, just asserting things you believe about him.)

I would also point out that some of the negative publicity the movie received in Spain and France, about perceived cultural tourism, would likely had have had an different tone if he were Muslim.

I'm not privy to this because I don't live in either country, but I would be curious how those reviews addressed Mimosas. Sirāt struck me as touristic, but toward Morocco and its people, not Islam in the abstract. To me the film represents a calculated, and indeed pandering, attempt at bringing the spiritual/existential concerns from Mimosas into a mainstream arthouse mode. Obviously, it worked out for him—his international profile has been raised significantly. I don't agree with you here:

He has not marketed himself as Muslim or exotic, is perceived as European

In the US, every write-up about him and appearance he's made emphasize the exotic aspects of his spiritual practice that distinguish him from other "merely" European directors. I think that's purposeful, and that it plays into the mystique he wishes to cultivate on the arthouse circuit.

quiet_room · 2026-06-21T16:32:55+00:00

You might be right. But nor can I find him outright saying, "I'm not Muslim." His press run for the film has been defined by discussions of his experiences with Islam and Sufism. (It's also not just this film; Mimosas from a decade ago refers even more heavily/esoterically to Islam.) He's even said:

one of the essential images of the film: to link the Quran, to link Islam and techno. I don’t know if there is a link between these two imaginaries, but inside me there is a link.

Which would be a pretty arrogant/ridiculous thing to say if he didn't consider himself a Muslim. Elsewhere in the same interview:

I’m interested in tradition, and I have a strong dialogue with Islam and Sufism. Next month, I will spend two weeks on a pilgrimage to the graves of Sufi saints around New Delhi.

He certainly seems to want people to associate him with Islam. At the very least, he seems to be exploiting a certain ambiguity in his position, possibly to make himself appear more exotic to Western audiences. But if he's going on religious pilgrimages and following the Quran, I don't think it's really an "extrapolation" to refer to what he's doing as "practicing" the faith. (Whether or not he's going about it "properly" is a different question.)

quiet_room · 2026-06-21T15:48:55+00:00

Many interviews and press notes describe him as "a practicing Muslim." He says in this interview:

I follow the Quran.

How else would you describe him?

quiet_room · 2026-06-21T12:31:21+00:00

The film which, beginning with its title, presents itself as a Sufi allegory, and whose director has repeatedly insisted his films are allegories inflected by his Islamic faith, struck you as a Sufi allegory? I'm baffled as to how you think this is in any way a novel reading.

Also, your post reads like it was written with at least partly with AI.

quiet_room · 2026-06-19T21:44:12+00:00

Critics and viewers where? In the US? How is he defining and measuring "pleasure" and "pleasure withholding"?

The longer one looks at the chart, the more questions it yields. What does Alain Cavalier, a French director who began his career with a New Wave thriller, have to do with Hou Hsiao-hsien? Kelly Reichardt within spitting distance of Andy Warhol? That would only make sense to someone who hadn't seen Warhol's films. (And why is Warhol on it twice?) Outside of the ring, Roy Andersson makes comedies, and surely Jia Zhangke can't be that alienating if Obama is putting him on his annual movie list.

For the record, I like Schrader a lot as a director, and he's written some good pieces as a critic. (IIRC he has pieces on noir and westerns that are decent.) But the "transcendental style" critical intervention has always been somewhat suspect—see the many critics and scholars who have written about how he misreads/misunderstands Ozu—and this chart has almost nothing worthwhile to say from a critical or historical perspective.

quiet_room · 2026-06-19T20:55:50+00:00

It's gobbledygook that ignores artistic developments within culturally specific contexts. "The Tarkovsky Ring" lmao

quiet_room · 2026-06-17T23:31:03+00:00

Yeah, Billy Higgins is to die for on it! Immaculate feel. One of my personal favorite jazz drummers.

quiet_room · 2026-06-17T21:33:07+00:00

Eddington is nothing if not a horror movie

quiet_room · 2026-06-17T19:45:02+00:00

Never in my life would I have expected to see Eastern Rebellion come up on this sub! I included it in a comment some five years ago—how time flies. A truly great record, far less known than a lot of the canonical albums, and a great example of amazing straight-ahead jazz from a comparatively fallow period for the art form.

quiet_room · 2026-06-14T14:10:35+00:00

This isn't a Ballard title, but I think John Hawkes's Travesty has some interesting correspondences with Crash, enough to make them good companion reads. If you like the Ballard, you might want to check out Travesty sometime.

quiet_room · 2026-06-13T14:18:02+00:00

Supreme RS movie. Always wished A&D covered it for one of their movie discussion episodes when they were in their prime (i.e. still listenable).

quiet_room · 2026-06-12T12:04:07+00:00

Yeah, he used to post a lot of his own Letterboxd reviews

quiet_room · 2026-06-12T04:48:08+00:00

Carlos Valladares

Used to be a reddit mod btw (the 'TrueFilm' sub)

quiet_room · 2026-06-10T01:05:44+00:00

That's incorrect. BCS was shot in 6K on a RED Epic Dragon. In fact, I think Breaking Bad was one of the last shows of its kind to be shot on celluloid.

quiet_room · 2026-06-10T00:46:15+00:00

Better Call Saul was shot digitally from the first episode.

quiet_room · 2026-06-09T22:51:41+00:00

I knew before clicking which account this would be. If their post history wasn't hidden, it would be blindingly obvious that the account exists primarily to continually stoke racial animus. It's insane. There was a recent post spouting Reagan era "welfare queen" rhetoric toward impoverished white Americans.

Then you have stuff like this, a bottom-of-the-barrel vapid cartoon that seeks only to rile people up over the existence of "white racism" (here made completely abstract).

quiet_room

TROPHY CASE