tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61903270119598752392024-03-13T13:59:32.506-07:00Inner GenreShawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.comBlogger206125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-51751548532538588932013-11-28T01:30:00.003-08:002013-11-28T01:30:35.074-08:00on thanksgiving you know what i did? let me tell youon thanksgiving i took an excuse to make another list. i guess i'm experiencing a list frenzy<br />
<br />
the theme of this list is i'm excited to make it and i have no goal in mind<br />
<br />
the sandlot<br />
the adventures of milo and otis<br />
the buttercream gang<br />
<br />
done. happy thanksgiving(?)Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-42126243352092841382013-06-09T01:35:00.003-07:002014-08-11T14:37:18.498-07:00movies that are examples of movies i'd make a list out ofthought "i've done this before." <a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-sight-and-sound-list-imagination.html">i've done this before</a><br />
<br />
this list is barely different from that list<br />
<br />
the docks of new york, '28 von sternberg<br />
killer of sheep, '79 burnett<br />
chungking express, '94 kar-wai<br />
friday night, 2002 denis<br />
shadows in paradise, '86 kaurism<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 22px;">äki</span><br />
rebels of the neon god, '92 ming-liang<br />
two or three things i know about her, '76 godard<br />
vampyr, '32 dreyer<br />
unknown pleasures, 2002 zhangke<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 22px;">kes, '68 loach</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 22px;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 22px;">guess for the movie from recent years that's on a future list</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 22px;">fish tank, 2009 arnold</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 22px;">paranoid park, 2007 van sant</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 22px;">lost in translation, 2003 coppola</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 22px;"><br /></span>Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-835552628969342532013-04-27T14:57:00.000-07:002015-03-21T14:18:23.708-07:00three stacks of moviestoday i was curious about my self and wondering which movies i'm glad to own. i went through my collection and made three stacks of movies, and these are lists for the stacks. this event occurred quickly and i can't think of a reason to describe it, k<br />
<br />
stack 1 (three cardboard dvd cases):<br />
two-lane blacktop by monte hellman<br />
vampyr by carl dreyer<br />
the docks of new york by josef von sternberg<br />
<br />
stack 2 (dvds):<br />
sparrow by johnnie to<br />
time and tide by tsui hark<br />
the goodtimes kid by azazel jacobs<br />
devil's island by fridrik thor fridrikkson<br />
2 or 3 things i know about her by jean-luc godard<br />
band of outsiders by jean-luc godard<br />
what have i done to deserve this? by pedro almodovar<br />
grey gardens by albert and david maysles<br />
spirited away by hayao miyazaki<br />
paranoid park by gus van sant<br />
pather panchali by satyajit ray<br />
aloha bobby and rose by floyd mutrux<br />
hysterical blindness by mira nair<br />
over the edge by jonathan kaplan<br />
the brown bunny by vincent gallo<br />
24 hour party people by michael winterbottom<br />
rebels of the neon god by tsai ming-liang<br />
goodbye south goodbye by hou hsiao-hsien<br />
melvin and howard by jonathan demme<br />
l'avventura by michangelo antonioni<br />
<br />
(the only quote i remember taping to a wall, back in ohio, was from antonioni about his movie l'avventura:<br />
and here we witness the crumbling of a myth, which proclaims it is enough for us to know, to be critically conscious of ourselves, to analyze ourselves, in all our complexities and in every facet of our personality. the fact that matters is that such an examination is not enough.<br />
)<br />
<br />
stack 3 (blu-rays)(a timebased list? i wonder):<br />
amarcord by federico fellini<br />
vivre sa vie by jean-luc godard<br />
tokyo! by michel gondry, leos carax, and bong joon-ho<br />
prince / purple rain by someone<br />
the postman always rings twice by tay garnett<br />
speed racer by the wachowski brothers<br />
the adventures of robin hood by michael curtiz<br />
3 women by robert altman<br />
chungking express by wong kar-wai<br />
fallen angels by wong kar-wai<br />
red desert by michalangelo antonioni<br />
risky business with tom cruise by someone<br />
wings of desire by wim wenders<br />
kes by ken loach<br />
trainspotting by danny boyle<br />
lost in translation by sofia coppola<br />
detention by joseph kahn<br />
milk by gus van sant<br />
akira by katsuhiro otomo<br />
the leopard by luchino visconti<br />
fish tank by andrea arnold<br />
<br />
kShawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-82710736102574679652013-02-28T11:59:00.002-08:002013-02-28T12:10:37.733-08:00Bird of Paradise ('32)<div>
encounters w pre-code hollywood movies have been small bets with big payouts</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
the movies tend to be fast and tight,</div>
<div>
sprawling narrative arcs in sub-90mins</div>
<div>
still in the fast lane, eighty years later<br />
<br />
bird of paradise is 1:22.35minutes long<br />
and it takes place in fucking polynesia</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
i was attracted to the movie because of its period<br />
and because karl (who let me borrow the movie) said he liked it a lot<br />
although karl and i agree that he enjoys adventure movies more than i do<br />
but then also i read <a href="http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/55009/bird-of-paradise-kino-classics-edition/">here</a>:<br />
(i've helpfully <b>bolded</b> the exciting parts!)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>one of hollywood's strangest, sexiest pre-code fever dreams</b>, king vidor's 1932 bird of paradise is a potentially tawdry tale of a <b>seafaring sexual adventure to the tropics</b> that transcends its <b>titillation</b> (though it does have plenty in the way of the <b>risqué</b> going on) to offer up <b>a true dream world</b> -- a <b>sheerly escapist</b>, almost entirely invented analogue to any recognizable reality, with dolores del rio no more believable as its "native" virgin isles princess as joel mccrea is as the seasoned sailor, and it doesn't matter, because their attractive limbs here look like they were made for the sole purpose of being entwined. the whole thing plays like the sexually/racially charged fantasy of a "civilized" (read: white) dreamer as regards a<b> voraciously fetishized</b> and irrationally feared darker people, but as potentially problematic as that is, it enhances rather than saps the film's interest. at this point, its <b>story of the forbidden, intensely erotic passion</b> between a muscular white american and a bronze, nubile islander feels much less like <b>actually objectionable racial simplemindedness</b> than a privileged peek into someone's (perhaps even yours or mine) <b>fascinating, delirious, delusional </b>subconscious, not to be taken at face value; it plays like <b>a wet dream</b>, with about as much plausibility and with the same odd, <b>sometimes unexpectedly beautiful and focused intensity</b>. it's rife with a kind of <b>quasi-pornographic</b> reduction of character to erotically physical presence, but however crude its racial and cultural assumptions may be, the appeal and power of bird of paradise survives its <b>surface nonsense </b>and <b>soars</b> anyway, escaping the fate of being a mere relic through its <b>unique narrative structure</b>, <b>potent imagery</b>, and the <b>palpable eroticism and chemistry</b> that engulfs its two leads in a swooning, <b>hyperdramatic blaze of passionate sensuality</b> and <b>doomed love</b> so hot that it leaves the viewer a little singed in its wake, too. </blockquote>
lol<br />
about to watch it and take photos on my phone like the old days<br />
this is king vidor, one year after the father-son boxing melodrama the champ, three years after the all-black musical hallelujah!<br />
joel mccrea (sullivan's travels, barbary coast) stars<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Gqf1iBPepCk/US-2z_zU3yI/AAAAAAAAC7o/b6O6LY8KNcE/s1600/IMG_6808+copy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Gqf1iBPepCk/US-2z_zU3yI/AAAAAAAAC7o/b6O6LY8KNcE/s320/IMG_6808+copy.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
--------------------------------------------------------<br />
14:08 minutes into the movie<br />
i paused the movie to check a tumblr i remembered during a stray thought<br />
there were youtube video updates<br />
the videos were related to shapes and architecture and time<br />
i watched a little from 2/3 of them<br />
<br />
so in this movie,<br />
they arrived at their destination by their boat<br />
all the natives came out on their canoes<br />
the people on the boat threw "gifts" (i.e. their goodwill clothes and things like ice blocks and an alarm clock) into the ocean<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TnX7A1sPsUc/US-2Qf3wzYI/AAAAAAAAC7M/E6mt7Kl0Nsw/s1600/IMG_6803+copy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TnX7A1sPsUc/US-2Qf3wzYI/AAAAAAAAC7M/E6mt7Kl0Nsw/s320/IMG_6803+copy.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
the villagers dove for the gifts<br />
they threw a knife for a woman<br />
<br />
she caught it in the water with her teeth<br />
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a shark came<br />
a guy tried to do something with a rope and the shark<br />
he fell into the ocean tied to the shark<br />
the woman cut the rope with her knife<br />
<br />
they arrived at the island,<br />
i think a celebration is happening itm (in this movie)<br />
<br />
paused at 17:30 'cause i thought i saw someone<br />
and then couldn't figure out if i thought i'd seen dan duryea or richard widmark<br />
but neither appear to be in this movie, anyway<br />
<br />
paused at 28:34 while the woman gets <i>whipped</i><br />
which is brutal<br />
so much has happened<br />
they went skinny dipping together<br />
the american stayed behind when the boat left<br />
and the old boat captain was like 'i think it's a good idea. wish i'd done it when i was young' or something<br />
there were flying fishes<br />
<br />
32.27 to watch the man slide down the hill on the plant while he cradles a squealing pig<br />
34:41 paused for line "white man want you to stay here with him always" (tapping his own chest)<br />
paused at 43:48 to record decreased interest in writing about this movie<br />
unrelated to man getting a "paint job" (blackface) to rescue the woman<br />
as she danced in the middle of the fire circle<br />
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58:54 A MAN UNDERWATER WRESTLED A TURTLE<br />
AND THEN SURFED THE TURTLE BACK TO BEACH<br />
something happened with the volcano<br />
i think earlier they explained something about the volcano<br />
but i wasn't interested in the volcano, at that time<br />
anyway the volcano exploded<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EktxuYKhXTk/US-2_bgG-xI/AAAAAAAAC7w/uNXyr3LPpsU/s1600/IMG_6807+copy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EktxuYKhXTk/US-2_bgG-xI/AAAAAAAAC7w/uNXyr3LPpsU/s320/IMG_6807+copy.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">whirlpool</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
1.18:23 only like four minutes of the movie left, but i just had an instance of awake-dreaming, or something like that, like i was still awake and watching the movie but there was also a dream texture, and i was sure i was watching the movie with a friend at a friend's house, when that wasn't the case at all<br />
so i'm going to sleep and i'll finish tomorrow<br />
so close to the end lol<br />
<br />
i finished the movie<br />
karl likes adventure movies more than i do but<br />
this was funShawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-77096350319917899862013-01-15T16:31:00.002-08:002013-01-16T15:19:34.419-08:00Fav Twelve of Twenty Twelve<b>laurence anyways</b> -- part of me thinks it's so exceptional that it could be praised based "on principle." but that's like silly. xavier dolan throws a cinematic bash for his sweet laurence. i think the movie is a cinematic party and everyone's invited. i feel this movie confirms what i <a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/2011/08/heartbeats.html">suspected</a>, that dolan cares, his feelings are substantive, and i think accusations of self-indulgence are at this point unreasonable. dolan's emotional reach extends beyond the screen and into, at least, my heart. laurence anyways increased my sense of self. it made me feel less lonely. and in the evening of my viewing i felt sharply self-empowered, and during and after the movie i had fireworks in my soul. hope it sticks when it's released in the theaters. it could be cinema's ambassador.<br />
<br />
<b>post tenebras lux</b> <a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/2012/11/dispatch-from-afi-post-tenebras-lux.html">--</a> this girl runs through water puddles chasing cows and the sky darkens from deep purple to black and lightning cracks and mountains huddle in the background.<br />
<br />
<b>tchoupitoulas</b> -- just thought "this movie is balzacian" and i think it is<br />
<br />
<b>bad fever</b> -- movies like this will always be important, imo. ones that kind of strip things away. its ugly honesty, its secret tenderness. kentucker audley as eddie is like totally human and by the end of the movie you want things for him, like he's your dude, and i think it's amazing when movies do that.<br />
<br />
<b>dark horse</b> -- my friends and i cheered for the cougar. i think we clapped for her and sometimes sighed and just got really into her. laughing thinking about her car and house. feel like solondz kind of mellowed his pessimism, 'cause this one's tough and sometimes mean and terrible, but i felt like he was saying "try harder," and i feel like if one sees that life is worth fighting for that's like, a good step forward.<br />
<br />
<b>the master</b> -- i think a lot of us wanted pt to do something else. this movie was like flamboyantly formal. it's a formal exercise, sure. and we were like, what, we cried like toddlers. somehow this movie has struggled to align itself with values outside cinephilia. the scientology thing didn't stick. the best friends angle didn't ignite. post-war spiritual desolation, brand making, animalism, alcoholism, self-inquiry, magnetic personality -- none of it has really stuck out. but it's all there. in time it'll become more obvious that pt didn't let cinema down, we let pt down. only the movie matters. good movie. good job.<br />
<br />
<b>only the young</b> -- i like felt like the movie was about me, you know. good job<br />
<br />
<b>blood of my blood</b> -- don't want to forget how much i liked its handling of overlapping conversations/moments<br />
<br />
<b>open five 2</b> <a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/2012/12/open-five-2.html">--</a> seems like kentucker audley really thought about what it'd feel like to watch this movie, which consideration seems like an advancement from like previous or other lowbudge movies. it's fluid. it's the new marker, that's all i mean<br />
<br />
<b>rust and bone</b> -- it's so fun to remember and describe this movie<br />
<br />
<b>turn me on, dammit!</b> -- kind of expected, right. a pretty, feeling, sexual-coming-of-age story. this one dialed me up.<br />
<br />
<b>perks of being a wallflower</b> -- squeezing this one in 'cause it talked about depression and had rocky horror picture show reenactments. those things need movies. i don't understand like what happened with the aunt and i don't think that was necessary maybe. but, good movie.<br />
<br />
the endShawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-43700527195462769802012-12-21T20:13:00.000-08:002012-12-21T20:57:42.879-08:00William Never MarriedThe sole line of writing I contributed to <a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/2012/12/open-five-2.html">this Open Five 2 entry</a> was a parenthetical caption that speculated on whether I just like any ol' movie with a dirty windshield. I'm also inclined to like movies with fireworks.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ArZgWdai4-U/UNUfG3uBpfI/AAAAAAAACzc/Rg6-zCPRygQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-21+at+6.46.29+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ArZgWdai4-U/UNUfG3uBpfI/AAAAAAAACzc/Rg6-zCPRygQ/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-21+at+6.46.29+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
William Never Married begins with fireworks, and then a medium shot of a person with fireworks behind her,<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8MWY3CzU0js/UNTeXHwWioI/AAAAAAAACvk/d8FUOQXQ-Rs/s1600/fireworks.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8MWY3CzU0js/UNTeXHwWioI/AAAAAAAACvk/d8FUOQXQ-Rs/s400/fireworks.png" width="400" /></a></div>
and then a closeup of the person with fireworks behind her.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wqF4YXhUHUU/UNTeYrzblbI/AAAAAAAACvs/uYYJmEa9A7w/s1600/firework2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wqF4YXhUHUU/UNTeYrzblbI/AAAAAAAACvs/uYYJmEa9A7w/s400/firework2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
(It was easy for me to double-check this sequence because, as of right now, the full feature is <a href="http://vimeo.com/35097357">available</a> online and for free.)<br />
<br />
Fireworks strike me as excellent material for cinema, 'cause their size and color "work" visually, and 'cause they can connect a person with a reallife memory that's likely to be positive and special. So right away I liked William Never Married, directed, co-written, and co-edited by Christian Palmer, who also stars, because it began by gifting me with a cinematic treat. Sometimes you can watch an entire lowbudge movie and not receive a single cinematic treat.<br />
<br />
The reasons I like dirty windshields are unrelated to the reasons I like fireworks, and it's their nonrelation that's important, vital -- these things feel like good launching points for discussing cinema and reality and the way reality interacts with cinema.<br />
<br />
To summarize, basically, unrelated things (or dissimilar things, like reality and artificiality) can end up complimenting each other and achieve a cinematic harmony, if the person making the movie wants to do this.<br />
<br />
Like many conversations about cinema, this one has precedent in a quote by Jean-Luc Godard, who said "the cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't."<br />
<br />
Whether one wants to call cinema art, it's a thing someone has to create for it to exist. Cameras and editing and maybe other things are used to create cinema. Conversations about reality and artificiality in relation to cinema are sometimes kind of confusing, 'cause one sometimes feels that these lines are arbitrary, and ideas about "limited manipulation" and "artistic emphasis" can become fuzzy, and overwhelming, and sometimes the conversations are frustrating because a person can try very hard to steer the conversation one way or another, and anyway maybe sometimes one doesn't want to have the conversation. So instead of that conversation, I'll talk about William Never Married, while secretly talking about this. Or maybe I'm talking about this and secretly talking about William Never Married. Anyway,<br />
<br />
by beginning with fireworks, I feel like Palmer began with specialness, and that specialness is related to consideration (if it's selected, which these fireworks were), and that cinema takes special consideration.<br />
<br />
In this movie, which can lean toward the poetic (e.g. fireworks), the characters are the dirty windshields,<br />
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the thing that might not exist in a movie that attempted to clean material in order to deliver it germ-free to the audience. The lead in William Never Married is a depressive alcoholic whose sufferings are sometimes external and always internal.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RhhrIFjVxGQ/UNUmSijH2-I/AAAAAAAAC1U/fN36YH1BoIo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-21+at+1.13.24+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RhhrIFjVxGQ/UNUmSijH2-I/AAAAAAAAC1U/fN36YH1BoIo/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-21+at+1.13.24+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
The character's depression and alcoholism have the melodramatic gravity they do in real life -- they can seem ridiculous, unnecessary, too much. Obviously wrong. One sortof wishes he'd "snap out of it." I felt uncomfortable sometimes.<br />
<br />
In this way, William Never Married has the open-eyes open-heart quality that I like in cinema. I like when a movie is faithful to its characters first, and I like when the cinematic machine is used to mine something out of the character, and help the audience discover the substance of the character.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YiA7bkpITZ8/UNUtHR16C8I/AAAAAAAAC3M/s9DBVLDwv-Q/s1600/tub.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YiA7bkpITZ8/UNUtHR16C8I/AAAAAAAAC3M/s9DBVLDwv-Q/s400/tub.png" width="400" /></a></div>
During a movie like this beautiful collisions can occur between cinema and its reality. A thing can be shown in a special way that enhances the emotional comprehension without subtracting from the reality of the moment, such as the above shot, a god's eye pov. Here the technique doesn't damage the sense of reality.<br />
<br />
There's a funny thing about productions -- it seems like with lots of resources and time a moviemaker can go further in crafting reality, but one knows or senses the large apparatus controlling the reality, and with limited resources and time the reality can be automatic or pre-supposed, and one knows or senses the tininess of the apparatus.<br />
<br />
However tiny the apparatus is, it exists, and why should it be disregarded, if it can't be dispensed with. Some lowbudge movies seems like they're saying "this was just happening and we stuck a camera there, believe it. BELIEVE IT." For example Snow on Tha Bluff, a movie I like for many reasons, forces a framing device that I feel kindof cheapens the movie, 'cause I don't understand why a moviemaker would have to insist that what's happening is reality (and like, if that's supposed to help you imagine the movie is reality, why use the imagination in such a limited and duplicitous way).<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M2_Q3XO_t6w/UNUyML_OlMI/AAAAAAAAC5E/m5tMAxKcGAY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-21+at+1.39.25+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M2_Q3XO_t6w/UNUyML_OlMI/AAAAAAAAC5E/m5tMAxKcGAY/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-21+at+1.39.25+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Instead, it seems better to insist that the person in the movie is feeling this thing or that thing, and that what's happening on screen is the best possible representation of a multi-layered reality of living moments.<br />
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A moviemaker can't dig more truth out of reality, which just is what it is, but a moviemaker can add truths to reality, I think.Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-29716904850718679172012-12-20T12:48:00.001-08:002012-12-20T12:50:40.583-08:00Open Five 2<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I1TYPKKS6yE/UNNwXxrwGnI/AAAAAAAACrs/jHDX9h2YrOo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-20+at+8.45.37+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I1TYPKKS6yE/UNNwXxrwGnI/AAAAAAAACrs/jHDX9h2YrOo/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-20+at+8.45.37+AM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(think I like any movie with a dirty windshield)</td></tr>
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"There is a degree to which I don't have older people in the movies because I don't want there to be an easy relation point for everyone. Like sorta, okay, so -- you're an older actor, if you see an older person in these movies you sort of see his perspective, or her perspective, and you think 'oh, I can find my way into this.' But if you don't have that, you're sort of left adrift. That's an interesting experience for me. You're sort of having to go through this world and not be -- like, you don't know anybody at the party, okay so, you have to go talk to somebody, that you don't feel comfortable with, or you have to just leave and go home. Both are reasonable responses, but I think that's an interesting kick off."<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dsb0c-ImaMo/UNNwslnbJnI/AAAAAAAACr0/wXlsLm7CojA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-20+at+8.49.23+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dsb0c-ImaMo/UNNwslnbJnI/AAAAAAAACr0/wXlsLm7CojA/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-20+at+8.49.23+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
"As far as themes, I don't work with themes until the editing. And very loosely in the editing. I try to steer as clear from themes as possible. I don't think that they can be reduced to a theme. Um. I don't even know what the theme would be. I think they're about relationships, and trying to build a comprehensive view of my relationship and my friend's relationship -- not entirely comprehensive, but just trying to come at it from different angles."<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Uq3UCZ3IRQ/UNNx3WtOxwI/AAAAAAAACts/Ly0O2j4tsSA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-20+at+10.44.51+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Uq3UCZ3IRQ/UNNx3WtOxwI/AAAAAAAACts/Ly0O2j4tsSA/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-20+at+10.44.51+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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"I don't always want to make films this insular. I realize that there's issues outside of myself. And, um. But. I think, that that stuff will come, and I'm not in a rush to change the subject, to change the world that I've spent a couple years trying to establish, and I'm not in a rush to create something else, or to get outside myself. But I will. But I don't think insularity cripples the films, and I don't think they come and go so quickly, I don't think that these films -- I think they'll be around."</div>
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(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNwUB2gyEKM">quotes from)</a>Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-80361964422169564332012-12-12T14:14:00.000-08:002012-12-12T15:01:59.284-08:00St. Nick<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-geMizcy4h-Y/UMj1kPKq1qI/AAAAAAAAClc/EmoxakJFQg4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+1.00.46+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-geMizcy4h-Y/UMj1kPKq1qI/AAAAAAAAClc/EmoxakJFQg4/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+1.00.46+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
St. Nick strikes me as a kind of folk movie, in that it draws from its own self, and seems faithful to itself above all. Like, it sings a song of its own soul, with the voice of cinema.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m8x1tWJyqvI/UMj3Z9HUw2I/AAAAAAAAClk/QbMzERXeRL4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.38.17+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m8x1tWJyqvI/UMj3Z9HUw2I/AAAAAAAAClk/QbMzERXeRL4/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.38.17+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
The narrative evokes thoughts and feelings about self-searching and urgent discovery, and the speed of the movie is true to its characters, children (who are gifted with a mostly clockless existence), and its settings of fields and rundown homes and other outskirts of civilization.<br />
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It's sort of off the grid, minding its own, and unhurried by unseen troubles.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UZ3z6eWROXU/UMj39WKQJ6I/AAAAAAAACls/aw_GJ4qZubk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.41.25+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UZ3z6eWROXU/UMj39WKQJ6I/AAAAAAAACls/aw_GJ4qZubk/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.41.25+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="text-align: left;">Is it a children's movie? In every wonderful way: its content is child friendly, its main characters are children, and most important to me, I felt like a child when I watched the movie. It has the sensitivity of a child and somehow -- a product of its art -- the movie vibrated with mystery and wonder, like the world does for a child.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H1dKA9qVG3k/UMj52-XbbCI/AAAAAAAACl0/5g2E5tkcn8E/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.46.54+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H1dKA9qVG3k/UMj52-XbbCI/AAAAAAAACl0/5g2E5tkcn8E/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.46.54+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The movie is fluent in the language of cinema. <a href="http://www.road-dog-productions.com/weblog/">David Lowery</a> (writer/director/editor) and dp Clay Liford demonstrate such good taste that was I reminded of the classic Hawks quotes about "three great scenes, no bad ones" and that a good director is "someone who doesn't annoy you."</div>
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St. Nick is a warm and lyrical movie that's essentially faultless.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lSJngR4zOb8/UMj7VjaKRRI/AAAAAAAACl8/Arm0T-Jbdmk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.05.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lSJngR4zOb8/UMj7VjaKRRI/AAAAAAAACl8/Arm0T-Jbdmk/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.05.14+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-55sKDWJyj4s/UMj7XGrpygI/AAAAAAAACmE/rnBjD47vPrM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.05.39+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-55sKDWJyj4s/UMj7XGrpygI/AAAAAAAACmE/rnBjD47vPrM/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.05.39+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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A thing that's difficult to demonstrate in this format is Lowery's skill for cinematic grammar. The narrative is essentially a wallless series of drifting vignettes. Events occur late in the movie to help provide an overall context, but the bulk of the structure exists inter-sequence, emotion to emotion.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dUhjoWbja7c/UMkAs3NI9kI/AAAAAAAACn8/dtdaKdU5yXk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.45.25+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dUhjoWbja7c/UMkAs3NI9kI/AAAAAAAACn8/dtdaKdU5yXk/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-12-12+at+12.45.25+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Cinema, from the inside out.Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-11742814817233785912012-11-25T14:23:00.003-08:002012-11-25T23:07:08.092-08:00Doctor Detroit"there is no doctor."<br />
"there is if you believe in him brother."<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XYt3wYqJq-U/ULKYPdQu0iI/AAAAAAAAChc/brNvn0TpYrg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-11-25+at+1.46.27+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XYt3wYqJq-U/ULKYPdQu0iI/AAAAAAAAChc/brNvn0TpYrg/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-11-25+at+1.46.27+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
argentine writer césar aira has this idea he calls "flight forward" that basically means he never allows himself to feel stuck as a writer cause at any point he can invent something to unstick himself. seems like this concept has always existed, but i like that aira cherishes it to the point that it's gifted a name and implemented as a central feature.<br />
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doctor detroit, directed by michael pressman (tmnt ii: secret of the ooze) is a silly fun movie that ignores the weight of reality in order to allow the imagination flight.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bzyq5RRs0c4/ULKZ91AHuyI/AAAAAAAACh4/HIWe-GWzeR8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-11-25+at+2.18.25+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bzyq5RRs0c4/ULKZ91AHuyI/AAAAAAAACh4/HIWe-GWzeR8/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-11-25+at+2.18.25+AM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a character in doctor detroit making a face one might make while watching doctor detroit</td></tr>
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basically the entire movie is a "flight forward" cause it's the telling of the creation of a character invented by another character at the story's beginning. what happens is this pimp can't repay his business partner (named mom) the 60k he owes, and so invents a person named doctor detroit, who then must be made real. associate professor clifford skridlow (dan aykroyd) is the person trapped into this role, which role is mostly the opposite of his normal everyday role, although the plus side is the task allows him to access parts of himself previously unrealized.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5-aQl1_Ni_c/ULKYrgbtZMI/AAAAAAAAChk/uPhjUIjqiQ8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-11-25+at+2.08.24+PM+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5-aQl1_Ni_c/ULKYrgbtZMI/AAAAAAAAChk/uPhjUIjqiQ8/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-11-25+at+2.08.24+PM+1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
the invention of doctor detroit prompts a series of problems which in turn require more inventiveness. the movie, thankfully, often uses fun as an ingredient of invention.
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iSaAfeP5KOA/ULKZj5epZVI/AAAAAAAAChw/f_ik-3aqlYk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-11-24+at+12.41.47+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iSaAfeP5KOA/ULKZj5epZVI/AAAAAAAAChw/f_ik-3aqlYk/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-11-24+at+12.41.47+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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to me its value seems to be not so much an examination of an interior self or the root of human problems, but a stimulation of the human animal's creative faculties and a reminder of infinite possibility.</div>
Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-72677139885692187162012-11-03T01:45:00.002-07:002012-11-21T23:32:30.514-08:00Dispatch from AFI: Post Tenebras Luxthe greater los angeles area has over 17.9 million people, a stat which i think makes the area endlessly fascinating and surprising. one interesting city and an OK place to live i think.<br />
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but fact is, because we're all different from each other and live our lives in at least slightly different ways, there are 17.9 million+ great los angeles areas, because each person creates their own metropolitan area through personal experience and perspective.<br />
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carlos reygadas, director of post tenebras lux (after dark, light)(FYI), has proven in each of his four movies that the spectrum of human experiences exist within each person regardless of geographical location or network size. </div>
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each person, to the toppest highs to the lowest lows, contains the full ingredients. and only a moviemaker like reygadas, who seems to care in a deep and earnest way about each person he places in front of the camera, is able to make this point. </div>
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i feel like reygadas might possibly lol at the idea of a "supporting character," or in other words a person whose perspective is a narrative or structural obligation. i feel like reygadas wouldn't insert a character in order to insert a character. i feel like reygadas cares about his characters in a way that suggests a person who cares about people too much to reduce them to narrative ornamentation. he's a moviemaker who holds on characters for extended periods but with shots so cinematically hypnotic and captivating and compelling that his longest shots feel short. any cinephile in 2012 can tell you how rare that quality is. you don't hold long to hold long -- something lives in the duration of a shot, in pure duration (which itself is a symbol of the human condition), and reygadas, i feel, knows what lives in the light, in the shadows, in the space of time, and elsewhere.</div>
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he probably doesn't know, of course. but he's curious. and i think the curious are brave. i really do.</div>
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Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-9089582382929138392012-10-02T18:50:00.001-07:002012-10-03T01:46:06.965-07:00The Gate ('87)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NDLn0q6c2ks/UGtxuYx2CwI/AAAAAAAACY0/v8pHqDW8xZA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-09-30+at+4.41.20+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NDLn0q6c2ks/UGtxuYx2CwI/AAAAAAAACY0/v8pHqDW8xZA/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-09-30+at+4.41.20+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
This prequel to Sofia Coppola's Somewhere stars Stephen Dorff as Glen, a little boy who's afraid of black magic and demons and flies into hysterics over every bad or scary thing that happens and makes repeat demands that on-vacation parents be called and sobs in front of people and feels shame about over-emoting in front of people so hides in his room. Basically, it's a close cinematic match to my personal memories of being a boy.<br />
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Glen is such a fucking kid, which I think means Dorff was a good child actor,<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HOV2kx6htfc/UGtzCx3De6I/AAAAAAAACY8/6HuPV0J56kY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-01+at+4.48.29+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HOV2kx6htfc/UGtzCx3De6I/AAAAAAAACY8/6HuPV0J56kY/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-10-01+at+4.48.29+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
AND GLEN IS TOTALLY JUSTIFIED, by the way, in being terrified by the evil-seeming world. There is evil in the world,<br />
the evil is in the backyard.<br />
!!!!!!!!!<br />
Yaaaaay :)<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-D23jl_SOGZw/UGuP47MuFyI/AAAAAAAACag/y_Qk56TMtbY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-02+at+1.36.49+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-D23jl_SOGZw/UGuP47MuFyI/AAAAAAAACag/y_Qk56TMtbY/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-10-02+at+1.36.49+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
There seem to be a high number of 80s genre movies that promise to deliver fantasy and fun and then deliver those things. I like how inventive they feel -- maybe a lot of contemporary multiplex movies feel less inventive to me because they're not original stories but remakes and adaptations and well you know.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NqTq5hqCvP8/UGuQ0c1opXI/AAAAAAAACao/1Fm_-eP6YY8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-02+at+1.40.25+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NqTq5hqCvP8/UGuQ0c1opXI/AAAAAAAACao/1Fm_-eP6YY8/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-10-02+at+1.40.25+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
I kept waiting for The Gate to run out of steam. It does not run out of steam FYI. The script is by Michael Nankin, who co-wrote and co-directed the cult-classic Midnight Madness. The script is often sharp and playful, and crisp, and pops. Popcorn dialogue.<br />
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Glen has a nice arc about discovering his capacity for courage, and also I like his friend Terry (Louis Tripp, whose career it seems never quite took off), who also feels naturalistic and fleshed-out: he's a nerd/occultist/heavy metal fan (which nears my perception of IRL heavy metal fans) who grieves his mother's untimely death.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qxw4fYvXl34/UGuWBIV-YQI/AAAAAAAACcM/FPuWgG_JxNo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-01+at+4.07.44+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qxw4fYvXl34/UGuWBIV-YQI/AAAAAAAACcM/FPuWgG_JxNo/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-10-01+at+4.07.44+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
One might make the case that The Gate has subtext, but that subtext exists only though subjective interpretation, in some Todd Haynes-type semiotic deconstructionist pov, concerning maybe suburbia and fear of the unknown, if one wanted to make that case. It'd be interesting I bet. If any of that makes sense it's true, I swear.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V5Sl6WZL91w/UGuW3iVpR8I/AAAAAAAACcU/izNtGdUwU5U/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-02+at+1.49.18+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V5Sl6WZL91w/UGuW3iVpR8I/AAAAAAAACcU/izNtGdUwU5U/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-10-02+at+1.49.18+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
But overall I think it's the kind of movie that it's best not to overthink. I sat back and experienced the movie and was rewarded with surges of pleasurable adventure. I'm happy to say director Tibor Takács, whose other work is unfamiliar to me, has a sharp eye for cinematics.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ICdYyGsnaDs/UGuYuTXhSmI/AAAAAAAACcc/48ssDXJ6fQM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-02+at+2.15.21+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ICdYyGsnaDs/UGuYuTXhSmI/AAAAAAAACcc/48ssDXJ6fQM/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-10-02+at+2.15.21+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
I like it as a black magic movie because I don't think black magic is serious. As a godless person I dislike religious black magic movies, like Catholic horror movies, because they're too serious. There are some exceptions, like <a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/2011/01/alucarda.html">Alucarda</a>, which treats the devil in the way I think he works: as an absurdity.<br />
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<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">In summary, good job here everyone. </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">The Gate is good.</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"> </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">Good job :)</span></div>
Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-32451593316950871952012-09-25T15:59:00.000-07:002012-09-25T15:59:47.282-07:00Barbara Kopple Accepts Academy Award for Harlan County USA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-25211997291654257212012-09-18T16:18:00.002-07:002012-10-03T14:10:32.591-07:00Taxi zum Klo<div style="text-align: center;">
"You see, I like men. I'm thirty and a teacher by profession. Otherwise I'm your normal, jaded, neurotic, polymorphously perverse teacher. I radically separate my job from my private life and pleasures."</div>
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Frank Ripploh directs himself in Taxi zum Klo, a confessional autobiography.</div>
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It's like Half-Nelson if Half-Nelson was about sex not drugs, and if it'd been directed by the <a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-am-curious-yellow-and-zusje.html">I Am Curious (Yellow)</a> director.<br />
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The density of Ripploh's admissions -- the extent of his insight into himself -- creates cohesive and lush textures and vibrant emotions and<br />
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light, poetic details. It's like if <a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/2012/01/weekend-2011.html">Weekend</a> had been made by the <a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/2012/07/little-fugitive-53.html">Little Fugitive</a> people and this was one person.<br />
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This movie has most of my fav qualities, it's: earnest, candid, humorous, warm, curious, passionate, creative.<br />
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Lots of sex. Gay sex. Ripploh is a gay swinger -- I care about judging this lifestyle about as much as he does. Which is not at all. There's a no-limits feeling, like Ripploh is willing to expose every part of himself. This Is How I Am Human, without barriers. In America right now we have people like Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow who make movies that are admissions of normalcy, and I think they do the same kind of thing, except they tend to take me places I've already been. Their narratives are kind of boring I think. Their lives are kind of boring I guess, it doesn't seem like they try to enlarge one's perspective of the world, it seems like they accept the world as it is and try to be mellow and not piss anyone off. I don't know, maybe they should try to shake things up a bit some time, maybe, I don't know. Just saying I'd rather hang out with Ripploh.<br />
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Just saying.<br />
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The fact that he's a teacher doesn't scare me. All people are horrible and some of them have to be teachers also -- I don't think Ripploh is particularly horrible and I don't think he "corrupts" the children. If my nieces had a teacher like Ripploh they'd be cooler, probably. They're pretty cool I'm just saying.<br />
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Ripploh can kick it with people who don't share his lifestyle. He's comfortable being himself and lacks obvious insecurities about his character or his sexual orientation. That's cool.<br />
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Ripploh reminds me of Portland. He reminds me of infinite possibility. He reminds me there's no mold -- and reminds me that those who ignore the molds are most interesting. He reminds me to be myself as much as fucking possible. He, I guess, helps me with my memory. His art is the type that connects with my sense of self and encourages me to expand and be fearless and honest and adventurous.<br />
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Good movie :)</div>
Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-28156905602840050472012-08-27T15:55:00.001-07:002012-08-27T23:30:32.238-07:00The Brown Bunny"i've never been a popular person, but it doesn't matter. i have everything in my life that i want. i'm not a walking publicity stunt. i'm not an anarchist, or bitter. i'm not trying to be subversive. i just try to remain unguarded, unprotected by fear, and agents and publicists, and i feel comfortable that way." <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/vincent-gallo-i-am-available-to-all-women-ndash-all-women-who-can-afford-me-that-is-1989482.html?action=Gallery&ino=4">vincent gallo</a><br />
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there's the story in the bell jar about the poet esther eats with at a fancy restaurant, where everyone but the poet is dressed a certain way, and the poet uses his hands to eat his salad, "one piece of lettuce at a time." and no one whispers or stares at him rudely. esther uses this story to communicate her belief that it's not one's knowledge of a table fork's intended use that's essential, but that the fork handler has confidence.<br />
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basically, i'm comparing vincent gallo with that poet in the restaurant. that's how i see him -- eating lettuce with his hands in a fancy restaurant.<br />
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a single restaurant couldn't be analogous to all of cinema, there'd have to be multiple restaurants, because it seems clear that not everyone wants the same cinematic food.<br />
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it's difficult to imagine a theater full of random people all liking and feeling positive about the brown bunny, based on people i know and movies that are popular. but because it doesn't appeal to everyone doesn't mean it wasn't made for everyone. this is important. gallo made his movie in a very specific way, but by all accounts (and i feel when watching the movie that) his intention was to make the movie for everyone. brown bunny doesn't operate on and isn't enriched by exclusionary cultural references or extraneous background knowledge.<br />
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the brown bunny exists as an unmappable curiosity, fine-tuned liked a person. its weight comes not from cinema, but from cinematic realness.<br />
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it wasn't a popular movie, with the audience or with critics. in the recent sight and sound poll, brown bunny received <a href="http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/film/4ce2b89550f5f">one vote</a>: american moviemaker josh safdie (<a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/2011/05/pleasure-of-being-robbed.html">pleasure of being robbed</a>), who also voted <a href="http://innergenre.blogspot.com/search/label/Robert%20Kramer">milestones</a>, korine's julien donkey-boy, and a maurice pialat movie.<br />
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i feel deep and meaningful connections to the brown bunny, more than i do with the majority of movies i see (and i see so many movies) and i guess that means things that don't appeal to everyone have the same capacity for personal meaning as movies that appeal to a greater number of people.</div>
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two weeks ago or thereabouts, over a shared bottle of sake, i told my roommate a problem i had was i wanted to see a movie in the theater but there wasn't a movie in the theater i wanted to see. and again he became mad at me for not wanting to see the dark knight rises. it's his favorite routine. it's either the dark night rises or fincher's girl with the dragon tattoo or slumdog millionare or some other movie. i sense that he wants me to see these movies not because i might like them, but because he likes them so much.<br />
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amid my explanations for not wanting to see the dark knight rises, he accused me of not wanting to see the movie because it's popular. he was so off it startled me. we weren't having the same conversation. it took me a day and a half to figure out where the assumption came from. i realized there's this perception that the popularity of a movie has meaning -- that the numbers themselves have a meaning. this doesn't occur to me, not because i'm anti-numbers, but simply because numbers don't have the same meaning for me.<br />
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i like community, and i want it from cinema, but there are other things i want.<br />
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there are other things i want more.<br />
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based on my familiarity with the type of movie the dark knight rises is, and its maker, and based on its trailers, the movie isn't my bag. my specific bag. it's not the thing i die for. and i might like the movie, when and if i see it, i might be totally wrong. but nothing about it immediately sings to me, and don't we all follow the things that sing to us?<br />
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when a movie plays in the theater that sings to me, like solondz's dark horse, or hansen-løve's goodbye first love, the value isn't related to b.o. receipts or attendance. that stuff doesn't matter in an ultimate sense. and a lot of people talk about how it's the business end and a lot of people talk about how it does matter, but the truth comes to people when they sit alone in the theater and experience the movie.<br />
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only the movie matters.<br />
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while having domestic squabbles with the local multiplex i can sometimes forget there are these really wonderful american movies, and i think that's because some of the most wonderful don't play in multiplexes. many american movies i think are really wonderful aren't popular, for one reason or another, and by popular i mean they don't get mentioned in glossy magazines or chatted about too much on television and people don't go to see them and things like that.<br />
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i don't at all think the pure fact of them being underseen or unappreciated makes them important or unimportant, culturally or otherwise. that's like thinking the person who's talking the loudest or whispering the quietest has the most valid opinion by virtue of their speaking volume.<br />
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this doesn't apply strictly to independents either. when five-year engagement and the avengers were in the theater at the same time i asked my friend, who's a big alison brie fan, if the friend had seen five-year engagement, in which the supporting actors alison brie and chris pratt outperform the movie's leads, in my opinion. my friend told me he hadn't seen five-year engagement, that he doesn't go to the theater often, and that he chose to see the avengers because it was the more "culturally important" movie. well, i remember alison brier's wedding speech in five-year engagement better than i remember anything from the avengers. i took more from five-year engagement than the avengers. facts. but i don't blame my friend, i think the summer's first blockbuster, by a talented moviemaker with an exciting and huge cast of people, has many reasons for being seen, and i think a lot of blockbusters offer tremendous riches. prometheus was a pot of gold. abe lincoln vamp hunter had a lengthy action sequence that took place within, and used as weapons, stampeding horses, in 3d. snow white and the huntsman doesn't just have a magical godlike white unicorn that reigns over a lushly fantastical forest specialworld, the movie also uses this unicorn creature for a major dramatic beat. you can't not make this stuff up. skipping the dark knight rises i take the risk of missing riches. but you can't see everything, right, so we each make these little judgments about how we're going to spend our time based on the information we have about the thing and about ourselves.<br />
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we follow what sings to us. the voice that sings to me is weird and not the same voice everyone else hears, and sometimes i hate it for that, tell you the truth. and then in stronger moments i know and believe that if others aren't hearing it, i have more personal responsibility about remembering its song.<br />
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i'm arguing with imaginary people.<br />
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gallo, right, the brown bunny, right. right right right.<br />
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gallo does despair, as he does all things, without the traditional accompaniment of self-pity and self-consciousness. he doesn't apologize for having emotions.<br />
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the twisted confidence of his misery makes it a mini-miracle. if you've ever been around a person or people and had a bad feeling, and apologized to the person or people for having that bad feeling, there's a strength to be acquired through gallo and his art.<br />
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the brown bunny is about bud clay (vincent gallo) feeling miserable while driving across america to los angeles. and i think the movie, by its patience and focus, captures many shades of misery that are important.</div>
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both this movie and buffalo 66 have a lead collapsing inward on a very specific feeling.</div>
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until the movie's end one might not identify the brown bunny's central feeling as a specific emotion, (a large number of people would describe the movie through their own emotion, boredom,) but the attentive viewer senses an emotion hovering outside frame.<br />
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and car trips in general and the specific shots of this trip engender complex feelings about traveling -- the literal experience of traveling, reasons for traveling, feelings stirred by traveling, memories of travel, etc.</div>
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over backstreets, passing white-shingled two-stories in the middle of bug-splatters and gas stations and highways and days turned to nights, one senses a feeling chases bud, and one senses a feeling bud chases.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hgy1onHJvok/UDv2nZ-d5SI/AAAAAAAACM8/yQaa0_zENio/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-08-27+at+2.08.23+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hgy1onHJvok/UDv2nZ-d5SI/AAAAAAAACM8/yQaa0_zENio/s400/Screen+shot+2012-08-27+at+2.08.23+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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the first spoken word, "hi," comes at 6:27. bud to the country girl.</div>
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<br /></div>
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whom he ditches, promoting a feeling other than misery, or at least a compound misery. something like anger, disapproval, objection.</div>
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<br />
bud's misery takes the shape of its environment.<br />
<br />
sometimes the movie doesn't feel miserable.<br />
<br />
things other than misery take place.<br />
<br />
i think the movie is actually a quiet war against misery.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J0daGZ9pR5s/UDv3Suu3zFI/AAAAAAAACNE/IgpcQPnHxsc/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-08-27+at+2.12.00+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J0daGZ9pR5s/UDv3Suu3zFI/AAAAAAAACNE/IgpcQPnHxsc/s400/Screen+shot+2012-08-27+at+2.12.00+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
or at least an investigation into misery.<br />
<br />
its despair has a confessional tone that lends it a sense of earnestness. bud, a victim of tragedy, victimizes others, creating new tragedies. he's stuck in the cycle of humanness that pains him. he buzzes with pure and innocent fear. one notices his downcast eyes. his short replies. (his conversational goal seems to be to speak as little as possible without appearing rude.)</div>
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the divergent emotional textures have roughly each the same value in an eventless and drifting narrative. gallo doesn't emphasize emotions, doesn't suggest one is more important or greater than the other. this indifference is the indifference of a reality beyond the camera.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V_4kkTsst1c/UDv9ccKhJMI/AAAAAAAACOk/lhT3UqdhNxg/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-08-27+at+2.15.14+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V_4kkTsst1c/UDv9ccKhJMI/AAAAAAAACOk/lhT3UqdhNxg/s400/Screen+shot+2012-08-27+at+2.15.14+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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the movie makes me feel tender. i want to take care of buddy. didn't i begin this piece by defending buddy, by rooting for him? the movie draws it out of me, triggers my instincts to protect the weak. and that's because buddy's imperfections are as clear as his humanness and his frailty.<br />
<br />
and i feel for him. for 93 beautiful minutes.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SzUnR2uHyHw/UDv99a-oSAI/AAAAAAAACOs/IIZLHieOflo/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-08-27+at+2.30.53+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SzUnR2uHyHw/UDv99a-oSAI/AAAAAAAACOs/IIZLHieOflo/s400/Screen+shot+2012-08-27+at+2.30.53+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-65863832824707307092012-08-04T03:07:00.000-07:002012-08-18T02:18:25.255-07:00Sight and Sound ballot (imaginary)"The Docks of New York" (1928, dir. Josef von Sternberg)<br />
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
"Killer of Sheep" (1979, dir. Charles Burnett)</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
"Chungking Express" (1994, dir. Wong Kar-wai)</div>
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"Friday Night " (2002, dir. Claire Denis)</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
"Vivre sa vie" (1962, dir. Jean-Luc Godard) </div>
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"The Hole" (1998, dir. Tsai Ming-liang)</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
"Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle" (1987, dir. Eric Rohmer)</div>
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<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
"Detour" (1945, dir. Edgar G. Ulmer)</div>
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"Melvin and Howard" (1980, dir. Jonathan Demme)</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
"Shadows in Paradise" (1986, dir. Aki Kaurismäki)</div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-65532581028968269542012-07-21T06:00:00.000-07:002012-07-28T19:10:26.914-07:00The Body as Soul: Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch<div style="text-align: center;">
Where did she come from, Julie Sokolowski? She plays Céline vel Hadewijch, the movie's lead. I can see her soul through her eyes, her face is an emotion.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_GRggq_UQVw/UAiERZGeh9I/AAAAAAAAB7s/lkmpGwwopsQ/s1600/face.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_GRggq_UQVw/UAiERZGeh9I/AAAAAAAAB7s/lkmpGwwopsQ/s640/face.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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When her face is absent, I think of seeing it.</div>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NBCXsCjxCDg/UAiUgO9OsfI/AAAAAAAAB-c/hl11yF3WGBg/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.13.58+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NBCXsCjxCDg/UAiUgO9OsfI/AAAAAAAAB-c/hl11yF3WGBg/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.13.58+AM.png" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a><br />
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I can't think of her 'neutral' expression, she seems always in some thought or feeling,</div>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kOFjGA0cqD0/UAiJB9E8LZI/AAAAAAAAB8Q/NU2ZrDXsRPw/s1600/face+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kOFjGA0cqD0/UAiJB9E8LZI/AAAAAAAAB8Q/NU2ZrDXsRPw/s640/face+2.png" width="640" /></a><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
drawing some thing out of herself for the moment,</div>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R_9So52323w/UAiJX_PkEOI/AAAAAAAAB8Y/ZH7HLxCWs6I/s1600/earnest.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R_9So52323w/UAiJX_PkEOI/AAAAAAAAB8Y/ZH7HLxCWs6I/s640/earnest.png" width="640" /></a><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
or searching for a thing,</div>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lg0IWxcDTvA/UAiJqMjw1iI/AAAAAAAAB8g/mK679FaQGpU/s1600/face+3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lg0IWxcDTvA/UAiJqMjw1iI/AAAAAAAAB8g/mK679FaQGpU/s640/face+3.png" width="640" /></a><br />
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or hiding,</div>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tC76oLanSXQ/UAiJ24WsDjI/AAAAAAAAB8o/27NtgINo5FQ/s1600/face+4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tC76oLanSXQ/UAiJ24WsDjI/AAAAAAAAB8o/27NtgINo5FQ/s640/face+4.png" width="640" /></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span">or absorbing;</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z63BI_u9s9w/UAiKQPfGSSI/AAAAAAAAB8w/vChTcjzvhqg/s1600/face+6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z63BI_u9s9w/UAiKQPfGSSI/AAAAAAAAB8w/vChTcjzvhqg/s640/face+6.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
her face can crush me, I become destroyed with it,</div>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-giA49KDyF6g/UAiKew8OzXI/AAAAAAAAB88/8zOAWzhhdkw/s1600/face34.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-giA49KDyF6g/UAiKew8OzXI/AAAAAAAAB88/8zOAWzhhdkw/s640/face34.png" width="640" /></a><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
because Céline's emotions become mine,</div>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TfOETMcUgbs/UAiKx55i7GI/AAAAAAAAB9E/jW3CT_f6-JE/s1600/trapped.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TfOETMcUgbs/UAiKx55i7GI/AAAAAAAAB9E/jW3CT_f6-JE/s640/trapped.png" width="640" /></a><br />
and I want so badly for her to have the good ones only.<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6v5dLVKHiCE/UAiLecxINlI/AAAAAAAAB9M/aSLWQQM1Ajs/s1600/scared.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6v5dLVKHiCE/UAiLecxINlI/AAAAAAAAB9M/aSLWQQM1Ajs/s640/scared.png" width="640" /></a><br />
But, life as it is, one takes the good one can get.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GMcSQYRqlYs/UAiL6wfR-8I/AAAAAAAAB9U/SJRH3skT35Q/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.10.12+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GMcSQYRqlYs/UAiL6wfR-8I/AAAAAAAAB9U/SJRH3skT35Q/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.10.12+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
When the movie begins Céline is studying to become a nun, and her psycho love for Christ worries her Mother Superior, who kicks Céline from the monastery. Still lost in a blindlove for Christ, but taken from that love's context and made to reenter the reality of Paris, Céline searches for a way to fuse with Christ.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XLhc2Mx16c4/UAiNmOKVlxI/AAAAAAAAB9k/3CUdiQD-iUs/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.57.55+AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XLhc2Mx16c4/UAiNmOKVlxI/AAAAAAAAB9k/3CUdiQD-iUs/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.57.55+AM.png" /></a></div>
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It's a romance story where the girl is unable to be with her love. Her father is a Professional Christian (minister), and her parents think she's home waiting for exam results. The audience knows of the tension between Céline and her father not because the movie stresses it through repetition, but because the only time Céline says a critical thing about a person is when she talks about her father ("jerk"), to her friend Yassine (Yassine Salime), whom she meets in a Paris cafe. At a concert along a river,</div>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r8tkBOxdwt8/UAiWMbQ2BAI/AAAAAAAAB-k/pZj7IaqMLjI/s1600/concert.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r8tkBOxdwt8/UAiWMbQ2BAI/AAAAAAAAB-k/pZj7IaqMLjI/s640/concert.png" width="640" /></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">Yassine makes a move on </span>Céline, before he knows better.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dUD3oKgX-aI/UAiNjEUttHI/AAAAAAAAB9c/Vi2v5kUmpYk/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.57.32+AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dUD3oKgX-aI/UAiNjEUttHI/AAAAAAAAB9c/Vi2v5kUmpYk/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.57.32+AM.png" /></a></span></div>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y890rrgj6V4/UAiPFNWMUSI/AAAAAAAAB90/IL1d2q5g2Lo/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.58.28+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y890rrgj6V4/UAiPFNWMUSI/AAAAAAAAB90/IL1d2q5g2Lo/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.58.28+AM.png" width="640" /></a><br />
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He likes her as a friend, but doesn't understand her all the way.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gNPVARk4yNQ/UAiW31Y5RhI/AAAAAAAAB-s/l3V0shb9vJk/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+3.27.06+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gNPVARk4yNQ/UAiW31Y5RhI/AAAAAAAAB-s/l3V0shb9vJk/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+3.27.06+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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His brother Nassir (Karl Sarafidis), a devout Muslim, gets her.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zmyvLLJG7cw/UAiXNSN5qvI/AAAAAAAAB-0/QBJ0158iirc/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+3.33.54+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zmyvLLJG7cw/UAiXNSN5qvI/AAAAAAAAB-0/QBJ0158iirc/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+3.33.54+AM.png" width="640" /></a> </div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QBF8Gwshssk/UAiXPn7zxnI/AAAAAAAAB-8/Z5eOVloB3xc/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+3.34.19+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QBF8Gwshssk/UAiXPn7zxnI/AAAAAAAAB-8/Z5eOVloB3xc/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+3.34.19+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Nassir has ideas about where Céline can direct her love for Christ. Though they practice different religions, they relate on mutual grounds of psycho-passion for God.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YXyeP4Rrfig/UAiXxRFTO_I/AAAAAAAAB_E/Z7IlOy8UnwU/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+3.36.02+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YXyeP4Rrfig/UAiXxRFTO_I/AAAAAAAAB_E/Z7IlOy8UnwU/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+3.36.02+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The movie makes the case that belief is a shared characteristic which becomes categorized by the particulars of religion.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8pIG52dD370/UAiYgKUbJ-I/AAAAAAAAB_Q/Sd3Xe_HivdA/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+1.57.39+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8pIG52dD370/UAiYgKUbJ-I/AAAAAAAAB_Q/Sd3Xe_HivdA/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+1.57.39+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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This is Bruno Dumont's fifth movie, from 2009. I hadn't seen a movie of his since his debut, 1997's The Life of Jesus, a good movie, but I was amazed by the growth Dumont has made. He's a moviemaker who continues the exploration of the human soul through the art of cinema, and his Hadewijch has the soul-puncturing efficacy of honest and brave movies.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9FefxPdkMSY/UAieI_z2oUI/AAAAAAAAB_0/SRS_NbU3x5s/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.36.35+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9FefxPdkMSY/UAieI_z2oUI/AAAAAAAAB_0/SRS_NbU3x5s/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+2.36.35+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span">And I'm not referring to </span>Dumont's bravery in confronting controversially extreme emotions -- that controversy will fade, and what lasts of that particular brand of bravery -- I'm referring to his cinematic quest to expose the interior truth of Céline. It's brave of a moviemaker to care about his lead so much that I'm overwhelmed by a desire to talk about the lead, instead of the moviemaker, and I seem unable to separate the emotions of the lead from the emotions of the movie. Dumont has made himself as invisible as possible; all his cinematic techniques are intended to focus the emotions of Céline. His technique burrows inward.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cr71YSNbi60/UAie8wb1VAI/AAAAAAAAB_8/7JPlVgvEAio/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+4.08.41+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cr71YSNbi60/UAie8wb1VAI/AAAAAAAAB_8/7JPlVgvEAio/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-19+at+4.08.41+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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And by witnessing a movie burrow into itself, I begin to burrow into myself. Hadewijch is a movie I've carried in my thoughts (there are a surprising number of emotions and moments to recall, though the narrative feels 'loose'), and in my thoughts the movie has continued to grow in meaning and emotion. </div>
</div>Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-51860673949281235782012-07-20T08:00:00.000-07:002012-10-03T14:20:15.318-07:00Chilly Scenes of Winter<div style="text-align: center;">
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"Why would you choose someone who loves you too little over someone who loves you too much?"</div>
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CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER</div>
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a fizzling romance drama from 1979</div>
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directed by Joan Micklin Silver</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nGrazDoAw2g/UAhpXLQDifI/AAAAAAAAB7A/r_lxYxpuF9w/s1600/chilly1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nGrazDoAw2g/UAhpXLQDifI/AAAAAAAAB7A/r_lxYxpuF9w/s400/chilly1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Suspect I would've preferred the 1976 novel Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie to this 1979 movie directed by Joan Micklin Silver. This story of a man who becomes frantically and neurotically obsessed with a woman suffers from a kind of gloomy, sticky intensity; the result of neurotic excretions and a tendency to emphasize, tonally and thematically, the neuroses. Realworld neurotics orbit their fears around dramatically rich specifics that appeal to creative types as enhanceable details.<br />
<br />
The match-up is corny, tedious, obvious. The method is common to movie narratives because movies tend to limit their tonal palettes, while novels tend to have more textures and perspectives. Not all movies do this and not all novels do that, but in my opinion, the first step toward making a boring movie is limiting your tonal palette. I believe a movie narrative should be like knocked over beer dripping from the edge of a table. I can think of at least a handful of neurotic, obsessive, male-centered romance movies from the 70s and 80s, and they're all damaged by a sweaty-palm nervousness.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
So we're all on the same page, this is my personal definition of neurosis:<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
neurosis <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: HiraMinPro-W3;">|</span>n(y)oŏˈrōsis<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: HiraMinPro-W3;">|</span></div>
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noun ( pl. -ses |-ˌsēz|)</div>
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mental incapacity to be mellow, for more than</div>
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like two seconds</div>
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Charles (John Heard) romances co-worker Laura (Mary Beth Hurt), his affection for her as immediate as his attraction. She's six weeks into a marriage separation</div>
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"If I make you feel terrific will you marry me?"</div>
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Charles swiftly angles for Laura to move in with him, which she does. He adores her. She's everything he wants. She's unsure. While living together, Charles begins to worry there's a problem with the relationship, and hounds Laura with needy insecure questions, and by worrying creates a problem.<br />
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The love Charles has isn't the same kind of love Laura seems to be looking for, or rather, Laura isn't sure what she's looking for and wants space to decide, but Charles crowds her because he's so sure.<br />
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The relationship lasted two months and occurred before the movie's narrative.<br />
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Laura returned to her husband.<br />
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The relationship is told through flashbacks, and the narrative takes place a year after the break up, when Charles begins to act on his longing for Laura.<br />
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He breaks a long radio silence, by calling Laura and asking to see her. Before the call, he promises himself not to beg.<br />
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She agrees to see him.<br />
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Seeing her makes him desperate to have her again.<br />
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The movie excels when it handles character emotions with tender earnestness. One can sense the flames of desire between Charles and Laura, and sense his fevered passion, and her earnest confusion. My fav thing about the narrative is how it renders a compassionate portrait of romantic despair.</div>
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The melodramatically suicidal mother of Charles is probs my fav character.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9hdc6mr0oqE/UAhpZuRHaRI/AAAAAAAAB7I/esgOAm051_M/s1600/chilly2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9hdc6mr0oqE/UAhpZuRHaRI/AAAAAAAAB7I/esgOAm051_M/s400/chilly2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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"I think one day she just decided to go nuts because it's easier that way. That way she can lie around in the bathtub, and say whatever she wants, and hit the scotch whenever she feels like it, and just not do anything. Sort of tempting, isn't it?"<br />
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I like the mother's excessive mania, which though it instigates drama, doesn't seem to seek or mean to create drama. Charles is an emotional tornado, his mother is the storm in the clouds.</div>
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"Susan. Susan always appears to be happy and normal. She must know something."<br />
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<b>(this next section discusses the movie's ending)</b></div>
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According to <a href="http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/157042%7C0/Chilly-Scenes-of-Winter.html">Matthew 1: 6-11</a>,</div>
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"The movie was first released under the title Head Over Heels to avoid the dreary connotations of 'chilly' and 'winter.' Director Joan Micklin Silver, with the studio's encouragement, also opted for an upbeat, optimistic ending that was faithful in spirit to the fadeout of Beattie's novel. But none of this helped the film find an audience and the reviewers who compared it unfavorably to Annie Hall (1977), Woody Allen's equally quirky comedy-romance, didn't help either. So Head Over Heels was shelved until UA's Classic division came along and decided to give it another chance in 1982."</div>
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in '82 the movie was rereleased with the Chilly Scenes of Winter title, and according to Matthew 2:2 </div>
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"The distributor also removed the original happy ending and substituted an alternate one which was more downbeat but true to the film's melancholy tone and wintry look."</div>
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The version I saw was the '82 version. I'd like to see the original.</div>
Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-59701125189884499912012-07-19T12:55:00.000-07:002012-07-19T14:50:36.865-07:00The Ohioans (music)<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="100" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=2166934666/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=fa0000/" style="display: block; height: 100px; position: relative; width: 400px;" width="400">&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://theohioans.bandcamp.com/album/hastings-drive"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Hastings Drive by The Ohioans&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;</iframe>Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-54522084025354232762012-07-19T08:00:00.000-07:002012-08-28T11:28:09.506-07:00Punching the ClownFaced with several attractive possibilities for Netflix streaming, but overloaded on conflicting reasons for watching each one, I instead decided to watch a completely random movie I'd never heard of and knew nothing about. Typical to this situation, the Netflix image for the movie was a deciding factor:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_FeabgAYGq4/UAd7nnqkKzI/AAAAAAAAB5M/4FdnYjawI_c/s1600/PunchingtheClown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_FeabgAYGq4/UAd7nnqkKzI/AAAAAAAAB5M/4FdnYjawI_c/s320/PunchingtheClown.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
The randomness of my choice, as opposed to the deliberateness of selecting one 'for my mood' or based on expectations, combined with the interesting poster (complete with laurels), and the positivity expressed by the swath of reviews I sampled, compelled me to watch Punching the Clown. Sometimes this method burns me and wastes my time, but I was lucky enough this time that it paid off.<br />
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Henry Phillips plays a fictional version of himself in a movie he co-wrote with director Gregori Viens. Henry is a comedian/musician large enough to have his name listed in Wikipedia, and small enough that the link doesn't lead to a page (red font = no link):<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nR8vkX7RduQ/UAeEsQ74qQI/AAAAAAAAB5w/2FbIHW6gFBk/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-18+at+8.44.59+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nR8vkX7RduQ/UAeEsQ74qQI/AAAAAAAAB5w/2FbIHW6gFBk/s640/Screen+shot+2012-07-18+at+8.44.59+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
and that seems like a pretty good introduction to Henry. In the movie he's decided to give his industry career a chance to blossom by moving to LA and sleeping on his brother's couch. His brother, Matt (Matthew Walker), is an actor who, when not auditioning for Hot Pocket commercials, dresses as Batman for children's parties.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EygaDMv0R-k/UAeH-rjZ7eI/AAAAAAAAB6c/s8_TqZjkqaA/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-18+at+6.59.30+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EygaDMv0R-k/UAeH-rjZ7eI/AAAAAAAAB6c/s8_TqZjkqaA/s320/Screen+shot+2012-07-18+at+6.59.30+PM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not actually a photo of Matt, this is Henry in Matt's costume. Matt is a balding redhead with a goatee and jangly teeth (I assume that's how he likes to be described)<br />
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<b>Matt</b>: Carrie left me.</div>
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<b>Henry</b>: Aw shit man. Just like that huh?</div>
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<b>Matt</b>: Well we had a pretty big fight, and I'll spare you all the gory details, but I thought it would be a good idea to make up, so I sent her a singing telegram. Then she fucked the singing telegram guy.</div>
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The movie does a good job of rerouting typical situations into humorous variants. The narrative works by surprise, coincidence, misunderstanding, etc punchline betrayals of audience expectations. His lyrical humor functions this way as well, by employing creative wordplay; because of this, his songs work best the first time you hear them (I wonder if the movie would be like that too, cinematically it's unimpressive).</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-twpRXT6H8LE/UAeHc0J3M2I/AAAAAAAAB6U/4cIeFVw2vQs/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-18+at+6.17.47+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-twpRXT6H8LE/UAeHc0J3M2I/AAAAAAAAB6U/4cIeFVw2vQs/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-18+at+6.17.47+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
The movie's LA feels unprocessed and realistic (it's shot 'documentary style'). There's often a satirical view of LA milieu and its tendency for small-talk charged with business overtones. Other LA topics explored are personal voice vs marketing image, power vs perception of power, public appearances vs reality, etc social dimensions common to the entertainment industry.<br />
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A thing I liked about Punching the Clown is Henry doesn't possess an LA personality. Henry seems genuinely unfazed by the gloss and glamor of the city, uninterested in adapting to its business models. He hopes to remain himself and obtain the modest goal of financial success. In this way the movie is about the enduring artistic struggle to retain one's integrity and intentions in the business of art. This makes the movie the least-LA LA movie I've seen in a long, long time.<br />
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I don't think Henry places himself above LA, I think he's likable for his skill at deflating the ego of LA while cracking into his own persona. It's not at all a story about a rise to success, or even overlooked genius. Just some crummy and relatable semi-miserableness. He pokes fun at his plight by performing a blues song that's about being out of blues, because his life isn't so bad. The movie's dry humor compliments its vague dreariness, and it's consistently funny and interesting.Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-73814493309112412892012-07-18T06:30:00.000-07:002012-08-28T11:37:03.255-07:00Little Fugitive ('53)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FVpNMNcpv2c/UAU_d-UP-jI/AAAAAAAAB3s/EvIrqcH6DJg/s1600/1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FVpNMNcpv2c/UAU_d-UP-jI/AAAAAAAAB3s/EvIrqcH6DJg/s400/1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Funny that this movie, which I'd never heard of until yesterday, is in the National Film Registry, and famous for being the movie François Truffaut named as inspiration for The 400 Blows, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2010/08/travels-with-truffaut.html">saying</a> "Our new wave would never have come into being if it hadn’t been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way to independent film production with his fine movie Little Fugitive."<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xvkOZxijQmQ/UAVBeBzDXzI/AAAAAAAAB30/BjMim77efiU/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+1.28.56+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xvkOZxijQmQ/UAVBeBzDXzI/AAAAAAAAB30/BjMim77efiU/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+1.28.56+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Little Fugitive, through non-professional child actors, a handheld 35mm camera, location shooting, and hundreds of clueless extras, captures the feeling of being a young boy from Brooklyn visiting Coney Island in 1953. The film is as light as the day of a child, eschewing adult world responsibilities, problems, neuroses, etc.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VnVaUutqMmI/UAVCYq8vv0I/AAAAAAAAB38/hwVkhv0aco4/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+1.33.44+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VnVaUutqMmI/UAVCYq8vv0I/AAAAAAAAB38/hwVkhv0aco4/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+1.33.44+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
The narrative pivots on a case of mistaken homicide: the slightly-older boys execute a ketchup-blood-based prank that convinces young and clingy Joey he's shot and killed his slightly-older brother.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-doyrF44jJNk/UAVCgffw8fI/AAAAAAAAB4M/UEdkDYaTWyA/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+3.03.45+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-doyrF44jJNk/UAVCgffw8fI/AAAAAAAAB4M/UEdkDYaTWyA/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+3.03.45+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
And then, true to both the movie's naturalistic style and its boyhood perspective, when Joey flees (aka goes on the lam) to Coney Island, he spends his time tossing baseballs at milk bottles, riding the carousel (felt like the whole carousel ride was included), collecting bottles for nickels he uses to ride ponies, and in various other ways behaves like a normal child.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nYkYTed00Is/UAVCetqPT9I/AAAAAAAAB4E/s4waSGlfdL8/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+3.10.17+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nYkYTed00Is/UAVCetqPT9I/AAAAAAAAB4E/s4waSGlfdL8/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+3.10.17+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
During this trip, two peripheral characters are introduced -- one a small boy who teaches Joey about collecting bottles, and the man who runs the pony business. I can't tell you a thing about these peripheral characters, because Joey doesn't take the time to learn about them, because he's a kid, and for likewise reasons they don't volunteer their life stories.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8BJSidAVy9c/UAVCiHDp8oI/AAAAAAAAB4Y/7soyzIhvW00/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+2.58.15+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8BJSidAVy9c/UAVCiHDp8oI/AAAAAAAAB4Y/7soyzIhvW00/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+2.58.15+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
I never felt afraid for Joey, whether because of assumptions about a safer 50s America, because he's only gone for one day, or because he doesn't seem too worried himself. There's the feeling that he's decided to live and spend the rest of his life on Coney Island, a place of endless pleasures.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vec3N8spwv8/UAVCndrGtnI/AAAAAAAAB4o/pVPKhekakpU/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+3.21.48+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vec3N8spwv8/UAVCndrGtnI/AAAAAAAAB4o/pVPKhekakpU/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+3.21.48+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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I liked this movie so much. It reminded me of a kid's fantasy movie crossed with a 50s Japanese melodrama crossed with a documentary. Still photographers by trade, the moviemakers search out delightful details from Joey's journey, and the naturalistic style gifts the film with a sense of life and breathe. This doesn't feel like a scripted recreation of this life, it feels like an encounter with the real thing.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dStEeuL3H94/UAVCl7bBARI/AAAAAAAAB4g/ighZZ6Ggyy4/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+3.23.36+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dStEeuL3H94/UAVCl7bBARI/AAAAAAAAB4g/ighZZ6Ggyy4/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+3.23.36+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Basically, the whole movie is off the rails, but in the meandering readworld way of childhood adventure.</div>
Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-73824692011120934892012-07-17T00:34:00.003-07:002012-08-28T11:26:41.156-07:00She Done Him Wrong ('33)<div style="text-align: center;">
"Listen, when women go wrong, men go right after them."</div>
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SHE DONE HIM WRONG</div>
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a pre-code saloon-set romantic comedy</div>
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directed by Lowell Sherman</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jas4l3I6dnU/UAS5G-v0QuI/AAAAAAAAB1Q/90EPAAsT9TI/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-16+at+2.52.28+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jas4l3I6dnU/UAS5G-v0QuI/AAAAAAAAB1Q/90EPAAsT9TI/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-16+at+2.52.28+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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"You know I, I always did like a man in a uniform. And that one fits you grand. Why don't you come up sometime and see me. I'm home every evening."</div>
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Talk about She Done Him Wrong is talk about Lady Lou (Mae West) dominating the screen. Liking her is the same as liking the movie. It's not the mere fact that she's the main character, it's that her behavior and attitude captivate beyond the normal. She's to this movie what Tom Power (James Cagney) is to The Public Enemy. She's a sex gangster.<br />
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The movie could be played in science museums under the title MAE WEST: FORCE OF NATURE. She'd double-feature with tornados.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8XmLv3fj6A8/UAS5FUBbB6I/AAAAAAAAB1I/S2oYqaknyaI/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-16+at+12.58.57+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8XmLv3fj6A8/UAS5FUBbB6I/AAAAAAAAB1I/S2oYqaknyaI/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-16+at+12.58.57+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The setting is New York, Bowery, in the 1890s: Lou sings in a saloon owned by her benefactor Gus (Noah Beery), whose charming Russian partner Sergei (Gilbert Roland) shows romantic interest in Lou. An unscrupulous sexual and business rival of Gus's, Dan (David Landau), haunts the saloon, desperate to win Lou's affections.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iOl7zsQctFY/UAUNrLUzdBI/AAAAAAAAB2E/4XIu9aAmlxw/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-16+at+2.43.44+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iOl7zsQctFY/UAUNrLUzdBI/AAAAAAAAB2E/4XIu9aAmlxw/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-16+at+2.43.44+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The saloon's atmosphere envelops the movie, it's portrayed from: Lou's bedroom, the bar area, the back-alley, and the stage; most of the movie's action takes place in the building. It's a late-early entry for cinematographer Charles Lang, who would go on to shoot many more movies, including Ace in the Hole, One-Eyed Jacks, How the West Was Won, The Magnificent Seven, and Some Like it Hot. Here the camera feels wooden and flat. It's missing dynamism.</div>
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The script, noted for Lou's crackling repartee and bawdy double entendres, is a censor-lightened version of West's play <i>Diamond Lil. </i>It may be no small coincidence that in 1934, the year after this movie's release, Hollywood instituted the production code. </div>
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Director Lowell Sherman began his career as an actor. He directed thirteen features, sometimes directing himself. If he was of any use to West and Grant I'm not sure, but he was of no use to cinema (here).</div>
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<b>Chick</b>: "You'd sell your heart and lungs for a handful of diamonds, and I'm doing a stretch with the rats and the bugs so you can have them."</div>
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Ex-squeeze Chick (Owen Moore) does time for the robbery of diamonds meant for Lou. He's okay with the stretch if Lou's waiting for him, but has crazy suspicions she's being 'unfaithful.'<br />
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<b>Sergei</b>: "See, they make your eyes sparkle. And your teeth clean like pearls. Oh you are beautiful. I love you so. The men of my country go wild about women with yellow hair."</div>
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<b>Lou</b>: "I'm glad you told me, I want to keep straight on my geography."</div>
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<b>Sergei</b>: "I love you. You were made for love, and for love only should you care. And now surely you have enough diamonds."</div>
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<b>Lou</b>: "Oooh. Diamonds is my career."</div>
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<b>Sergei</b>: "I swear I shall make you happy. I shall die to make you happy."</div>
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<b>Lou</b>: "Aaii, but you wouldn't be much use to me dead."</div>
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She's the sun of this sexual galaxy. Often her costumes, by a young Edith Head, sparkle. Although dress and body fashions have shifted since the 30's, and social attitudes and behaviors have changed, Lou still literally sparkles. And it's not so much the diamonds and fancy hairstyles and dresses that are magnetic, but the self-confidence Lou radiates.</div>
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<b>Captain Cummings</b>: "Well they're wonderful. But they always seem so cold to me. They have no warmth, no soul. I'm sorry you think more of your diamonds than you do of your soul."</div>
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<b>Lou</b>: "Well, I'm sorry you think more of my soul than you do of my diamonds. (laugh) Maybe I ain't got no soul."</div>
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Lou wants to fuck the virtuous Captain Cummings (Cary Grant). He's the one she can't have, so the one she wants most of all.<br />
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When Chick breaks out of jail he makes his way to Lou,<br />
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throws an abusive hissy fit<br />
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and pleads for her to run away with him.<br />
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And he's only one of her problems. Gus and his partners, to Lou's surprise, are involved in illegal activities, and a federal agent codename The Hawk is after them. Worse, Lou murders Sergei's lover in a fight over a knife.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Combing the hair of her murder victim</td></tr>
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Her life on the brink of chaos, the walls closing in, it takes the man with the right kind of love to end Lou's troubles.<br />
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Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-86298642516329914622012-07-16T07:00:00.000-07:002012-07-20T21:09:42.794-07:00Born to Win ('71)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It was this shot in particular that made me sit up and pay attention to Born to Win. Something about the fact that I immediately realized J (George Segal) couldn't enter Lauren Bacall's Applause (on the marquee in background), and Lauren Bacall couldn't enter George Segal's Born to Win. Born to Win is in some ways dissimilar from typical movies, because its structure and rhythm and aesthetics attempt to use cinema to come near reality, rather than create a special and artificial movie reality. There was sometimes a slight tension between reality and art: throughout the movie clever details made moments interesting and memorable, like when J hides from a cop in a drying machine and the cop figures it out and turns the machine on,<br />
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when J is locked in a room by some drug thugs and attempts to get the girl across the street to call the cops through flashing his genitals by opening and closing the lady's nightgown he's incongruously wearing due to his situation,<br />
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when the elevator door keeps trying to close during a dramatic scene,</div>
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the colors of the closing credits,</div>
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and an earlier moment wherein Parm (Karen Black) kisses J's heroin tracks. I've always felt kissing heroin tracks is the most romantic thing possible.</div>
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Tell you the truth, I have all sorts of problems with J and Parm's relationship. I think it's a relationship that's filmpossible, which is a word I created right now that combines 'impossible' with 'film' to denote a thing that could only happen if some filmmaker or filmwriter made it happen. The situation wherein J and Parm meet: she approaches a car he's stealing and asks for a ride, he agrees to give her a ride, it's revealed it's her car, they go to her house, she's very flirty and immediately head-over-heels, they make love etc. I guess maybe things like that happened in '71, maybe there was a more relaxed attitude about relationships and hooking up, but it was difficult for me to care about a relationship that happened so randomly and sustained itself not only for no good reason but even sustained itself despite the fact that J has a couple character flaws. It's like, if you're going for realism, why do that.<br />
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When the romance worked it was by sheer perseverance, like on their car trip when they ask each other for kisses, and he says he feels like he's a teenager and he says he likes feeling like a teenager, and he orally stimulates her sexual organs while she drives and recites a nursery rhyme.<br />
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Their trip takes them to the beach, and if there was ever a perfect movie to have a scene on a beach with grey skies, it was this movie about the ex-hairdresser (did I forget to mention?) heroin junky who takes his free-spirited gf to the beach.<br />
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The movie was Ivan Passer's second directorial effort. He made his name in Czech in the mid-60s, writing on Loves of a Blonde and The Fireman's Ball for fellow Czech moviemaker Milos Forman. Of his own films, Cutter's Way seems most famous. His most recent was 2005's Nomad: The Warrior, which appears to be one of those giant historical epics.<br />
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The relationship I thought was well-developed was J's relationship with drugs, which seemed all-consuming, and also I liked his friendship with Little Davey (Tim Pelt). They have misadventures trying to score their next fix, and are kind of sweet to each other.</div>
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Even though charismatic J has "Born to Win" tattooed on his arm, he has all kinds of bad luck during the movie. It's hard to be a destitute heroin junkie, cops always after you (including Robert De Niro), trying to get paid, do the thing that'll bring the next fix, etc.Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-64187596437627045762012-07-14T06:00:00.000-07:002012-07-20T21:20:47.835-07:00Aching Souls: Love Songs, Declaration of War, Tomboy<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mjZAv1VEjeM/T_8iZAiUr0I/AAAAAAAABuk/X20PTNhVJjE/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-11+at+11.49.53+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mjZAv1VEjeM/T_8iZAiUr0I/AAAAAAAABuk/X20PTNhVJjE/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-11+at+11.49.53+PM.png" width="400" /></a><br />
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Christophe Honore's Love Songs is a dreamy light-kissed romantic musical tragic romance. Because it's French, you know the double-up on romance isn't an accident: when the movie begins Ismaël Bénoliel (Louis Garrel) is in a threesome relationship with two girls, Julie Pommeraye (Ludivine Sagnier) and Alice (Clotilde Hesme). Julie is his girlfriend, the threeway is their mutual desire.</div>
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I can't tell you what other French movie's middle-moment is similar to Love Song's without spoiling both movies, but I'll say this movie shares a desire with other movies to explore the emotional trajectory of a single character as the character's life passes through multiple events that could just as well be two or more separate movies.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PuNMaVOXDi4/T_8ms1Kh5uI/AAAAAAAABvI/7EE7d9mXh2I/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-11+at+10.09.23+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PuNMaVOXDi4/T_8ms1Kh5uI/AAAAAAAABvI/7EE7d9mXh2I/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-11+at+10.09.23+PM.png" width="400" /></a>Love Songs investigates, for example, the role of one's partner's family in one's life when one's no longer partnered with the family, i.e. one's ex's family. When in a relationship, one's partner's family may come close to feeling like one's own, but if one wants to put distance between oneself and an ex, it may be necessary to distance oneself from the family, which might hurt the feelings of the family. In Love Songs, Julie 's family thinks of Ismaël as family, but as his life extends beyond his relationship with Julie, he comes to think of them less. "I already have a mother and father," he tells Julie's sister.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--L8KF0qbLVQ/T_8oeTRdmPI/AAAAAAAABvQ/xV8WH5jjajY/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-11+at+11.47.30+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--L8KF0qbLVQ/T_8oeTRdmPI/AAAAAAAABvQ/xV8WH5jjajY/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-11+at+11.47.30+PM.png" width="400" /></a>Love Songs showcases emotional details with a graceful elegance that enriches feelings of romance.The narrative isn't flattened in order to untangle emotional complexities. Honoré is faithful to his characters, honors their complexities, and doesn't "fix" them, but simply follows and observes, with a dazzling and intelligent camera that helps sharpen their emotional experiences.</div>
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This narrative technique has always been a favorite of mine for the reason that I've never truly felt like I'm the leader of all my own life's circumstances, sometimes I feel the inflluence of forces like fate, chance, chaos, catastrophe, etc. The fact is, things occur in my life outside my ideal script.</div>
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Tell you the truth, before watching it, I thought Valérie Donzelli's Declaration of War was a romance movie. It isn't. But it kind of is. It's a romance with realworld intrusions, and it's fair to say their story isn't the romance Romeo (Jérémie Elkaïm) and Juliet (Valérie Donzelli) anticipated upon meeting each other. Even those names, of course, refer to a terrific romance, but after the movie swiftly establishes their love affair, a child is born, and the child and his brain tumor are almost the center of the rest of the movie.<br />
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I say "almost the center" because the movie is still so much about the love affair between Romeo and Juliet, and one can often sense their love, behind a curtain of pain, even when many later scenes are set in the hospital (this makes the outdoors romance more romantic and lovely).<br />
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Donzelli depicts realities of existence and being human, and how one's quest for love and happiness is sometimes sabotaged by outside forces. She suggests dedicated love has an immense power (Romeo and Juliet's love for their son is something brave and big), and says part of our happiness comes from a choice made about one's interpretation of circumstances. <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SrLJQUpgKMc/T_8vgPicJGI/AAAAAAAABv0/YBTue1TYi1A/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-12+at+1.52.44+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SrLJQUpgKMc/T_8vgPicJGI/AAAAAAAABv0/YBTue1TYi1A/s400/Screen+shot+2012-07-12+at+1.52.44+AM.png" width="400" /></a><br />
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Funny to think a lot of family movies are about kids struggling to like their parents or parents struggling to like their kids or otherwise many variations on unhealthy, damaged, dysfunctional, or broken families. But fatal sickness and hovering death can make these problems vanish, in life as in the movie. Or rather, the problems don't vanish, but there's no greater human problem than death.<br />
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Donzelli sneaks her trysts with cinema. As a smile can break a spell of sadness, so too the movie occasionally sparkles; because if the characters are not, cannot always be, sad and dull, it follows that sometimes the voice of cinema has to sing.<br />
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I'd seen and liked Céline Sciamma's previous movie Water Lilies, but I'd never seen or read about Sciamma herself. I was delighted to discover a person whom I felt I could relate to, by her age, a curious detail in her IMDb profile, and her no-bullshit and badass IMDb photo.<br />
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The underlined portion reads: "She is totally afraid of dogs no matter their size," and she was born November 12, 1980.<br />
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It's interesting that, before I started this entry, I wouldn't have guessed Tomboy was the movie I'd have the hardest time selecting four choice screencaps to use (out of fairness to the other two movies that were given four). I don't think the camera does a great job of moving or breathing, and I don't think the aesthetics are eye-licking, but there's an intelligence to all of Sciamma's cinematic choices, sometimes subtle or subtextual.<br />
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The first photo seems important because it portrays Laure's ability to blend with boys (as Mickäel) at her age. The second photo express physical limitations, and the third captures her physical self-questioning.<br />
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It makes sense that visuals would be important to a movie about gender identity. Sciamma tends to compose a shot to frame the human elements, and this emphasis over the purely aesthetic grants her movie a lens of empathy.<br />
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I felt like Laure and her experience and private feelings were of paramount importance. She's in most shots, and when she's not in the shot she's being talked about.<br />
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During the movie I thought a lot about what looking at people means; it was interesting to see Laure observe boys to learn their mannerisms in order to imitate them. She had a special eye, different from everyone else. I thought about how one watches other people in order to learn how to be a person.<br />
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Common to each of these three French movies is the idea that characters as the center of movies creates opportunity for anything to happen, and then anything that happens is meaningful and important and relevant. If the story is the focus, character details can be off-topic and irrelevant, but if the movie is stories happening to a person, with an emphasis on the person, it seems like really and truly anything can count. It feels like the freedom of existence, rather than the rules of storytelling.Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-86144610604721070592012-07-13T01:41:00.002-07:002012-07-21T20:53:18.280-07:00Party Girl ('95)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
"We still have to hang that piñata, and make the hash brownies."</div>
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PARTY GIRL</div>
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an independent party comedy drama from 1995</div>
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directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer</div>
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This is the first shot of a person in Party Girl, from a tracking shot up a staircase during credits. And the first joke Mary (Parker Posey) makes is calling dollars "pesos." To say I liked this movie right away is an understatement.</div>
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Party Girl has lots of personality, style, and verve, lots of great superficiality, and executes these characteristics in a way I think reflects realworld surfaces (the inventorying of which modern literature and movies continue). The glossy, shiny parts of Mary's world stand out, but because she's human and possesses a soul and all that, it's important to explore the nourishment of her external existence. The movie suggests her impulsive party personality is rewarded with chill adventures, good times, sweet parties, mad hookups, crazy drugs, etc, but it doesn't say why she needs these things in her life. I submit that their usefulness is obvious, and that she needs them 'cause the qualities are demanded by the social sphere in which she thrives.</div>
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And, I don't know, who can't relate to that. Who doesn't perform a thing or two for the sake of advancement in the world in which they are immersed, whether it be family life or careerism or hobbies or whatever.</div>
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If anything, what's outdated is the way the movie almost attempts to redeem Mary with her burgeoning interest in library science. I say "almost" because how seriously can you take a narrative about a party girl discovering a submerged desire to become a librarian -- the movie has its cake and puts its piece of cake in its pants and sits down. The movie suggests a party lifestyle is one of diminishing returns, and one without meaning, but I submit this describes life in general, and that the substance of life and existence is completely valid itself. Mary's problem is twofold: she lacks money, and she isn't all the way committed to her lifestyle. Perhaps it's better she discovered a formative interest, in order that she may soon confront the strict and patterned formulas of thought inherent to the library sciences. If you don't think that's a reality of library science, don't be silly -- I ask you, where don't these things exist?</div>
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I'm being so serious! Do you think I'm partially compelled to seriousness because I want to impart on you my serious feelings about enjoying the hell out of this movie?! It's a great NYC movie: all these eccentric personalities collide for explosively hilarious anecdotes. During this movie I thought about how all the supposedly airhead party characters are interested in books and music and culture, and I thought about how those things could become important to someone living a fast and urban lifestyle. It's funny because in one way the things seem to add to their lives, and in another way the things seem to substitute for an inner life. Like, they hope figuring out music or books or movies or whatever is as good as figuring out themselves.</div>
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Probs one of my fav sequences was Mary revisiting her falafel-street-vendor crush (who won't date her because he doesn't want to be her cheap fantasy "vacation") in a series of different awesome fuckme outfits.</div>
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It's like, obviously each outfit has a different meaning, why else would she keep trying different ones?? The outfit the dude falls for is her librarian one -- they hook up in the romantic poetry section of the library, when he visits to find some books to learn how to become a teacher in America, which is what he was (a teacher) in the place he's from which is Lebanon.</div>
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There's a party freakout scene that's pretty damn good. The party's theme seems to be general Asia. While dancing with a gem bindi but in a Middle Eastern way, Mary starts falling down and people have to hold her up and I think say things to calm her, I don't really remember. Seems like I broke the law of movies, which is to observe, and obeyed the law of parties, which is to let each person party how they see fit.</div>
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Party Girl was directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer. It seems like fucked up shit that Mayer made this movie yet doesn't have a badass movie career. She's directing tv now, are you kidding me? Look, I'm not knocking tv, I haven't seen the tv stuff she's made, except maybe the Mad Men episode I didn't really look into it, but the point is Mayer, based on this movie alone, has a voice, a vision, and talent. And all of these things are rare and valuable, and if a person has them they're worth developing. Maybe it's some gender inequality, I don't know, I keep thinking about Noah Baumbach's Highball, which is a movie that's inferior to Party Girl in every way of which I can conceive. To elaborate, Baumach's first three movies, including the Criterion-released Kicking and Screaming, and Mr. Jealousy, are inferior to Party Girl. I say that as a fan of those movies and Baumbach in general. To be fair, there were a lot of other contemporary NYC moviemakers, and not all of them did as well as Baumach, regardless of gender, he shouldn't have been singled out by me, oops, he probably has a special quality, his movies are special, etc. But to stick to my point: Daisy von Scherler Mayer!</div>
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I feel insane right now. Am I being insane? I wrote this review stream-of-conscious. The movie deserved it. (Tell you the truth, I consulted and paraphrased the Paul Bowles novel The Sheltering Sky for an earlier sentence, because it felt relevant, and he was such a good writer :)</div>Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190327011959875239.post-13272870705889752122012-07-12T08:00:00.000-07:002012-07-12T08:00:08.697-07:00Cocaine: One Man's Seduction<div style="text-align: center;">
"We don't make love for a couple of days and you got me ready for the funny farm."</div>
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COCAINE: ONE MAN'S SEDUCTION<br />
a made-for-tv movie from 1983<br />
directed by Paul Wendkos<br />
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A cocaine melodrama about a suburban middle-class middle-aged real estate agent in his declining years who kicks his booze habit with some sweetass cocaine. James Spader is his teenaged son and Jeffrey Tambor is his friend who shares a coke history.<br />
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The coolest thing about this movie is it scissors reality into fantastically emotional and poignant melodramatic shapes. I think melodrama uses hyperreality to create an experience that by its intensity is meant to convey certain emotional realities, to "seek something in hyperbole which otherwise might not be reached," as Gass said. Sometimes when you see a movie about a situation it can be like, hard to feel what they feel, and I think melodramas search for ways to depict interior realities.<br />
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A funny personal story is I watched this movie thinking Karel Reisz had directed it, because I'd been considering watching a Reisz movie at the same time I was considering this movie. I probably would've even told someone Reisz directed this movie if I hadn't written this and gone to IMDb to fact check. Paul Wendkos directed this movie and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0920862/">apparently</a> over a hundred other tv episodes and tv movies, along with what looks like a handful of theatrical releases. I feel like if they still made tv movies like this I might watch them. But it makes sense this was directed by a tv director, it felt like a tv movie if I'm being honest.</div>
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<b>Boss</b>: "Eddie, it's bleeding, your nose."</div>
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(Eddie wipes nose)</div>
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<b>Boss</b>: "I'm sure Eddie didn't realize --"</div>
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<b>Eddie</b>: "Hey! Don't tell me I didn't realize. It's infected. Anybody'll tell you that. Any doctor will tell you that. It could happen to anybody. (to clients) What the hell are you looking at?"<br />
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For a while Eddie feels like God in that way cocaine makes people feel like God, and I think the movie does a good job of capturing the Godlike feeling (i.e. there's a helicopter shot). At first it's increased energy and renewed belief in oneself etc., but of course it turns south, and when it goes south, it goes all the way south.</div>
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Eddie travels to his buddy's house for a promised prep-snort before a crucial business meeting (Eddie flushed his own ounce during a bathroom mishap!), but his buddy's lady relays news that the buddy was arrested and is jailbound and she asks Eddie to leave she wants to be alone but Eddie won't leave and Eddie charges into the place and becomes angry and physical and ransacks the place searching for cocaine oh buddy oh buddy.<br />
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Then, when he gets the cocaine (out of a trashcan -- p, thetic), shit hits the mother fucking fan. Eddie suffers a paranoid freakout that segues into a hospital-severe o.d.<br />
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This, understandably, shreds the souls of hotass young Spader and his movie mommy. In the end Eddie learns an easy lesson the hard way -- all you can do is accept that life gets a little crappier as you age and your family is stupid and you aren't the success you wanted to be.<br />
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I liked this movie, I can't tell if I'm making fun of it or not. I liked it. Nine thumbs up.</div>Shawnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06121960844325552902noreply@blogger.com0