1980s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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flyonthewall2983
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1101 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Wed Sep 24, 2014 11:26 pm

Gregory wrote:...Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," which took a cheesy power ballad with generic '80s lyrics of the "I really need you tonight" variety...
Isn't that an actual line from the song?

You know, I would probably be up for a music video-only list.

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Cold Bishop
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1102 Post by Cold Bishop » Thu Sep 25, 2014 4:28 am

I don't know guys… I've been so burnt out on movie watching for the last few months I almost considered sitting this project out. Despite my lack of participation, I'd like to throw out one last Hail Mary spotlight title, that I've been holding off talking about until I could rewatch it. That might have to wait for it's inevitable panda status, but nevertheless I feel I should compose a few words, meager and hard blown though they may be, hoping that some of you may track it down in these last few days (after Long Arm of the Law, of course).

The Sword (Patrick Tam, 1980) – While mostly remembered nowadays for his famous protégé (Wong Kar-Wai) or his curious decision to give up the directing chair for the editing booth, Patrick Tam was one of the major figures of the Hong Kong New Wave. A disciple of the European art house tradition, he made his name in television by bringing Godardian aesthetics to his television projects. Unlike his fellow "art film" peers like Ann Hui or Allen Fong, Tam attempted to meld his modernist sensibilities with commercial genre cinema in a manner singular even for that period. It's hard not to read his premature retirement into the increasing impossibility of such a project.

This, his first film, is his best, not just a classic text of the New Wave (and one of its few martial-arts films) but also a culmination of the "cruel" trend of the wuxia… Really a culmination of the classical era of the entire genre. The plot is a classic chestnut – a skilled martial-artist determined at all costs to gain the title of supreme swordsman – but it's distinguished by a masterful formal rigor and psychological dexterity. Yes, this counts as a revisionist text, a martial arts film-which dissects the genre's will-to-power narratives and adherence to violence. Clean cut lines of good and evil become tangled as we realize the full extent of the hero's vanity and inflexibility. Likewise, the film's initial simple, if still outré Oedipal conflict expands outward, the film's cast of characters forming a web of familial and social interconnections. It's a microcosm of society that splinters and disintegrates in the neurotic drive for power and control (in various forms).

Yet for all its New Wave aplomb, the film feels almost Classical thanks to Tam's austere and measured staging and stylization, borne as much from the late 60's height of the genre as from his modernist influences. The moody novelistic influence of Chor Yuen is here, but Tam cuts his cast down to a minimum, keeps the plot clearly delineated, and adopts a much more subtly baroque visual palette, often giving way to sparse outdoor locations. The action, likewise eschews the constructive, choreographic influence of the kung fu film, updating the montage-based strategies of an earlier era. In fact, the film is arguably the work of two auteurs, as it is deeply impressed by the work of action-choreographer Ching Siu-Tung, himself on the cusp of his own storied directorial career (Duel to the Death, A Chinese Ghost Story). Ching brings his trademark frenzied and hyperbolic style to the action, while Tam manages to restrain the more outlandish and incomprehensible faults of that style. It's a perfect marriage of their two sensibilities.

Vividly dramatized, artfully rendered, and subsumed in an air of fatalism, this perhaps more than any King Hu film provides the prototype for the art-wuxias of a later generation (Ashes of Time, The Blade)… but this iconoclasm would not be nearly as effective if Tam didn't show a masterful control of the traditional elements of the genre. Standing at the end of the classical era, it provides as forceful and mournful a period point as Man of the West or Hara-Kiri did for their respective genres. A masterpiece… New Wave, wuxia pian, Hong Kong, cinema.
Last edited by Cold Bishop on Sun Sep 28, 2014 8:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

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thirtyframesasecond
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1103 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Thu Sep 25, 2014 7:18 am

flyonthewall2983 wrote:
Gregory wrote:...Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," which took a cheesy power ballad with generic '80s lyrics of the "I really need you tonight" variety...
Isn't that an actual line from the song?

You know, I would probably be up for a music video-only list.
I like the sound of that!

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1104 Post by zedz » Thu Sep 25, 2014 7:18 am

I know the 80s is supposed to be the golden age of music videos, but there are none I'd want to include on my list - and I've included at least one on my 70s, 90s and 00s lists. Gregory, you are joking about that Bonnie Tyler video, aren't you? That clip has always struck me as simply bad camp. Its witless bombast does kind of sum up the worst impulses of 80s music video, but I don't see that as a good thing!

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Gropius
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1105 Post by Gropius » Thu Sep 25, 2014 7:55 am

Cold Bishop wrote:That might have to wait for it's inevitable panda status...
Fear not - it will be getting a top 20 vote from me. I've been watching various Hong Kong titles, and this was the one that stood out the most, along with Tsui Hark's delirious Zu. With much of the more acclaimed HK stuff in other genres (A Better Tomorrow, Rouge, Peking Opera Blues), I find myself wanting to like it more than I ultimately do: there is always excellent technique on display - perhaps, as Bordwell argues, the best synthesis of art and mass entertainment at that time in the world - but the combination of exaggerated action (and/or romance and/or comedy) and broad melodrama can be difficult to enter into, particularly if, like a stereotypical Western cinephile, one favours the emotional reserve and detachment of the Taiwanese New Wave (though there's more than a trace of melodrama in Hou).

The Sword, as you point out eloquently, seems to come from another world, albeit a superficially familiar one. It's got all the usual martial arts ingredients, but the tone is cold, spiky, melancholic. The way it is shot and edited frequently explodes space in a bracingly formalist manner (rather as Tsui had recently done in The Butterfly Murders), and the synth soundtrack is comparable to the ones Popol Vuh did for Herzog. The way you talk about classical and modernist influences also makes me think of Carpenter's The Thing (currently sitting in my top 10), which, while not directly related, shares a similar revisionist approach to genre, and a similarly despondent atmosphere. I haven't had an opportunity to see any of Tam's later films yet (apparently he was dissatisfied with the released cut of Nomad?), but I gather they took a different turn into urban drama.

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Gregory
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1106 Post by Gregory » Thu Sep 25, 2014 10:59 am

zedz wrote:I know the 80s is supposed to be the golden age of music videos, but there are none I'd want to include on my list - and I've included at least one on my 70s, 90s and 00s lists. Gregory, you are joking about that Bonnie Tyler video, aren't you? That clip has always struck me as simply bad camp. Its witless bombast does kind of sum up the worst impulses of 80s music video, but I don't see that as a good thing!
I thought my post on "Total Eclipse of the Heart" made it clear that I think of it as the most bombastic camp, which I thoroughly recommend watching to experience the decade in its most undiluted form. It does much more than sum up the worst impulses of music videos; it distills them and takes them in some bizarre directions. I'm not going to actually vote for it or anything.

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thirtyframesasecond
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1107 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Thu Sep 25, 2014 12:30 pm

zedz wrote:I know the 80s is supposed to be the golden age of music videos, but there are none I'd want to include on my list - and I've included at least one on my 70s, 90s and 00s lists. Gregory, you are joking about that Bonnie Tyler video, aren't you? That clip has always struck me as simply bad camp. Its witless bombast does kind of sum up the worst impulses of 80s music video, but I don't see that as a good thing!
Rybczyński and Corbijn would have loads of candidates.

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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1108 Post by ohtani's jacket » Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:34 am

Is there a preferred format for the ballot?

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swo17
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1109 Post by swo17 » Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:46 am

Numbered 1-50 (no ties), with enough identifying information for me to know which film you are talking about. (For instance, there were two Black Rains released in 1989. If you don't specify which one you're voting for, I'm going to ask you about it.)

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Shrew
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1110 Post by Shrew » Sat Sep 27, 2014 12:20 am

I think this is the first time I've ever sent in a list before the final day, but I'll be busy this weekend.

Films watched for project: 22

US: 31 1/2
China: 5 (2 mainland, 2 Taiwan, 1 HK)
France: 4
Japan: 3 1/2
UK: 2

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the preacher
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1111 Post by the preacher » Sat Sep 27, 2014 5:09 am

Ballot sent. Country breakdown:

Argentina: 1
Australia: 1
Burkina Faso: 1
Canada: 1
China: 1
France: 2
Hong Kong: 2
Italy: 1
Japan: 1
Netherlands: 2
Peru: 1
Philippines: 1
Poland: 1
Senegal: 1
Spain: 3
Thailand: 1
UK: 3
US: 20
Vietnam: 1
West Germany: 4
Yugoslavia: 1

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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1112 Post by swo17 » Sat Sep 27, 2014 10:37 pm

With several more votes in, our more surprising #1 pick that I mentioned earlier has now been replaced with one that is less surprising. Though it's still a very close race in the top 4, each film hailing from a different (screwed-up) country.

And there's one film that, interestingly enough, has received joint votes both for it and one of two bonus films included on its DVD, each time that it's been voted for.

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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1113 Post by ohtani's jacket » Sun Sep 28, 2014 6:03 am

Firstly, I'd just like to mention how grateful I am for discovering this site and being able to participate in the poll. The 80s is one of my favourite decades for film because there aren't as many obvious candidates as other decades, which means you have to dig a little deeper like diggin' through the crates at the record store. I joined the project late, but thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Here's the last few films I watched in the voting period:

The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven) -- I like Verhoeven's 70s stuff, but this didn't work for me as either a thriller or a cult classic. I generally like surreal mysteries like this, but the premonition scenes were weak, there was very little tension, and it didn't come together in an interesting way.

An Autumn's Tale (Mabel Cheung) -- this was a nice film. It reminded me a lot of Ang Lee's early films. A lot is made out of Yun-Fat Chow playing a non-action role, but he basically played the same sort of character as Prison on Fire so it wasn't exactly stretching his range. I'm always a sucker for a nice romantic film and this was an interesting fish out of water love story being a Hong Kong film set in New York.

Escape from New York (John Carpenter) -- I might be the only person around here who hadn't seen this. I was looking for something fun to watch and this fit the bill and then some. Great casting, fun plot, moody and atmospheric look despite the budget. Really hit all the right notes for me in terms of a genre pic.

Duvar (Yilmaz Guney) -- Guney's expose of the Turkish prison system and its treatment of children. I liked this more than Yol, but I kind of thought that it could have been more sentimental. It sounds like a horrible thing to say, but I don't think Guney presented it as dramatically as he could have. Maybe that's too manipulative. It was a very good film.

The Time to Live and the Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-Hsien) -- long film drawing on Hou's childhood experiences. It was okay, but as I learnt in screenwriting classic: "just because your life is interesting to you doesn't mean it's interesting to everyone else." A touch harsh, but Dust in the Wind was much, much better.

The Big Red One (2004) (Samuel Fuller) -- this might not be a popular opinion, but I don't think the reconstructed scenes added much to the film. I understand the sanctity of the director's vision and everything, but if a studio decides to make cuts and uses a professional editor to do so, you have to believe that the editor has reasons for each cut. It seemed to me that non of the reconstructed scenes helped move the story forward and in some cases they seemed to be either incomplete or didn't fit in with the narrative. I'm sure most people wouldn't agree, but I was happy with the theatrical cut.

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1114 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Sun Sep 28, 2014 8:27 am

jindianajonz wrote:I know I've seen it addressed somewhere on the forum before, but can't remember where, but how do we count Histoires du Cinema for voting purposes?
A single film for the '90s project.
Imdb shows this as 1989 and 1988. Has this been recently revised/

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Lighthouse
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1115 Post by Lighthouse » Sun Sep 28, 2014 9:47 am

ohtani's jacket wrote:The Big Red One (2004) (Samuel Fuller) -- this might not be a popular opinion, but I don't think the reconstructed scenes added much to the film. I understand the sanctity of the director's vision and everything, but if a studio decides to make cuts and uses a professional editor to do so, you have to believe that the editor has reasons for each cut. It seemed to me that non of the reconstructed scenes helped move the story forward and in some cases they seemed to be either incomplete or didn't fit in with the narrative. I'm sure most people wouldn't agree, but I was happy with the theatrical cut.
At least the film worked for me very well in the theatrical version, and I think that not all of the new stuff is good for the film. Similar to Apocalypse Now a compromise between both versions would be perfect for me.
Last edited by Lighthouse on Sun Sep 28, 2014 9:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

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swo17
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1116 Post by swo17 » Sun Sep 28, 2014 9:52 am

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:
jindianajonz wrote:I know I've seen it addressed somewhere on the forum before, but can't remember where, but how do we count Histoires du Cinema for voting purposes?
A single film for the '90s project.
Imdb shows this as 1989 and 1988. Has this been recently revised/
No, the first two installments have always been from the '80s, but since most of them are from the '90s, we're calling it eligible as a whole for that project. I suppose if you somehow only love the first or the second one and hate all the others, you are welcome to vote for either of the first two on their lonesome now.

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domino harvey
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1117 Post by domino harvey » Sun Sep 28, 2014 9:54 am

When is the 90s thread getting unlocked? I could abuse my powers but won't ha

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swo17
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1118 Post by swo17 » Sun Sep 28, 2014 11:00 am

Once there has been two days of no one asking about it.

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domino harvey
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1119 Post by domino harvey » Sun Sep 28, 2014 11:02 am

So, never. Well, time to prepare for the 2000s list then! \:D/

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Forrest Taft
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1120 Post by Forrest Taft » Sun Sep 28, 2014 11:32 am

Handed in my list :D Here is some of the stuff I wanted to include, but couldn't find any room for:
Missing, House of Games, The Last Temptation of Christ, Frantic, The Fly, The Stunt Man, Secret Honor, The Elephant Man, The Stepfather, Dead Ringers, Repo Man, Down by Law, For All Mankind, and...uhm...Body Double & The Naked Gun: From the Files of Poliec Squad!. Looking forward to the final results!

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domino harvey
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1121 Post by domino harvey » Sun Sep 28, 2014 11:38 am

RobertAltman wrote: The Stepfather
Damn, it'll probably get Orphaned again (it's fate on the Horror List, to my eternal consternation). It's on my list, if anyone's looking to make last minute adjustments

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Forrest Taft
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1122 Post by Forrest Taft » Sun Sep 28, 2014 11:51 am

Glad to see it made someone's list! It is a very good film, and Terry O'Quinn is fantastic in the lead. I still remember the chill I got in that absurdly funny moment where he delivers that infamous line...that is great cinema. I envy those who haven't seen The Stepfather, as they still have the opportunity to experience that moment for their first time, much the same way I wish I could go back and watch Psycho for the first time, and be surprised and awed by it's twists and turns. If it's any consolation, it would have made my horror list if I had participated.

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domino harvey
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1123 Post by domino harvey » Sun Sep 28, 2014 12:05 pm

One of my fondest film-watching memories ever is viewing the Stepfather on IFC years ago with my ex-girlfriend and both of us exclaiming "OH SHIT!" at the same time during that justly infamous moment

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thirtyframesasecond
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1124 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Sun Sep 28, 2014 2:53 pm

the preacher wrote:Ballot sent. Country breakdown:

Argentina: 1
Australia: 1
Burkina Faso: 1
Canada: 1
China: 1
France: 2
Hong Kong: 2
Italy: 1
Japan: 1
Netherlands: 2
Peru: 1
Philippines: 1
Poland: 1
Senegal: 1
Spain: 3
Thailand: 1
UK: 3
US: 20
Vietnam: 1
West Germany: 4
Yugoslavia: 1
I'll try my hand at this too:

USA: 10
France: 6
UK: 6
West Germany: 3
Japan: 2
Poland: 2
Soviet Union: 2
Sweden: 2 (not actually by Swedish directors!)
Australia: 1
Austria: 1
Burkina Faso: 1
Canada: 1
China: 1
Cuba: 1
Greece: 1
Hong Kong: 1
India: 1
Iran: 1
Ireland: 1
Italy: 1
New Zealand: 1
Senegal: 1
Taiwan: 1
Tunisia: 1
Turkey: 1

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: 1980s List Discussion and Suggestions

#1125 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Sun Sep 28, 2014 3:07 pm

FRANCE 19
USA 9
IRAN 3
UK 3
RUSSIA 3
POLAND 2
JAPAN 2
GERMANY 2
SWEDEN 1
GREECE 1
TAIWAN 1
SPAIN 1
TURKEY 1
ITALY 1
HUNGARY 1

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