Hello Film Fans! Probably the most interesting films to watch over the next week would be the ones that are being screened on Turner Classic. The Armchair Film Fest features a Martin Scorsese film festival with classics like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and Alice Doesn’t live here anymore all being shown in one block.
Scorsese is the modern master of filmmaking. I would probably not screen a homage to Scorsese without including Goodfellas or Raging Bull, but the films they are showing are solid Scorsese classics. The Wolf of Wall Street may be the one film that, at least in recent years, didn’t get the recognition it deserved as the nature of the content, the greed and debauchery of Wall Street, was depicted as even more profane and grotesque than the behavior of the Mob!
Some other films that deserve mentioning in a Scorsese film fest and should be viewed: The Last Waltz; The Last Temptation of Christ with Willem Dafoe; Cape Fear, (a superior remake of the original with Robert Mitchum), and The Aviator, with one of DiCaprio’s best performances as Howard Hughes.
In 6 Degrees Magazine: The Filmmaker Taika Waititi, director of Boy, is quoted in a great piece from NoFilmSchool titled: Taiki Waitit on Breaking all of the Rules. Waitit speaks about Hollywood filmmaking in the 21st Century: “We’re in a very cool place right now where Hollywood is running out of ideas. They are scrambling…for new stories…They turn to anywhere outside of America for films that they can remake, because that’s where the interesting ideas are.” The idea, he maintained, was to keep people guessing. This gets right to the heart of what we speak of frequently in 6 Degrees, the remakes and superhero stories that are rehashed and cranked out on such a pervasive basis.
That’s all for now. Stay cool in these final days of summer and see you at the movies!
Six Degrees of Film 