Tuesday, March 11, 2008

to be be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness

I was suprised at how stoked I was on the Seventh Seal. I didn't remember much about it besides the playing chess with death stuff. The wisecracking of the squire makes it seem very Shakespearian. It's quite touching at times and disturbing because Bergman and I feel the exact same way about death. Terrrified.Not like we're alone in that. Another whose thinking about death I totally grok (oh man terrible) is Woody Allen. I was searching online for the part of Love and Death where he is sending up the Seventh Seal, and I came upon this clip from it on youtube which reminds me of how funny this movie is. I'm gonna Netflix it pronto.

Speaking of netflix, the only crappy part about the films at the Mondavi, is that they just screened a DVD, and on a screen that wasn't even that big (and on which the movie was not properly framed). I guess that's the best I can hope for in the greater Sacramento area, but it's really, really a rip for them to charge non-students ten bucks. I got a big dollar off with my staff discount. Nevertheless, I'm stoked to go see Smiles On A Summer Night next week.

11 comments:

Liv Moe said...

did you catch the pre-film lecture? i suppose this film program is an easy revenue source for the Mondavi for which i've heard mixed things about as to how successful they've been in recent years.

i saw virgin spring and the 7th seal within 2 weeks of each other this past winter which was an interesting combo. after watching VS, 7S seems playful and light hearted, although i suppose most films would after watching virgin spring.

In conclusion... young Max Von Sydow = awesome!

Anonymous said...

Old Van Sydow is pretty good, too. He gave a wonderful performance (in French!) as Bauby's father in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". To say nothing of his work in "Rush Hour 3"!

-DB

Anonymous said...

Is the mondavi doing a regular monday night film (well, dvd projection) program? I know i could probably google this, but it's so much more 'cooperative' to ask in a public forum. Look, I'm part of a community.

Seventh Seal was a lil bit of a disappointment for me, mainly because it seemed like a parody of something-- even though it was the original which inspired all of the parodies. I kept feeling like i was watching an extended SCTV skit. I know, i'm a churl.

-omf

beckler said...

I thought it would seem like a parody too, but there's a lot of humor and self-mockery in it, so it escapes from that. Like when the knight is playing chess with Death and pulls a "oops, I knocked over the pieces and I don't remember where the were" and then Death is like "I do". That's obviously supposed to be funny.

We missed the pre-film lecture on the black death. I'm sure it would have been good, but I would be more psyched to see a lecture by a film professor than a history professor.

Yeah, they're doing a regular thing, after next week the schedule is all war movies (including the Grand Illusion which I've already seen on the big screen) so I'm not too intrigued. I hope it goes well and they branch out. It was a pretty good-sized crowd last night. Probably 2/3 to capacity.

Anonymous said...

the pre-film lecture was interesting, but it was about the plague moreso than the seventh seal. she did show clips from monty python and the holy grail, so that was entertaining. i didn't stick around for the post-film discussion, though.

you are welcome to come over to my place for dinner or maybe grab something out in davis on monday night before smiles next week, if you don't feel like shuttling back and forth to sacramento...

deeann said...

This may double post- I didn't see the last post I did show up.

I haven't seen a screening there yet, how was the framing off?

beckler said...

you could just see that the image was larger than the screen. so a sliver of the border was projected onto the wall behind.

deeann said...

It sounds like spill, which is a pretty common problem. We found it easier to align to a brightly colored background image to minimize it and now I've just taken this conversation down to a level of boringness.

Anonymous said...

Another Bergman-Woody Allen connection: Von Sydow in Hannah and Her Sisters.

Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCjoNt0iCzY

Been looking forward to the series since SN&R's Jonathan Kiefer wrote it up a while back.

wburg said...

My own Seventh Seal experience was back in 2001 when Mr. Lobo's "Cinema Insomnia" show was still on local TV. So, in addition to the other lovely notes of the film, you had horror-host commentary and ads for "Horsen Milken."

Anonymous said...

Um...he-LLO? Biz? Where's the 'Bill and Ted' comment???

-- Patrone