Them cunts at Expectingrain are at it again,Dylan this and Dylan that,dont they ever tirer of talking about the useless old fucker,man there's only so much shit you can say about the decrepid old wanker,why the fuck anyone would go on a Bob Dylan site and talk about him is beyond me,fucking dimwit brainless arseholes the lot of em,i wouldnt have dreamt of posting anything on that twisted fucked up website,i mean this ones far superior isnt it,especially when no cunts on here,you can talk drivel to yourself all day untill ya hearts content.

Three formative influences in Bresson’s life undoubtedly mark his films:
his Catholicism, which took the form of the predestinarian French strain
known as Jansenism; his early years as a painter; and his experiences
as a prisoner-of-war. These influences manifest themselves respectively
in the recurrent themes of free-will versus determinism, in the extreme
and austere precision with which he composes a shot, and in the frequent
use of the prison motif (two films are located almost entirely inside
prisons).

	Au Hasard Balthazar

Three of his works take place in a wholly Catholic context: Les Anges
du péché, a metaphysical thriller set in a convent,
Journal d’un curé de campagne
(1950), a rare example of a great novel (by Georges Bernanos) being turned
into an even greater film, and Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc
(1962), inevitably overshadowed by Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 classic
La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. The Jansenism manifests itself in the
way leading characters are acted upon and simply surrendering themselves
to their fate. In Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), for example, both
the donkey Balthazar and his on-off owner Marie (Anne Wiazemsky) passively
accept the ill-treatment they both experience, as opposed to the evil
Gérard (François Lafarge) who initiates much of what
causes others to suffer. Bresson seemed to become increasingly pessimistic
about human nature: his penultimate two films suggest that he had more
concern for animals and the environment than for people, while the characters
in his astonishing swansong L’Argent are simply the victims of
a chain of circumstance; money is the root of all evil.
One effect of the Jansenist influence is Bresson’s total mistrust of
psychological motives for a character’s actions. The conventional narrative
film, indeed the conventional story of any kind, insists that people have
to have reasons for what they do. A motiveless murder in a detective story
would be unacceptable. In Bresson, however, people act for no obvious
reason, behave "out of character", and in general simply follow
the destiny which has been mapped out for them. Often a character will
state an intention, and in the very next scene will do the opposite. Characters
who appear to be out-and-out rogues will unaccountably do something good,
an example being the sacked camera-shop assistant in L’Argent who
gives his ill-gotten gains to charity. At the same time it should be stressed
that Bresson did not predetermine how his films would finally emerge;
it was a process of discovery for him to see what would be revealed by
his non-professional actors ("models" he designated them) after
he trained them for their part.

	L'Argent

Bresson’s second influence, his early experience as a painter, is manifested
in the austerity of his compositions. A painter has to decide what to
put in; a filmmaker what to leave out. With Bresson nothing unnecessary
is shown; indeed he goes further, and often leaves the viewer to infer
what is happening outside the frame. Thus we often see shots of hands,
feet, doorhandles, and other parts of objects where any other filmmaker
would show the whole. A Bresson film requires unbroken concentration on
the viewer’s part, and I have occasionally felt literally breathless after
watching one because of the concentration required. So rich in detail
and events is Balthazar, for example, that it is easy on a first
viewing simply to overlook sub-plots such as the child’s death and the
long-running legal wrangle over land. It is for this reason that many
of Bresson’s films are exceptionally fast-moving in their narrative (one
exception is the almost contemplative Quatre nuits d'un rêveur
[1971], where little actually happens; interestingly the central character
is a painter). If L’Argent were remade as a Hollywood thriller
it would have at least double the running-time and would dwell at length
on the brutal violence in the last section which is merely elliptically
hinted at by Bresson. The running-time of his films averages under 90
minutes, yet the viewer can be surprised at the amount that happens in
that time.
Un Condamné à mort s'est échappé (1956)
and Procès are the two prison-films, and Bresson often uses
prison as a metaphor for spiritual imprisonment or, indeed, release. A
classic case of the latter is Pickpocket (1959), where Michel (Martin
LaSalle) finds redemption from his criminal career only by intentionally
being caught, and in the famous final scene by telling Jeanne (Marika
Green) from his prison cell "what a strange road I had to take to
find you".

	Journal d’un curé de campagne

A key ingredient of Bresson’s methods is his view of actors, his "models".
From Journal on he used solely non-professionals, and was even
reported to be upset when two of his actors (Anne Wiazemsky from Balthazar
and Dominique Sanda from Une Femme douce) went on to professional
acting careers. Only one actor ever appeared in two of his films. (Jean-Claude
Guilbert in Balthazar and Mouchette [1967].) Actors were
chosen not for their ability but for their appearance, often for an intense
facial asceticism like the Curé (Claude Laydu)
or the Pickpocket. He trained them to remove all traces of theatricality
and to speak with a fast monotonic delivery. Indeed he rejected the word
"cinema", which he regarded as merely filmed theatre, and instead
used the word "cinematography" (not to be confused with the
art of camerawork). All movements of actors are strictly controlled by
the director; when they walk they have to take a precise number of steps;
and eye movements become extremely important - the lowering of the eyes
towards the ground is almost a Bresson trademark. The result of this approach
is that the viewer becomes involved not with a character’s appearance
but almost with the core of his being, his soul. Bresson’s first
two features use professionals, even "stars", and though they
are both excellent films which anticipate the director’s later themes,
they would probably have been even more satisfying if "models"
had been used.
Along with Bresson’s painterly eye for what should and should not be
shown, he makes exquisite use of sound. Off-screen sound is of key importance:
the raking of leaves during the intense confrontation between the priest
and the countess in Journal, the scraping of the guard’s keys along
the metal railings and the far-off sound of trains in Un Condamné,
the whinneying of horses in Lancelot du Lac (1974), all serve to
heighten the sense that a time of crisis has arrived for the central characters.
Music is used increasingly sparingly as his career progresses; a specially
composed score is used in the early films, but in Un Condamné
there are occasional snatches of Mozart, in Pickpocket Lully, in
Balthazar Schubert, and in late Bresson non-diegetic music is dispensed
with altogether.

You ever hear of a "chocoholic," you know, someone who can't get enough chocolate? I'm like that, but for beer. You might say I'm a "beer-aholic."

Would, do you think, someone who just can't get enough of Uzi's thought-provoking and word-packed posts be known as a King-of-pop-aholic? Just wondered.

They're usually called Canaanites, I think.

He does seem to have a fondness for this particular emoticon:
Ain't nothin' but a G' Thang'.

felix sez:

Quote:

Would, do you think, someone who just can't get enough of Uzi's thought-provoking and word-packed posts be known as a King-of-pop-aholic?

Uzi replies:

Quote:

They're usually called Canaanites, I think.

Me: How do you get to be a Canaanite?

Heh, yeah i haven't done any animated gifs in a while.

And stoned lad, I've barely mentioned the old Norwegian Dylan Fansite in recent weeks, but if you want me to, I thought this was a klassik bit of their new rules:

"When posting, we require that you are respectful of Bob Dylan's personal life and his family. Do not engage in discussions you would not be happy to have Mr. Dylan listen in on. You never know."

The funniest aspect of their draconian mindset is that a major driver of their traffic is the Rare Recordins Section, which is blatantly illegal under the most liberal application of international copyright law, forget the concert recordings (which still are illegal), there's all manner of studio outtakes available. So they're a website that wants to host flagrantly illegal content while trying to be absurdly draconian in the regulation of fan-talk.

And I'm sure they were a most valuable resource -- before the invention of "Google News" or similar services. Think the Newslinks are indispensable? Go to Google News and search "Bob Dylan", or you could also try the rare trick of searching for "Bob Dylan" on youtube or another search engine, and voila - you have the cherished newslinks, the stuff that makes the viking owners feel obliged to beg for donations on a regular basis.

I'm sure there are many good things about the Norwegian peoples, but if the site is any indication, they've shown to have close to Zero understanding of Bob Dylan's art, legacy, what he stands for etc. For whatever reasons, the owners mods admins have come to the point of encouraging the worst kind of lowest common denominator fanboy setlist hero worship culture, while dissuading robust discourse.

In their strange fantasy that Mr. Dylan visit their hallowed grounds, I'm relatively certain he would be fucking appalled at such a cabal of fans.

Look, I didn't even want to discuss norwegian fansites anymore, the stoned lad made me do it.

Stoned young chap is a bastard. Thoughtless and probably Norwegian. Or Swiss.

I'm a polyhistor and you snisn't......that may or may not be an accurate representation of the tone and atmosphere of good man fishes. I think he likes movies. Maybe somebody could do something with that.