philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

This movie really – really – hit home. At the time of its release, I was myself involved in a relationship with a woman [a married woman] who was in fact in possession of her very own green card. It was by far – emotionally, intellectually, sexually – the most tumultuous relationship I had ever been in. And still to this day. She was a Thai citizen who had come to America to earn a degree in art at MICA. Here in Baltimore. But when she decided to stay she entered into her own “marriage of convenience”. And then [insert moans and groans here] an unbelievely complex conflagration ensued between us.

In the end? Well, let’s just say she is still married to him. It turned out it really wasn’t just a “marriage of convenience” after all.

This film of course focuses instead on a marriage that unequivocally started out as one of convenience. She needs a husband to gain access to the residence of her dreams…and he needs a wife to gain access to the green card. Needless to say they could not possibly be more incompatable. But one way or the other they have to dupe the immigration officials in the government. They have to convince them they really are madly in love; and plan to spend the rest of their lives together happily ever married.

So, among other things, that means they must move in together. At least long enough to know as much about the other as possible. You know, in order to get their stories straight when the interviews begin.

Think the Odd Couple if they were gay. And if one of them was a Frenchman. And if marriage was an option back then.

Sure, you know right from the start where this one is going. But the trials and the tribulations along the way make it all worth watching. I mean, they are really incompatable when all of this begins.

Look for Larry Wright over the opening credits: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wrig … et_drummer

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Card_(film
trailer: youtu.be/JkB9NBoHrLw

GREEN CARD [1990]
Written and directed by Peter Weir

[b]Brontë [to Georges]: We don’t have to like each other. We just have to get married.

…

Georges [bidding Bronte farewell after they are, uh, married]: Okay, so, uh, good luck with your life.

…

Bronte: So what happens next?
Anton [who arranged the “marriage”]: That’s it. You don’t even have to see him again.

…

Bronte [to the folks who will decide if she gets the apartment]: Look, I’m very aware of the situation. It’s just that… well, I could bring the garden back to the way the late professor had it. I don’t want to get too technical, but the moracus syconia needs thinning… and the crinums and the zamias are sadly neglected. The chamaedorea’s root bound, and special care must be taken… for the poor cyathaceae dicksonia. Not to mention the cordyline or the heliconia. And there’s work nurturing the aspidistra… begonias, the bromeliads.[/b]

Then, having established that while her “husband” is in Africa now, he is not actually an African, she gets the apartment.

[b]Georges [a waiter in a restaurant, to Bronte taking her order]: And, uh… for mademoiselle? Or is it madame?

…

Brontë [trying to shift all the blame for their bogus marriage onto Georges]: You stroll around my apartment, touching my things. Do you know what trouble you’ve gotten me into? Do you?!
Georges: I’m sorry, Betty.
Brontë: It’s Bronte.
Georges: Oh.
Brontë: It’s hopeless…
Georges: The coffee?
Brontë: The coffee? I’m about to go to jail, you’re gonna be deported and you’re worried about the coffee?

…

Gorsky [INS official investigating their marriage]: May I use your bathroom?
Georges: My what?
Gorsky: Your bathroom.
Georges: What for?[/b]

Not a good answer.

[b]Lawyer: They want a second interview on Monday. This is Friday. That gives you the weekend to get your stories straight.
Bronte: Two days? Well, I don’t see why he has to move in. Why can’t he just meet me here in the park or something?
Lawyer: Because this interview’s going to be in-depth. They’re gonna question you separately. They’re gonna want to know the colour of each other’s toothbrush. Uh, what does he like to eat? Does he snore? You’re gonna have to, uh, study each other’s habits. It’s like you’re cramming for an exam.

…

Lawyer: Just get your stories straight. By Monday evening this’ll all be over…and we can start planning the divorce.
Bronte: I can’t wait.

…

Bronte: Georges writes for the ballet. He’s an old friend. He’s…
Georges: …not gay.
Bronte: Of course not.
Lauren: Good.
Bronte: He just couldn’t find a hotel. And he’s been in Africa.
Georges: Look, we just old friends. So I don’t fuck her.

…

Georges: You begin the lie when you married. I didn’t make you lie. You always blame me. You did it too.
Bronte: Did what?
Georges: Married me! I did it for the green card. Why did you do it? No one made you! No one!
Bronte: Outside! Outside!
Georges: If you push me to be a beast, I can be a beast, so take care!
[he knocks a picture off the wall breaking the glass]
Bronte: Now look what you’ve done! You silly French oaf!

…

Georges [to Bronte]: You like plants better than people.

…

Bronte: The Adlers are thinking about giving some trees to a gardening group I’m in. Bronte: What’s that?
Bronte: Oh, it’s…,it’s just a gardening group. We go into poor areas, like the Lower East Side, and…
Georges: I came from that life. You waste your time.
Bronte: What?
Georges: Yeah. Nothing will change down there. It will always be that way. Better to forget about it.
Bronte: Forget about it?
Georges: Yeah. Look, the trees are very good. Yes, sure, sure. But you can’t eat the trees. Bronte: Well, nothing changes without hope.
Georges: Oh, you think the gardens make hope?
Bronte:Well, it’s something.
Georges: The trees are very good, yes, but go to the country if you want trees.
Bronte: Huh? You try telling that to the children. They live with chaos, despair. You may think it’s nothing to give them a garden to plant…or trees to climb, but at least it’s doing something.
Georges: If it amuses you, then do it.
Bronte: Amuses me?!

…

Georges: Phil…he’s not right for you.
Bronte: Oh, really? He knows more about people’s feelings than you’ll ever know.
Georges: Feelings? You don’t have feelings at all.
Bronte: You snore, and your manners are atrocious.
Georges: Ah, if you think that’s important, you’re a snob.
Bronte: Well, you’re a slob, you’re overweight, you’re disgusting!
Georges: But you live your life like you got it from a book. And Phil? Oh, yes, you make-a nice love with Phil, like-a vegetables. You need a fuck.
Bronte: That’s the language of the gutter, where you came from and where you’ll end up.
Georges: I am… I am the gutter, yes. But you…you are like a plant. A ca-ca… cactus!
Bronte: I once said I had no opinion of you, and now I do. I hate you. I really hate you!
Georges: Good, good. Your first feeling. Good!

…

Bronte: Your father’s name, was it Bertrand or Bernard?
Georges: Rene.
Bronte: Oh.[/b]

[iambiguous]

The true story of this man: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82ady … w_Szpilman

Easily one of the luckiest men to have ever lived.

Poland at the time of the German invasion. Day in and day out: Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Then…SPLASH! The Nazi deluge.

This has been portrayed many, many times in film. A Jewish family of means [relatively speaking] watches as week in and week out the Nazi policies towards the Jews become increasingly more repressive…more ominous. What to do? Stay or go? Is that an option?

The fucking humiliations that had to be endured. Always you wonder: what would I have done? You want only to refuse them. To strike back. But is that really an option when to do so means certain death? And not only for yourself but for those you love?

What could I endure? Where would I draw the line? Over and over and over again: bearing the unbearable.

And all the while the war looms larger and larger…the consequences becoming greater and greater. But everyone still has his or her own individual part to play in it. There is no getting around that. This is one man’s harrowing sojourn through it all.

Well, harrowing perhaps, but by no means as harrowing as the fate that awaited his family…and millions more sent to the camps. Fortuity. Itzak Heller yanks him from the others [heading for trains heading for the death camps] and everything changes: Heller: What do you think you’re doing, Szpilman? I’ve saved your life! Now, go, go, go on, save yourself!

We watch films like this and then we go about the business of living our lives. Like we can fit them both together somehow.

IMDb

[b]The film is based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman. The director Roman Polanski tried to make the film as faithful of an adaptation as possible, with additional inspiration coming from events that happened to him while he was a boy during the war.

In order to connect with the feeling of loss required to play the role, Adrien Brody got rid of his apartment, sold his car, and didn’t watch television.

During the shooting of the movie, while scouting locations in Krakow, Roman Polanski met a man who had helped Polanski’s family survive the war. Roman Polanski himself experienced the Holocaust. His parents were sent to two different concentration camps: his father to Mauthausen-Gusen in Austria, where he survived the war, and his mother to Auschwitz where she was murdered.

This is the first film ever to receive the Best Film Award at the Césars (France’s national film award) with not a single word of French spoken in it.[/b]

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0253474/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pianist_(2002_film
trailer: youtu.be/u_jE7-6Uv7E

THE PIANIST [2002]
Directed by Roman Polanski

[b]Henryk [to Wladyslaw]: I told mother not to worry. You had your papers on you. If you’d been hit by a bomb, they’d have known where to take you.

…

Wladyslaw [to his father]: What…what do you think you’ll do while you’re setting up your new line of defense? Wander around luggin’ your suitcases?

…

Wladyslaw [to Dorota after seeing the NO JEWS sign on the restaurant door]: They all want to be better Nazis than Hitler.

…

Wladyslaw: It’s an official decree, no Jews allowed in the parks.
Dorota: What, are you joking?
Wladyslaw: No, I’m not. I would suggest we sit down on a bench, but that’s also an official decree, no Jews allowed on benches.
Dorota: This is absurd.
Wladyslaw: So, we should just stand here and talk, I don’t think we’re not allowed to do that.

…

Halina [holding out a newspaper]: Have you seen this?
Wladyslaw: What? What? I’m working. What? What is this?
Halina: It’s where they’re going to put us.
Wladyslaw: What do you mean “put us”?

…

Wladyslaw: Where are we going?
Mother: Phhhhh, out of Warsaw.
Wladyslaw [confused]: Out of Warsaw? Where?
Regina: You haven’t heard?
Wladyslaw [exasperated]: Heard what?
Regina: Haven’t you seen the paper?
Wladyslaw: No!
Regina: Ah, where’s the paper?
Halina: I used it for packing.
Regina [incredulous]: Ah, she used it for packing!

…

Wladyslaw [regarding the “Jewish ghetto”]: It’s too small. There’s 400,000 of us in Warsaw.
Henryk: No, there’s 360,000. So it will be easy.

…

Mr. Lipa: 2,000 and my advice is to take it. What will you do when you’re hungry? Eat the piano?
Henryk: Get out! You’re a thieving bastard, we don’t want your money, get out! We’d rather give it away!
Mr Lipa: Hey! Hey! What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you eaten today, what you suffering from? Hey! You people are crazy! I’m doing you a favour, two thousand, and I’m paying for the removal, I’m not even charging for the removal!
Wladyslaw [resigned]: Take it…

…

Wladyslaw: You sell anything?
Henryk: Just one. Dostoevsky. The Idiot. Three zlotys.
Wladyslaw: That’s better than yesterday.
Henryk: Three lousy zlotys. And there are people here making millions.
Wladyslaw: I know.
Henryk: You don’t know, believe me. They bribe the guards. The guards turn a blind eye. They’re bringing in cartloads, food, tobacco, liquor, French cosmetics, and the poor are dying all around them and they don’t give a damn.

…

Yehuda [regarding the underground newspapers]: These will start the uprising. Majorek hides them in his underpants, and leaves them in toilets.
Majorek: As many toilets as I can find. Germans never use Jewish toilets. They’re too clean for them.

…

Mother: And, please, tonight, for once, I don’t want anything bad talked about. Let’s enjoy our meal.
Henryk: Okay, then I’ll tell you something funny. You know who I mean by Dr. Raszeja. The surgeon. Well, for some reason, don’t ask me why, the Germans allowed him into the ghetto to perform an operation…
Halina: On a Jew? They allowed a Pole to come in to operate on a Jew?
Henryk: He got a pass, that’s all I know. Anyway, he puts the patient to sleep and starts the operation. He’d just made the first incision when the SS burst in, shoot the patient lying on the table, and then shoot Dr. Raszeja and everybody else who was there. Isn’t that a laugh? The patient didn’t feel a thing, he was anaesthetized.
[He laughs. No one else does]
Mother: Henryk, I said nothing bad.
Henryk: What’s the matter with you all, huh? You lost your sense of humor?
Wladyslaw: That’s not funny.
Henryk: Well, you know what’s funny? You’re funny, with that ridiculous tie.
Wladyslaw [getting angry]: What’re you talking about my tie for? What does my tie have to do with anything? I need this tie for my work!
Henryk [mocking]: Oh, your work.
Wladyslaw: Yes, that’s right, I work!
Henryk: Yes, yes, your work. Playing the piano for the parasites in the ghetto.
Wladyslaw: Parasites…
Henryk: Yes, parasites. They don’t give a damn about people suffering.
Wladyslaw: And you blame me for their apathy, right?
Henryk [accusing]: I do, because I see it everyday. They don’t even notice what’s going on around them.
Father: I blame the Americans.
Wladyslaw: For what, for my tie?!
Father: American Jews, and there’s lots of them, what have they done for us? What do they think they’re doing? People here are dying, haven’t got a bite to eat. The Jewish bankers over there should be persuading America to declare war on Germany!

…

Wladyslaw (to an elderly man nearest him): What’s happening?
Man: They’ve got my grandson in there. They pick 'em up, they take 'em away. What do they do to them? I’ve stopped believing in God!

…

Wailing Woman: Why did I do it?! Why did I do it?! Why did I do it?!
Halina: She’s getting on my nerves. What did she do, for God’s sake?
Grun:: She smothered her baby. They’d prepared a hiding place and so, of course, they went there. But the baby cried just as the police came. She smothered the cries with her hands. The baby died. A policeman heard the death rattle. He found where they were hiding.

…

Dr. Ehrlich: We’re letting them take us to our death like sheep to the slaughter!
Father: Dr. Ehrlich, not so loud!
Dr. Ehrlich: Why don’t we attack them? There’s half a million of us, we could break out of the ghetto. At least we could die honourably, not as a stain on the face of history!
Grun: Why you so sure they’re sending us to our death?
Dr. Ehrlich: I’m not sure. You know why I’m not sure? Because they didn’t tell me. But I’m telling you they plan to wipe us all out!
Father: Dr. Ehrlich, what do you want me to do? You want me to fight?
Grun: To fight you need organisation, plans, guns!
Father: He’s right. What d’you think I can do? Fight them with my violin bow?
Grun: The Germans would never squander a huge labour force like this. They’re sending us to a labour camp.
Dr. Ehrlich: Oh, sure. Look at that cripple, look at those old people, the children, they’re going to work? Look at Mr Szpilman here, he’s going to carry iron girders on his back?

…

Wladyslaw: What are you reading?
Henryk: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? It you tickle us, we we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
Wladyslaw [seeing that it is Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice]: Very appropriate.
Henryk: Yes, that’s why I brought it.

…

Wladyslaw: It’s a funny time to say this, but…
Halina: What?
Wladyslaw: I wish I knew you better.

…

German soldier [as the Jews board the trains]: Well, off they go to the melting pot.

…

Majorek [to Wladyslaw]: They’re going to start the final resettlement now. We know what it means. We sent someone out. Zygmunt. A good man. His orders were to follow the trains out of Warsaw. He got to Sokolow. A local railwayman told him the tracks are divided, one branch leading to Treblinka. He said every day freight trains carrying people from Warsaw forked to Treblinka and returned empty. No transports of food are ever seen on that line. And civilians are forbidden to approach the Treblinka station. They’re exterminating us. Won’t take them long. We’re sixty thousand left. Out of half a million. Mostly young people. And this time we’re going to fight. We’re in good shape. We’re organised. We’re prepared.

…

Wladyslaw [to Szalas, taking off his watch]: Here, sell this. Food is more important than time.

…

Wladyslaw: No. Please. I’m Polish. I’m not a German.
Polish Soldier: Then why the fucking coat?
Wladyslaw: I’m cold.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Hmm. Are the “aliens” being portrayed here really just a way of imagining how some see the invasion of immigrants throughout Europe? I mean, how farfetched is it? They live among themselves by and large in “ghettos”. And they are not human at all. Well, not like you and I. More like, say, insects. But don’t let their seeming subjugation fool you. They are just biding their time. One day they will reemerge as jihadists [you know, terrorists] and reek havoc among the civilized populations throughtout the world.

Here is one take on that angle: theguardian.com/film/filmblo … ate-change

Or the focus may be [and in fact is] more narrowly drawn: race [apartheid] in South Africa: The film was inspired by director Neill Blomkamp’s childhood in South Africa during apartheid.

It is a four fold society here. There are the “prawns” – the aliens. There are the citizens living around the alien ghetto – almost all poor blacks. There are the gangster “Nigerians” who deal with the prawns directly. And then there are the “authoriites” in the government and the media and the military – all white.

In any event, this " insect race" is one that must be kept as far removed from the rest of us as possible.

Shot in the “faux documentary” style.

Alas though, in the end, it all devolves into a shoot-em-all-up quagmire of special effects violence. And about as improbable too.

See if you can spot the military industrial complex here.

IMDb

[b]The language used by the aliens (clicking sounds) was created by rubbing a pumpkin.

All the shacks in District 9 were actual shacks that exists in a section of Johannesburg which were to be evacuated and the residents moved to better government housing, paralleling the events in the film. Also paralleling, the residents had not actually been moved out before filming began. The only shack that was created solely for filming was Christopher Johnson’s shack.

The title is a nod to a real place and a real incident. District 6 was a mixed race neighborhood of Cape Town which the apartheid government demolished in 1966 to make room for whites.

The mutilated animal carcasses in the background of many scenes were real and with only a few exceptions, were already in the real slums and shacks used for the filming.[/b]

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt1136608/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_9
trailer: youtu.be/yfem7wKeNaU

DISTRICT 9 [2009]
Written in part and directed by Neill Blomkamp

[b]Wikus [to the camera]: We are here at MNU head office, Department of Alien Affairs. My name is Wikus van de Merwe. And behind me you can see other Alien Affairs workers. And what we do here at this department is…is we try to engage with the prawn on behalf of MNU…and on behalf of humans.

…

Sarah [a sociologist, to the camera]: The creatures were extremely malnourished. They were very unhealthy. They seemed to be aimless. There was a lot of international pressure on us at the time. The world was looking at Johannesburg…so we had to do the right thing. The government then established an aid group that started to ferry the aliens to a temporary camp that was set up… …just beneath the ship. We didn’t have a plan. There was a million of them. So, what was a temporary holding zone soon became fenced, became militarized. And before we knew it, it was a slum. Well, the truth is nobody really knew what this place was. There’s a lot of secrets in District 9.

…

Citizen [to the camera]: The government is spending so much money to keep them here when they could be spending it on other things. But at least…at least they’re keeping them separate from us.

…

Wikus [to the camera]: The prawn doesn’t really understand the concept of ownership of property. So we have to come there and say, “Listen, this is our land. Please will you go?”

…

Grey [news correspondent]: What we have stranded on Earth in this colony, is basically the workers. Don’t think for themselves, take commands, have no initiative. They’ve lost all of their leadership through, we presume, illness.

…

Sarah: Where there’s a slum, there’s crime and District 9 was no exception. The Nigerians had various scams going. One of them was the cat-food scam…where they sold cat food to the aliens for exorbitant prices. Not to mention interspecies prostitution. And they also dealt in alien weaponry.

…

Wikus [handing an Alien reproductive apparatus to co-worker]: Here, you can take that, you want to keep that, as a souvenir of your first abortion.
Thomas [beaming]: Thanks, boss!

…

Wikus [while the ‘anti-abortion team’ burns down the shack with the alien eggs in it]: You hear that? That’s a popping sound that you’re hearing. It’s almost like a popcorn!

…

Grey [to the camera]: MNU is trying to move the aliens for humanitarian reasons…but the real focus, just as it has been right from the beginning, is weapons. MNU is the second-largest weapons manufacturer in the world. We assumed that we’d be able to pick up the alien gun and be able to shoot it. It didn’t work like that. As we discovered, their technology is engineered in a biological manner…and interacts exclusively with their DNA. So it just doesn’t work with humans. It’s as simple as that.

…

Wikus [to Alien]: Get your fokkin’ tentacle out of my face!

…

Wife: What’s the matter?
Wikus [already infected]: I might have crapped in my pants.[/b]

Shades of The Fly here as Wikus starts to become one of them!

[b]MNU official #1: Gentlemen, you’re running out of time. This is the key stage in the metamorphosis. His DNA is in perfect balance between alien and human. The problem is, as the infection spreads the transition becomes permanent and less active.
MNU official #2: He’s going to turn into one of them, a prawn?
MNU official #1: What happens to him isn’t important. What’s important is that we harvest from him what we can right now. This body represents hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars worth of biotechnology. There are people out there, governments, corporations who would kill for this chance.
MNU official #2: Will he survive the procedure?
MNU official #1: No, of course not. We need everything. Tissue, bone marrow, blood. The procedure’s gonna basically strip him down to nothing.

…

Grey [to the camera]: He became the most valuable business artifact on Earth. He was the only human who had ever…successfully… been combined with alien genetics and remained alive. But his real value was that he could operate alien weaponry.

…

Wikus: When we get to the mother ship, how long is this gonna take?
Christopher: To do what?
Wikus: The fixing. To fix me.
Christopher: It’s going to take a bit longer than I thought.
Wikus: Okay. All right. That’s fine. How long do you need?
Christopher: Three years.
Wikus: Sorry, wait. Just go slowly with the clicks there. It sounded like you said “three years.” Like human years?!

…

Wikus: The deal was, you go home, I get fixed.
Christopher: I will not let my people be medical experiments!
Wikus: I’m a fucking medical experiment. You hear me? I’m a fucking medical experiment, man![/b]

[iambiguous]

This is the darker side of Catfish. For some, just fucking around with identity “online” isn’t enough. Instead, they fall into the virtual labyrinth hook, line and sinker. The shadows on the wall become the real thing. And then someone actually ends up dead. Executed.

This is a true story. It really happened. And who knows how many times it has already been replicated to one degree or another.

“Who” “I” “am” online is limited only by our imagination. But some seem to forget that this also works for everyone else too. Or it can work this way. They think: my own life is shit. Or, if not shit, no where near as fulfilling as it could be. As it should be. As it would be if the “real me” inside were able to emerge. So they strike up a “relationship” with a complete stranger somewhere out in cyberspace. Only to find out later this complete stranger is doing exactly the same thing to them.

Next thing you know someone is slumped in their pickup truck dead.

We live in a world where over and over and over again many are reminded of the huge gap that truly does exist between the relatively dull, ordinary lives that they endure day in and day out and the lives of, say, the “rich and famous” – the glamorous folks on TV or in the movies or from one another adjunct of our ubiquitous “pop culture”. Or even if not on that level they live lives one hell of a lot more rewarding than our own.

We’re starting to get older, our “looks” are becoming for shit, our jobs are drudery, our relationships agonizingly quotidian. We live out our “dead end” lives in our “dead end” worlds. Ah, but we now have access to a technological “solution” that previous geenrations did not. We can acquire a personal computer, plug into the internet and make contact [anonymously] with any number of folks in the same boat. We can then become someone else vicariously. After that [in our heads] the sky is the limit.

Well, as long as we are content to stay up there. And as long as we are content to believe the one on the other end really is who she claims to be: A tall, hot, 18 year old blonde. But then in so many different ways our “real lives” can become entangled in our “virtual identities”. Other people can become implicated. The knots become more and more entangled. We can be yanked in so many different directions. Suddenly, things can start to spin out of control. The “virtual reality” takes on a life all its own. We find ourselves unable to really control all of the other players. Reality and fantasy begin to blur.

Are these folks pathetic or what? Sure seemed so to me. But it’s not one can’t imagine how [or why] thousands upon thousands of folks might engage in the same thing. There’s just something about the “modern world” and the manner in which it is able to degrade you, dehumanize you, debase you out of existence. Why not invent an alternative?

I suspect that some folks right here are only really here “in character”. And look how inflamatory some of those exchanges can [have]become.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talhotblond
trailer: youtu.be/K4AOWExA604

TALHOTBLOND [2009]
Written in part and directed by Barbara Schroeder

[iambiguous]

Teen angst. Think Jason Dean. Same actor but very different roles. Dean embodied a cynical nihilistic rage directed at any and all authority. Solution? Blow the whole damn thing up.

On the other side of the coin is Mark Hunter. Same contempt [and hardcore cynicism] regarding “the system”. But his reactions – eventually – are grounded more in exposing it to the world and then motivating “the kids” to do something destructive about it. Like, say, change it. All of it. Only first “the kids” have to bring him around to that.

Of course the “system” here is rather far removed from the manner in which folks like me embed it in political economy. His rendition is more along the lines of your hard core “radical liberal”: change yourself into one of them [the hip radicals] and the “blue meany” world of alientation and repression will all come crashing down.

Try to even imagine kids from the more squallid parts of our urban jungles – the world of hard core dope addiction, entrenched poverty and gangbanging – watching this. Lots of hopelessly idealistic [i.e. cringeworthy, excruciating] moments here.

So, in their heart some will go along for the ride but in their head – they just know better.

Lots of stick figures here. But sometimes that’s all you really want. You know, when you’re just a kid yourself. Or [wink, wink] young at heart.

This film was made nearly 25 yeaqrs ago. You tell me in which direction “youth culture” has turned. At least here in Ameica. For every OWS advocate out there, there must be at least 50 kids who just want to be “stars”. Or, if not that, well, at least “cool”.

trailer: youtu.be/MuhHPQxS2nQ
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_Up_The_Volume_(film

PUMP UP THE VOLUME [1990]
Written and directed by Allan Moyle

[b]Mark [as Hard Harry]: Do you ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up?

…

Mark [on the radio]: I like the idea that a voice can just go somewhere uninvited and just kind of hang out like a dirty thought in a nice clean mind. To me a thought is like a virus. You know, it can just kill all the healthy thoughts and just take over.

…

Marla [mother]: We think you should see a psychiatrist.
Mark: Is it that obvious?

…

Mark [as Hard Harry on the radio]: Suicide is wrong, but the interesting thing about it is how uncomplicated it seems. There you are, you got all these problems swarming around in your brain, and here is one simple, one incredibly simple solution. I’m just surprised it doesn’t happen every day around here.

…

Mark [as Hard Harry on the radio]: I’m sick of being ashamed. I don’t mind being dejected and rejected, but I’m not going to be ashamed about it. At least pain is real. I mean, you look around and you see nothing is real, but at least the pain is real.

…

Mark [as Hard Harry on the radio]: They say I’m disturbed. Well, of course I’m disturbed. I mean, we’re all disturbed. And if we’re not, why not? Doesn’t this blend of blindness and blandness want to make you do something crazy? Then why not do something crazy? It makes a helluva lot more sense than blowing your fucking brains out.

…

Mark [as Hard Harry on the radio]: Hi folks! It seems we have a new listener tonight. Mr Watts of the F.C.C. Hi Arthur thanks for coming out. Imagine a fucking political hack being in charge of free speech in America.[/b]

Talk Hard!

[iambiguous]

Nothing is what it seems. And [apparently] not only in Chinatown. In fact, wherever you find government [local, state, federal…here and abroad] the only common denominator is wealth and power. It is only a matter of how far in the backgound it is. Less so in places like Beijing and Moscow, more so in places like Washington D.C. and Los Angeles.

Or course [over time] things do change. Except for those parts that don’t. Here it’s another portrait of L.A. Confidential. The wheeling and the dealing that goes on somewhat at a distance from, say, democracy and the rule of law. The Golden Rule? Yeah, but the other one. Unless, of course, that’s the one you were thinking of. And, if anything, that always comes a lot closer to objectivism than the rather lamebrain renditions of it from the deontologists here.

Nowaways of course the rich and the powerful rely less upon flagrant corruption and more upon simply paying off their political cronies in campaign contributions. It’s all more or less out in the open now. And it’s all perfectly legal. And given the current ideological propensities of the Supreme Court, starting to spread like wildfire.

And then the other part of the story. Noah and Evelyn and Katherine. A whole different kind of corruption altogether.

But either way the folks involved in the corruption have two ways they go about it: using carrots or using sticks. But one way or the other they intend to get their way.

IMDb

[b]The Chinatown (1974) screenplay is now regarded as being one of the most perfect screenplays and is now a main teaching point in screen writing seminars and classes everywhere.

The enigmatic title stands for failure, bad luck and being out of your depth in something you don’t understand.

Katherine Mulwray is raised believing that Evelyn Mulwray is her sister, but it is later revealed that Evelyn is her mother (or rather, both mother and sister). Shortly after the film was released, Jack Nicholson discovered that the woman he was raised to believe was his sister was, in fact, his mother.

Roman Polanski has said that the dark ending to the film was a result of his own despair following the murder of his wife, actress Sharon Tate.

At the time of filming, Jack Nicholson had just embarked on his longstanding relationship with Anjelica Huston. This made his scenes with her father, John Huston, rather uncomfortable, especially as the only time Anjelica was on set was the day they were filming the scene where Noah Cross interrogates Nicholson’s character with “Mr Gittes…do you sleep with my daughter?”[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_(1974_film
trailer youtu.be/2yJJWXhXbuI

CHINATOWN [1974]
Directed by Roman Polanski

Bagby: Gentlemen, today you can walk out that door, turn right, hop on a streetcar and in twenty-five minutes end up smack in the Pacific Ocean. Now you can swim in it, you can fish in it, you can sail in it but you can’t drink it, you can’t water your lawns with it, you can’t irrigate an orange grove with it. Remember we live next door to the ocean but we also live on the edge of the desert. Los Angeles is a desert community. Beneath this building, beneath every street there’s a desert. Without water the dust will rise up and cover us as though we’d never existed!

Supply and demand. Ripe for the picking. Corruption, in other words.

[b]Jake [to Walsh]: Echo Park. Jesus, water again.

…

Jake [to the boys in the office]: So there’s this guy. He’s tired of screwin’ his wife… So his friend says to him, Hey, why don’t you do it like the Chinese do? So he says, How do the Chinese do it? And the guy says, Well, the Chinese, first they screw a little bit, then they stop, then they go and read a little Confucius, come back, screw a little bit more, then they stop again, go and they screw a little bit…then they go back and they screw a little bit more and then they go out and they contemplate the moon or something like that. Makes it more exciting. So now, the guy goes home and he starts screwin’ his own wife, see. So he screws her for a little bit and then he stops, and he goes out of the room and reads Life Magazine. Then he goes back in, he starts screwin’ again. He says, Excuse me for a minute, honey. He goes out and he smokes a cigarette. Now his wife is gettin’ sore as hell. He comes back in the room, he starts screwin’ again. He gets up to start to leave again to go look at the moon. She looks at him and says, Hey, whats the matter with ya. You’re screwin’ just like a Chinaman!

…

Jake: Mulvihill! What are you doing here?
Mulvihill: They shut my water off. What’s it to you?
Jake: How’d you find out about it? You don’t drink it; you don’t take a bath in it…They wrote you a letter. But then you have to be able to read.

…

Evelyn [about dropping the lawsuit]: Hollis seems to think you’re an innocent man.
Jake: Well, I’ve been accused of a lot of things before, Mrs. Mulwray, but never that.

…

Jake: Hello, Claude. Where’d you get the midget?

…

Ida Sessions [on the phone]: Are you alone?
Jake: Isn’t everybody?

…

Noah Cross: I hope you don’t mind. I believe fish should be served with the head.
Jake: Fine… long as you don’t serve the chicken that way.

…

Noah Cross: You may think you know what you’re dealing with, Mr. Gittes, but, believe me, you don’t.
[Jake grins]
Noah Cross: Why is that funny?
Jake: That’s what the District Attorney used to tell me in Chinatown.

…

Morty [to Jake]: Can you believe it? We’re in the middle of a drought, and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.!

…

Jake: That dam is a con job.
Evelyn: What dam?
Jake: The one your husband opposed. They’re conning L.A. into building it, only the water won’t go to L.A. It’ll go here. Everything you can see, everything around us. I was at the Hall of Records today. In the last three months, Robert Knox has bought 7,000 acres, Emma Dill 12,000 acres, Clarence Speer 5,000 acres, and Jasper Lamar Crabb 25,000 acres.
Evelyn: Jasper Lamar Crabb?
Jake: Know him?
Evelyn: No, I think I’d remember.
Jake: They’ve been blowing these farmers out of here and buying their land for peanuts. Have any idea what this land’ll be worth with a steady water supply? About thirty million more than they paid.
Evelyn: And Hollis knew about it?
Jake: It’s why he was killed. Jasper Lamar Crabb. There was a memorial service at the Mar Vista Inn today for Jasper Lamar Crabb. He died two weeks ago.
Evelyn: Is that unusual?
Jake: A week ago he bought those 25,000 acres. That’s unusual.

…

Jake [pretending to seek a nursing home for his father]: There’s one thing. Do you accept people of the Jewish persuasion?
Mr. Palmer: I’m sorry, we do not.
Jake: Don’t by sorry - neither does Dad.

…

Evelyn: Tell me, Mr. Gittes: Does this often happen to you?
Jake: What’s that?
Evelyn: Well, I’m judging only on the basis of one afternoon and an evening, but, uh, if this is how you go about your work, I’d say you’d be lucky to, uh, get through a whole day.
Jake: Actually, this hasn’t happened to me for a long time.
Evelyn: When was the last time?
Jake: In Chinatown.
Evelyn: What were you doing there?
Jake: Working for the District Attorney.
Evelyn: Doing what?
Jake: As little as possible.
Evelyn: The District Attorney gives his men advice like that?
Jake: They do in Chinatown.

…

Jake [to Escobar]: You’re dumber than you think I think you are.

…

Evelyn: She’s my daughter.
[Jake slaps Evelyn]
Jake: I said I want the truth!
Evelyn: She’s my sister…
[slap]
Evelyn: She’s my daughter…
[slap]
Evelyn: My sister, my daughter.
[More slaps]
Jake: I said I want the truth!
Evelyn: She’s my sister and my daughter!

…

Jake: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?

…

Jake: I want to know what you’re worth. Over ten million?
Noah Cross: Oh, my, yes.
Jake: Then why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can’t already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes. The future!

…

Noah Cross: Now where’s the girl? I want the only daughter I have left…as you found out, Evelyn was lost to me a long time ago.
Jake [sarcastically]: Who do you blame for that? Her?
Noah Cross: I don’t blame myself. You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of anything.

…

Jake: Evelyn, put that gun away. Let the police handle this.
Evelyn: He owns the police!

…

Escobar [After Evelyn had just been killed]: Go home, Jake. I’m doing you a favor
Walsh: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Imagine: For years and years you have always had a moustache. And for years and years the folks around you have never seen you without one. One day on impulse you shave it off. You expect all manner of reactions from your friends, from colleagues and acquaintances. But especially from your family and your loved ones.

Instead they all react the same: what moustache? Sure, a few of them might not notice it. Some folks just don’t keep track of things like that. A full bread, yes. Or if you dyed your hair purple, probably. But “just a moustache”? Here though no one notices it.

At first, you’re thinking they’re all in on the same joke. They’re just conspiring to act as though nothing has changed. Nope. Still, it is one thing for them not to notice that it is gone, another thing altogether to insist it was never even there in the first place.

But the moustache is only the beginning. What else is there about your life that may not be at all as you imagine it to be.

Increasingly you become more and more paranoid about what is and what is not real. As well you should. Aren’t we talking about your very sanity here?

And just how many mental, emotional and psychological levels can we entertain here in order to explain the “meaning” of the film. Lots and lots of them apparently:

offscreen.com/index.php/page … moustache/

Or maybe it is not really your own sanity at all that is in question…but the sanity of others. Your wife, for instance. Who to believe…and about what?

And what of that surreal sequence in Hong Kong…the small village in China? What a jolt to the narrative that is. How in the world do all of the pieces fit together here. Or maybe that is the point. They fit together from a point of view. More or less sane.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Moustache
trailer: youtu.be/DfURXKUwbFA

LA MOUSTACHE [2005]
Written in part and directed by Emmanuel Carrère

[b]Marc: Are you asleep?
Agnes: No.
Marc: What are you thinking about?
Agnes: Your moustache, of course.
[long pause]
Agnes: You know, in the car earlier, I thought if you carried on, I’d really get scared. I got scared.
Marc: You carried on.
Agnes: Please stop it. It scares me.
Marc: So don’t start again.
Agnes: You’re the one starting again. Stop it!
Marc: It doesn’t matter. I’ve shaved it off, but it can grow back.
Agnes [bolting out of bed]: Why are you doing this?! You know you’ve never had a moustache!!

…

Marc: You just called my parents to cancel lunch?
Agnes: Your mother, yes.
Marc: Okay, you spoke to my mother, but we were having lunch at at my parents’?
[long pause]
Agnes: Your father’s dead, Marc. Your father died last year.

…

Marc: Agnes, you aren’t going to vanish? Not you.[/b]

Next thing you know he is on the bed curled up in the fetal position.

Marc: My key.
“Hotel” clerk: The lady.
Marc: The lady?
“Hotel” clerk: Yes sir. Your wife.

Yes, her. And she is acting rather, well, strange. Another jolt to reality. This one, anyway.

[b]Marc: You’ll come back?
Agnes: Of course.
Marc: Wait. I’ll come with you.

…

Agnes: I almost thought you’d shaved your moustache off earlier. I’d like to see you without it one day.[/b]

So off it comes.

Agnes: I see you’ve done it.

[iambiguous]

She wakes up on Christmas morning. And there’s her boyfriend James lying on the floor next to her. Dead. A suicide.

Noted. Now it’s time to get on with her life.

You know it goes deeper than this. But you are not privy to that part. He no longer wanted to live. And so he stopped. Their relationship then can only be imagined. The whole sequence is eerie, ineffable, out of focus. Day after day she comes and goes. Day after day she leaves the corpse sprawled out on the floor in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.

You have no idea how to react because there is simply too much you can only guess at. But he’s dead and she’s not.

The boyfriend was a writer. A good one. He leaves her the novel he had written and instructions on what publishers to send it to. She does what he asks. Only she affixes her own name as the author. The book gets published. The publishers send her a check for a lot of money. Meanwhile, not only did she not write the book, she hasn’t even read it!

As for her relationship with with Lanna, your guess is as good as mine. Why? Because nothing is more exasperating than watching a film from Scotland in which there are no English subtitles. They may speak English there, sure, but try following it without subtitles. But you get the gist of it. Especially the part where it crumbles.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morvern_Callar_(film
trailer: youtu.be/5gmbLGmjbpg

MORVERN CALLAR [2002]
Written in part and directedby Lynne Ramsay

[b]Morvern [looking at the computer screen]: READ ME

[she clicks on enter]

"Sorry Morvern,

Don’t try to understand, it just felt like the right thing to do. My novel is on the disk, print it out and send it to the first publisher on this list. If they will not take it, try the next one down. I wrote it for you.

I love you.

Be brave."

…

Lanna: Where are we going?
Morvern: Somewhere beautiful.

…

Lanna [to Morvern]: What do you want, a planet of your own?

…

Susan [publisher rep]: Do you have an agent? Someone on the business side we should talk to?
Morvern [taken aback]: Me. You can talk to me.
Publisher rep: What did you have in mind for an advance?
[Morvern just gawks at him]
Publisher rep: Well, should I just put something out then? Something in the region of 100?
[nothing from Morvern]
Publisher rep: Well, I’ll be direct. We love the novel. We don’t just jump on a plane and fly to Spain everytime an unsolicited manuscript comes through the door. But you are a first time writer and as such we are taking a risk. So you have to appreciate that.
[Morvern nods]
Susan: I can assure you that as a first time writer, a hundred thousand pounds is a really good deal.
[Movern is dumpstruck but tries not to show it]
Morvern: Can I go to the toilet?[/b]

She walks out of sight but her body language tells us all we need to know about how blown away she is by this offer. They could have told her 1,000 pounds and for all she knew that could have been a good offer!

[b]Publisher rep [to Morvern]: So, are you working on any more new material?
Susan: Just give us a few hints. What are you working on next? What’s your next book about?
Morvern: I work in a supermarket.
[the reps burst into laughter]
Publisher rep #1: So, Morvern, you really do work in a supermarket?

…

Morvern: Fuck work Lanna, we can go anywhere you like.
Lanna: I’m happy here.
Morvern: Are ya?
Lanna: Yeah, everyone I know is here. There’s nothing wrong with here. It’s the same crapness everywhere, so stop dreaming.[/b]

So Movern leaves town [with that big check] without her.

[iambiguous]

You’re blind. Since birth. And you have a meddling, overprotective mom. So, really, what are your options?

Moving to San Francisco and settling into your own apartment? How likely is that?

But they have an agreement. He can try – try to make it on his own. For two months. She stays away. If he can’t hack it though, it’s back home. For the remainder of his life. Or at least until Mom kicks the bucket. At first though he had Linda. Then Linda left him for someone else.

Meanwhile, Goldie Hawn moves in next door. A young and “free spirited” wannabe actor in a San Francisco that is still smack dab in the middle of “the Sixties”. She spends most of her time prancing about Don’s apartment in her underwear. Being an “ex-hippie” and all.

Still, she’s in his apartment for the longest time and doesn’t even realize that he is blind. He has to tell her.

We see this one coming a mile away. At least until Don meets Ralph. And, then, just for a second…

But being blind since birth? How different is that really from once having been able to see? That’s something I have found myself mulling over from time to time. After all, if you are born blind that’s all you know. And from the cradle to the grave. But what must it be like to never know what to means to see? For some, it’s back to the distinction Woody Allen makes:

I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories. The horrible are like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s very lucky, to be miserable.

That’s not how Don thinks about it though:

I was born blind. I never had to adjust. It’s be different if I’d been able to see and then went blind, but for me, blindness is normal.

Of course there are [apparently] things worse than being blind. Being “emotionally crippled” for example.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterflies_Are_Free
trailer: tcm.com/mediaroom/video/2481 … iler-.html

BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE [1972]
Directed by Milton Katselas

[b]Jill [to Don]: I don’t have anything, but it manages to wind up all over the place.

…

Jill: I was married once when I was 16.
Don: Sixteen?! How long were you married?
Jill [remembering back glumly]: It seemed like weeks…

…

Jill: Wow, I thought I was sloppy!
Don: What do you mean?
Jill: Well, unless you know something I don’t. Like, ashes are good for the table. Is that why you keep dropping them on there?
Don: Have you moved the ashtray?
Jill: It’s right here, what’re ya blind?
Don: Yes.
Jill: What do you mean, yes?
Don: I mean, yes, I’m blind.

…

Don [about being blind]: Wait. Don’t get self-conscious about it. I’m not.
Jill: Why didn’t you tell me?
Don: I just did.
Jill: I mean when I came in.
Don: You didn’t ask.
Jill: Well, why would I ask you? I don’t walk into somebody’s house, saying: “Hi, I’m Jill Tanner, are you blind?”

…

Jill: I’m auditioning for a part in a new play with a little theatre group called The Cosmic Workshop. It’s about this girl who gets all hung up when she marries a homosexual. Originally he was an alcoholic, but homosexuals are very in now in movies and books and plays, so they changed it.
[pause]
Jill: Are you homosexual?
Don: No, just blind.

…

Jill: Boy, were you right!
Don: About what?
Jill: Your mom. She never had syphilis. I’m surprised she had you.

…

Mrs. Baker: And what is that on your head?!
Don [wearing the hat he bought with Jill]: French foreign legion cap.
Mrs. Baker: Oh, have you enlisted?
Don: No, I was drafted.

…

Mrs. Baker [interrogating Jill about being divorced]: How long were you married?
Jill: Six days.
Mrs. Baker: And on the seventh day you rested?

…

Mrs. Baker [Jill says she has to go to an audition]: Then you’re an actress?
Jill: Well, yeah.
Mrs. Baker: Might I have seen you in anything, besides your underwear?
Jill: Um, not unless you went to Beverly Hills High School. I was in The Mikado. I played Yum-Yum.
Mrs. Baker [smickering]: Yes, I’m sure you did.

…

Mrs. Baker [trying to make Don come home]: If you insist on staying here, I will not support you.
[Don goes to the phone]
Mrs. Baker: What’re you doing?
Don: Calling The Chronicle. What a story! ‘Florence Baker Refuses to Help the Handicapped!’
Mrs. Baker: Donnie, I’m serious.
Don: Oh, well, then I’ll call the New York Times.
Mrs. Baker: What are you going to do for money? The little you saved must be gone now.
Don: I can always walk along the streets with a tin cup.
Mrs. Baker: Now you’re embarrassing me.
Don: Oh, no, I’ll keep away from Saks.

…

Mrs. Baker [to Jill]: You’ve seen Donnie at his best in that place that he’s memorized. He’s memorized how many steps to the drugstore, to the delicatessen. And you were probably very impressed by that. But I’ve seen him in strange surroundings. He didn’t know I was watching him. I’ve seen him lost. I’ve seen him panic. He needs someone who will stay with him. And not just for six days.

…

Jill [to Mrs. Baker]: It was Linda Fletcher, not you, who gave him what he needed most…confidence in himself. You’re always dwelling on the negative. Always what he needs, never what he wants. Always what he can’t do, never what he can. What about his music? Have you heard the songs he wrote? I’ll bet you didn’t even know he could write songs. Well, you might be dead right about me. I’m not the ideal girl for Don. But I know one thing: neither are you! And if I’m going to tell anybody to go home, it’s gonna be you, Mrs. Baker! You go home!

…

Jill [talking about auditioning for the play naked]: I don’t think anyone could call me a prude.
Mrs. Baker [mock outrage]: I’d like to see them try!
Jill: Well, at first I hated the idea of getting completely undressed, but there were, like, twenty or thirty actors all around me, all naked, and I was the only one with clothes on! How would you feel?
Mrs. Baker: Warm. All over.

…

Mrs. Baker [talking about Ralph’s play]: I do not intend to pay money to see nudity, obscenity and degeneracy.
Ralph: Mrs. Baker, these things are all a part of life.
Mrs. Baker: I know, Mr. Santori. So is diarrhea…but I wouldn’t classify it as entertainment.

…

Don [when Jill says she’s moving in with Ralph]: Tell me, Jill, with Ralph, is it like the Fourth of July and like Christmas?
Jill: Not exactly. He has a kind of…strength. With him it’s more like Labor Day.

…

Don: You wouldn’t feel a thing about walking out on Ralph or Sebastian or Irving. Well hate me! Or love me! But don’t leave because I’m blind…and don’t stay because I’m blind!
Jill: Who are Sebastion and Irving?[/b]

[iambiguous]

The wrong place at the wrong time. Or, if you’re the thugs, the right place at the right time. That is until they find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or, if you hate thugs, the right place at the right time.

Back from the dead and he winds up where he does by pure chance. With folks who can only afford to live in shipping containers. But kind Christian folks. Folks more intent on helping him than beating him senseless. A beating that takes his very identity away from him.

Characters with amnesia are often an interesting lot. If only because you’re always wondering if, sooner or later, one way or the other, their memory will come back. Then what? But [for now] the man [M.] is more intent on becoming entangled in a new point of view [a new life]. The past and the present may or may not cleave. God knows.

And then there is Irma. Irma and the Salvation Army. Very strange people in a very strange world. Just as ours would be to them.

I try to imagine bumping into folks like this and exchanging points of view. But I soon abandon it. They are fixed and I am ironic.

So, is the film laughing with them or at them? Simple folks with simple lives? Or uncomplicated folks with uncomplicated lives? In some respects it’s the theatre of the absurd. Very dry. Very droll.

Garnered a 98% fresh rating at RT: 91 fresh, 2 rotten. Rotten? What’s not to like?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Without_a_Past
trailer: youtu.be/3srBsylmHW4

THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST [Mies Vailla Menneisyyttä] 2002
Written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki

[b]Nieminen: You’ve got a workman’s hands. You must have used these hands; you don’t look like an educated man.
M: Thank you.
Nieminen: You’re welcome.

…

Antila: A month’s rent, in advance.
M: Tomorrow, God willing.
Antila: God moves in mysterious ways. If you don’t pay up I’ll send my killer dog to bite your nose off.

…

M: What do I owe you?
Electrician: If you ever find me face down in the gutter, turn me around to my back.

…

Irma [to colleague]: There’s a wretched man out there. I think we should help him.

…

Anttila: I’ll be in Tallinn for a week. The dog stays here, watching you. He only eats raw meat. - M: I’ll take care of him.
Anttila: He takes care of himself. Don’t try to pet him or you’ve thrown your last dart.
M: Does he have a name?
Antila: Hannibal.

…

M: Can I borrow your car for Saturday night?
Anttila: I’ve never lent any one anything in my life. Twenty per hour, plus petrol.
M: Greed is a mortal sin.
Anttila: I run a business. The State protects business. The State does not sin. Reservation fee is fifty.

…

M: I went to the moon yesterday.
Irma: I see. How was it?
M: Peaceful.
Irma: Meet anyone?
M: Not really; it was a Sunday.

…

Anttila: Tickets.
M: What do you mean?
Anttila: You haven’t paid.
M: But I organized this.
Anttila: That’s what you think.

…

M [locked in the bank vault after a robbery]: We’re running out of oxygen.
Teller: The air conditioning was cut off for financial reasons.
M: Luckily the police will come immediately after the alarm.
Teller: What alarm?
M: So we’ll die here.
Teller: We can always just breathe out.

…

Police: We’ve discovered your identity. We leaked your photo to the press and your wife contacted us today.
M: My wife…
Police: Yes. Your name is Jaakko Antero Lujanen. Does it sound familiar?
M: Are you sure?
Police: Yes. You are a metal worker from Nurmes.

…

Irma: If you do have a wife…somewhere out there…you must return home.
M: I don’t want to.

…

Irma [at the train station]: I made you sandwiches. Your home is so far away.
M: You won’t forget…
Irma: The child of sorrow? How could I? You were my first love. [/b]

[iambiguous]

The gang’s all here. And, sure, some of them were famous only for being famous. Even back then. Though that was more or less just catching on. Most of them were famous because they were actually accomplished at something: acting, painting, writing, composing.

Not many philosophers showed up though. Unless you counted the literati.

Nowadays of course being famous “just for being famous” is rather routine. Someone like that comes along practically everyday. Or they are famous basically for being “pop” artists. To each his or her own, of course, but, hey, come on…accomplished artists?

Warhol on the other hand seemed to explore/expose/entertain art [and fame] more…ironically: “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”

Well, aside from what we put there. The, uh, intelligentsia.

What is remarkable about Warhol is the existential gap that existed between the unremarkable life he lived as a child and the truly remarkable life he lived as an adult. As daseins go it was quite extraordinary. Sickly and introverted as a child he imploded into his own little world. Of drawing and art and illustrating. And let’s not forget he came into his own as a commercial artists. A fashion illustrator bringing to life all of the fashion accouterments of the beautiful people. Though it is said he always approached this as just a path into the world of “fine art”.

But, let’s face it, it is not just a coincidence that “commercial art” burst onto the scene at a time when, increasingly, commercials/advertisments themselves were exploding into “mass consciousness”. They were everywhere in a world where the media [and television especially] became the dominant distraction.

And the general consensus among those who knew Warhol best was that, above all else, he loved money. That and [apparently] all the jewelry it could buy.

Which makes you wonder: How much was he paid for his appearance on The Love Boat?

no wiki article [that I could find]
excerpt: freakpowertix.buzznet.com/user/v … ife-times/

SUPERSTAR: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ANDY WARHOL [1990]
Written and directed by Chuck Workman

Interviewer: I’d like to talk some more about the paintings and the things you did earlier because I think there is something that needs to be explained for the public which has a certain impression of you and I’m not sure it is the one that you would want them to have…although I don’t think that it matters much to you. Is that true?
Warhol [seemingly bewildered]: What?
Interviewer: Does it matter to you that people feel one way or the other about you? You have a kind of reputation now that is a little bit apart from what you really are, I think. Does it matter to you that they feel one way rather than another about you?
Warhol [deadpan]: I don’t really understand…what do you mean?

Warhol the ironist.

[b]Interviewer [with Warhol standing in front of his Brillo pad illustrations]: Are you just interested in finding something pretty easy to do and then just submitting it?
Warhol: Uh, yes.

…

Ultra Violet: We wasted a lot of time, I’m embarrassed to say. That’s my only regret about the '60s - the time wasted.

…

Ultra Violet: We would arrive at The Factory around 11 o’clock in the morning. We would look through all of the newspapers and magazines and see if we were in them. If we were not in them the day was lost, we were depressed. And if we were not in them we would call the media and orgainize an interview or a lttle scene or something. We wanted attention. Fame was the cosmic glue of The Factory.

…

Interviewer: Andy, do you think that pop art has reached the point where it is becoming repititious now?
Warhol: Uh, yes.
Interviewer: Do you think it should break away from being pop art?
Warhol: Uh, no.
Interviewer: Are you just going to carry on?
Warhol: Uh, yes.

…

Tom Wolfe: Prior to the pop art world of Andy Warhol, the reigning attitude in the world of art was that of the abstract expressionists. And the idea was that America was a benighted, crassly commercialized, rather horrible place and the artist could only turn his back and avert his eyes as best he could…Warhol came along as a slightly younger generation and his idea was, “Oh, it’s so horrible, I Iove it”.

…

Hilton Kramer [former New York Times art critic]: He treated it all as a game and the name of the game was success. The statement that Warhol was making in his work goes something like, “ha, ha, ha”.

…

Broadcaster: When asked to defend himself against his critics, Warhol replied, “Oh, I can’t because they’re right.”[/b]

Next up: the history of Campbell Soup can designs. No, really, the actual history of it.

[b]Broadcaster: One of the most publicized of the films is “Sleep” by Andy Warhol. Six and a half hours of a man sleeping.
Interviewer: Why is it that you are making these films?
Warhol: It’s just easier to do…it’s easier to do then…mm…painting, The camera has a motor. You just tun it on and walk away. It makes the film all by itself.

…

Fran Lebowitz: Andy was one of the primary inventors of the affect that the media has now. People don’t remember but there used to be many less celebrities back then…there were a few celebrities but now celebrities constitute a real segment of the population. And I think that Andy was largely…not solely…but largely responsible for that. Andy made fame more famous.

…

Tom Wolfe: The attitude that they talk about in downtown New York, in Soho, all the young artists talk about is the Warhol attitude. The Warhol legacy. And the attitude is that you can have your cake and eat it too. You can wallow in all the marvelous excesses of the American life and at the same time be superior to it. You are mocking it at the same time that you are indulging it.[/b]

[iambiguous]

In which the question, “what shit are you willing to put up around a genius?” is groped at. And then grappled with. But never quite pinned down

The genius after all is often portrayed in art as a difficult person to be around. And precisely because the qualiites that make him a genius [and it’s almost always a him] are the qualities that make him difficult to be around. No still waters here. He seems to run “deep” regarding all aspects of his life. Just ask him. Oh, and ask him how great he is. Anyway, since we are lucky enough to be around genius at all then, hey, cut him some fucking slack!

So it then comes down to this: where the rest of us are willing to draw the line. But that can often depend entirely on what we get out of his genius. For example, does it make any money for us? Or does he fulfill us emotionally? sexually? Does he have a provocative, stimulating mind?

Then you measure that against all the times you feel like strangling the son of a bitch. But since that often varies considerably from day to day it’s no easy task to finally make up your mind.

And did I mention that, in any event, this is done tongue in cheek? Not that underneath it all there aren’t some bitter lessons to be learned about life and love.

IMDb

[b]Rosie O’Donnell was offered the role of Hattie. She turned it down due to her disdain for Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi Previn.

Samantha Morton received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and she has no spoken lines at all.[/b]

Rosie O’Donnel as Hattie? Nope, I can’t even imagine it. And Samantha Morton also played the charater Morvern Callar above. Can she act or what?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_and_Lowdown
trailer: youtu.be/x1X7hfx9BT0

SWEET AND LOWDOWN [1999]
Written and directed by Woody Allen

Woody Allen: Why Emmet Ray? Because he was interesting. To me, Emmet Ray was a fascinating character. I was a huge fan of his when I was younger. I thought he was an absolutely great guitar player…and he was funny. You know, or…if funny’s the wrong word, then sort of pathetic in a way. He was flamboyant and he was, you know…boorish and obnoxious.

A boorish and obnoxious genius.

[b]Ben Duncan [DJ]: Well, the problem is that there’s just so little known about him. But we do know that he was a great guitar player. I’d say he was probably the second greatest guitar player in the world. Django Reinhardt was the best… and believe me, Emmet idolized Django. He was in awe of him.

…

Emmet: I can’t settle down, Ann.
Ann: We don’t have to marry.
Emmet: I gotta be free. I’m an artist.
Ann: I thought you liked me.
Emmet: We have fun. I took you to the dump. I let you shoot my gun at some rats.
Ann: Shootin’ rats at the dump is not my idea of a good time.
Emmet: Why not? We brought sandwiches.
Ann: And sittin’ at the railroads watchin’ trains, that’s pretty strange too.
Emmet: See? That’s what I mean. What I like to do, what you like to do, ain’t the same thing.
Ann: That’s not it, Emmet. It’s that you keep your feelings locked up…and you can’t feel nothin’ for anybody else.
Emmet: You say that like it’s a bad thing.

…

Emmet [to Hattie who is mute]: Do you know how to write? Did you go to school? What is that? Is that a yes or a no? You’re a hard-luck case. You an orphan? You don’t know? Oh, this is great. This is great. I get a goddamn mute orphan half-wit here.

…

Emmet [aloud to himself]: Where the hell am I? Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania? I take one puff in New Jersey, I end up in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania?!

…

Emmet [to Hattie who is struggling to replace a tire on the car]: What’s the matter? Nobody said it was going to be a picnic. You know I can’t risk my hands.

…

Manager: Emmet, we gotta look for places to cut down.
Emmet: I burned a hundred dollars once. A guy dared me. He was a floor-flusher. He burned a fifty, I burned a hundred. He burned a twenty, I burned another hundred. I could cut that out.

…

Emmet: Are you gonna squeal on me?
Blanche: “Squeal” on you? “Squeal” on you? No, Gosh. Not only are you vain and egotistical but you have genuine crudeness.

…

Blanche: I won’t squeal on you if you take me for a drive in that sublime automobile of yours.
Emmet: Drive. Where?
Blanche: Where? To the ends of the earth. Astonish me.[/b]

Guess where he takes her!

[b]Blanche: What do you think of when you play? What goes through your mind?
Emmet: Yeah, that I’m underpaid. I think about that sometimes.

…

Blanche [to Emmet after she shoots the rat]: Do you get a bigger kick doing this, or stealing small objects?

…

Blanche [voiceover]: After-hours jam session. Chicago South Side. He’s like a cat…a feline with the guitar, which is his only, certainly deepest love. No, his only. The sound…the beat, the ideas…where do they come from? Any woman would be second to his music. He wouldn’t miss me any more than the woman he abruptly left. He could only feel pain for his music.[/b]

A genius in other words.

Woody Allen: And then he just, you know, seemed to fade away. I mean, I have no idea. Some people said he went to Europe. And some people feel that he may have stopped playing altogether. But we do have, fortunately, those last recordings he made. And they’re great. They’re absolutely beautiful.

[iambiguous]

Jolting along between the past and the present the whole point is in connecting the dots between them. Adam before and Adam today. And how this relationship plays itself out when he becomes newly entangled in the lives of Les and Ella. What do we really know about the folks who [fortuitously] become a part of our world? Other than in what they choose to tell us.

We roll the dice. It’s only a question of how self-conscious we allow ourselves to become of this when they get in deeper and deeper.

First up: A dead [nearly naked] body floating in the river. And Adam’s unsettling reaction to it.

Provincial lives. What else is there but to make them a bit less so. Sex has always worked here. And given this particular context was there ever any question of that? Only the consequences left to poke about.

And one of them is almost always this: what was once new, gets old. That and the [almost inevitable] pregnancy.

All the more grim when you dream of being someone you simply do not have the talent to be.

But does an innocent man then have to die because of his own failings? It would seem so. And that he makes any effort at all here is surprising enough.

IMDb

This was the first film which Ewan McGregor did not take his family along for the shoot.

See if you can spot the reason why.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Adam_(film
trailer: youtu.be/V4LexLpsGxQ

YOUNG ADAM [2003]
Written in part and directed by David Mackenzie

[b]Les: I think she fell in water.
Joe: So how do you explain she was half naked?
Les: Maybe she was drunk. Maybe she wandered onto a boat or something.
Joe: Maybe she was pregnant.

…

Les: So what do you think, Joe?
Joe: I think she went to a bridge fully dressed and stood there breathing the warm night air. And she took off her jacket and folded it neatly on the ground. And then she unbuttoned her blouse and undid her brassiere and let it drop down on top of the other clothes. And she’d unbutton her skirt and let it slip down over her hips. And then she’d unroll her stockings and hold them out so that they blew in the breeze like penance before she let them float off into the night. And she’d shiver and ask herself if she really wanted to go through with this, and she’d answer that question by kicking her clothes into the river. And hurriedly now she’d take off her garter and her knickers. And there’d she be, standing in her petticoat, thinking about whatever it was that brought her to this. And then with her petticoat billowing around her she’d drop into the water like a rose, float there for a moment, and be gone.
Les: What kind of woman would do that?
Joe: Just an ordinary woman.

…

Joe [after having sex with Ella]: Are you sorry?
Ella: Fat lot of good that would do me.

…

Cathie [to Joe]: Nothing’s really changed. Except us.

…

Cathie: I am pregnant. It’s yours. Two months has gone.
Joe: Two months ago you wanted me out of your life.
Cathie: I just thought you should know. You could marry me and we’ll make wonderful babies together.
Joe: Kids is not exactly us, is it?
Cathie: Why not, Joe? What are you afraid of?
Joe: There’s a kid on the barge and I spend almost every moment wanting to kick him over the side.
Cathie: You don’t have to be like that. We can work it out intelligently.
Joe: It’s not about us. It’s about what kids do to people. Cathie, I am not someone you want to marry and you know that.

…

Joe: I’m sorry, Les. It just happened. There’s nothing personal against you.
Les: I should just kick your fucking head in.
Joe: I won’t fight you, Les. Hit me if you think it’ll make you feel better.
Les: What about my son? What do you think happens to my son when you are fucking my wife?
Joe: It wasn’t like that.
Les: Like what, Joe? Tell me what it was like.

…

Joe [reading about Dan in the paper]: Poor bastard.
Ella: How? He killed an innocent woman.
Joe: He didn’t do it.
Ella: What makes you say that?
Joe: It was an accident.
Ella: How do you know that?
Joe: I know.

…

Les [after Joe tosses his typewriter into the river]: What’d you do that for?
Joe: I had no use for it.
Les: Must be worth something, though.
Joe: Not to me.[/b]

[iambiguous]

This film is based on “actual events”. But with one very, very, very big difference:

Inspired by a true story, that of Jean-Claude Romand. In reality, Romand went on to kill, on January 9, 1993, his wife, two children and both his parents.

Romand at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Romand

This sort of thing pops up in the news from time to time. Someone loses his job and is simply unable to own up to it. Not to his family and friends. For example, there have been accounts of men who turned to crime [like robbing banks] while pretending to go to work from day to day. Meanwhile no one around him suspects a thing. That is until the whole contraption begins to collapse all around them.

And [eventually] they all do. And we know this. Lie upon lie upon lie upon lie. How long can it be sustained? Lies about leaving the old job. Lies about starting the new job. And then the Ponzi scheme to bilk folks out of their money. The hole getting deeper and deeper and deeper. It’s just a matter of how effectively the film maker is able to draw us into their lives. And how excruciating it becomes as the cracks keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. A lot will depend on the extent to which we hold the protagonist responsible for the hole he is in. Imagine all the folks who lost their jobs when crony capitalism nearly collapsed a few years back. They were basically just so many spokes in the wheel.

But his guy creates a whole new wheel. And the wheel only exists in his head. You see, he is counting [as they all do] on the greed of others to keep the wheel moving on down the road. The “deal” isn’t strictly legit. And it is predicated in turn on the lie that his new “job” involves working for the UN.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Out_(2001_film
trailer: youtu.be/rFV6nRMDkSs

TIME OUT [L’Emploi Du Temps] 2001
Written in part and directed by Laurent Cantet

[b]Vincent [on one level confessing to his wife]: Things aren’t going the way I had hoped. I knew it would take time to adapt. I didn’t think it would be this hard.
Muriel: You only started a few weeks ago.
Vincent: I get along well with my colleagues. Easy to talk to. Good atmosphere. But still perverse. That makes lying easy, telling myself that everything is fine. That’s a lie. I’m afraid I’ll disappoint.
Muriel [confused]: Afraid of what?
Vincent: Afraid I’ll disappoint. Afraid I won’t make the grade.
Muriel: You’ve had worries like this before, but you always pull through.
Vincent: I can’t handle anything right now. I’m just going along. Sometimes I just don’t know what I am supposed to do. Nor what’s expected of me. So I start to panic. A simple phone call becomes overwhelming. I go from meeting to meeting. No time to sum things up or take a step back. I can’t think anymore. My mind is blank. I look around me, at the people I work with. I only see totally unknown faces. Like moments of absence…

…

Jean-Michel [who is on to Vincent’s scam]: Let’s start with what is true in your story. Anything? You aren’t working in Switzerland?
Vincent: I’ve been out of work for about 3 months. My wife doesn’t know. None of my family knows.
Jean-Michel: What about the money your friends give you? You can’t really think that your story can last? One day your friends will want their money. Six months, maybe a year. What will you do then?
Vincent: I know it won’t last. I know…I’m just buying time. For now…
Jean-Michel: You’re out of your mind. Aside from the ones I’ve seen, how many have you convinced?
Vincent: It’s getting up there. I’ve been in touch with a dozen people.
Jean-Michel: All friends of yours?
Vincent: More or less.
Jean-Michel: So what to do now?[/b]

That’s when he introduces Vincent to his own [illegal] scam: smuggling goods on the black-market.

[b]Vincent: What’s wrong?
Julien [his son]: You know what’s wrong. You bullshit us!
Vincent: What’s wrong? Just tell me. What’s different? Didn’t I take care of you all? What did you think? It’s not that easy.
[he hugs him]
Vincent: So you think I’m a bastard? But nothing changed for you. I did that so that you could live like nothing happened. I could have run off. You know that? I could have run off.

…

Vincent [to his family]: I’m so tired. None of you know how tired I am.[/b]

In the end though he comes back full circle. But at least he had that option.

[iambiguous]

The Wicker Man. Not to be confused with that other one. The 2006 remake with Nicolas Cage. As though anyone would or could confuse them. What’s the difference? Well, among other things, the original 1973 movie [this one] garnered a 90% favorable rating at RT [on 48 reviews]. The 2006 remake garnered a 15% favorable rating [on 105 reviews].

Strange island, strange people. Strange people, strange religion. And when a young girl is reported missing from the island a policeman is sent to investigate. One Sergeant Howie then stumbles upon a religious rendition not at all in sync with his own more traditional upbringing. Considerably more carnal for instance. What some might even call debauched. But then human sexuality has always had a rather problematic presence among the faithful.

These folks [it seems] are pagans:

Miss Rose: Here, we do not use the word dead. We believe that when the human life is over, the soul returns to trees, to air, to fire, to water, to animals, so that Rowan Morrison has simply returned to the life forces in another form.

So the young girl is not really “missing” at all…is she? She has merely been “reincarnated” into another life form. Unless of course she is just…bait.

Could this then be about the absurdity of all religious belief? Hundreds of them out there…and each one convinced that only their own tall-tale reflects the one true path to salvation?

And is not another “May Day” just around the corner? Perhaps Maia can apprise us of what to expect.

IMDb

[b]The film was inspired by an engraving called “The Wicker Image” in Britannia Antiqua Illustrata by Aylett Sammes in 1676. Some people have doubted the historical existence of the Wicker Man suggesting that it came from Roman propaganda by people such as Julius Caesar. There is, however, undeniable evidence that the Druids and the Celts practiced human sacrifice.

According to Britt Ekland, some animals may have actually perished inside the burning Wicker Man. However, according to director Robin Hardy, the animals were not inside the Wicker Man when it was set alight (this scene was faked) and great care was taken that they were not in danger of being hurt.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wicker_Man_(1973_film
FAQ at MDb: imdb.com/title/tt0070917/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
trailer: youtu.be/Mx1oU1IiZ3k

THE WICKER MAN [1973]
Directed by Robin Hardy

[b]Miss Rose [a teacher to a class of young girls]: Now, uh, Daisy, will you tell us what it is, please, that the maypole represents? Really, Daisy. You’ve been told often enough.
Student: Miss Rose, I know!
Miss Rose: All right, then, anybody.
Student: The phallic symbol.
Miss Rose: The phallic symbol. That is correct. It is the image of the penis, which is venerated in religions such as ours, as symbolising the generative force in nature.

…

Sergeant Howie: Miss Rose, you can be quite sure that I shall report this to the proper authorities. Everywhere I go on this island, it seems to me I find degeneracy. And there is brawling in bars, there is indecency in public places, and there is corruption of the young, and now I see it all stems from here – it stems from the filth taught here in this very schoolroom!

…

Sergeant Howie: The children never learn anything of Christianity?
Miss Rose: Only as a comparative religion. The children find it far easier to picture reincarnation than resurrection. Those rotting bodies are a great stumbling block for the childish imagination.

…

Miss Rose: The building attached to the ground in which Rowan’s body lies is no longer used for Christian worship, so whether it is still a churchyard is debatable.

…

May Morrison: Can I do anything for you, Sergeant?
Sergeant Howie: No, I doubt it, seeing as you are all raving mad!

…

[outside, several young girls are dancing naked over a fire]
Lord Summerisle: Good afternoon, Sergeant Howie. I trust the sight of the regenerative young people refreshes you.
Sergeant Howie: No sir, it does NOT refresh me.

…

Sergeant Howie: Your lordship seems strangely… unconcerned.
Lord Summerisle: Well I’m confident your suspicions are wrong, Sergeant. We don’t commit murder here. We’re a deeply religious people.
Sergeant Howie: Religious? With ruined churches, no ministers, no priests… and children dancing naked!
Lord Summerisle: They do love their divinity lessons.
Sergeant Howie [outraged]: But they are…are naked!
Lord Summerisle: Naturally! It’s much too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on!
Sergeant Howie: What religion can they possibly be learning jumping over bonfires?
Lord Summerisle: Parthenogenesis.
Sergeant Howie: What?
Lord Summerisle: Literally, as Miss Rose would doubtless say in her assiduous way, reproduction without sexual union.
Sergeant Howie: Oh, what is all this? I mean, you’ve got fake biology, fake religion…Sir, have these children never heard of Jesus?
Lord Summerisle: Himself the son of a virgin, impregnated, I believe, by a ghost…

…

Lord Summerisle: It’s most important that each new generation born on Summerisle be made aware that here the old gods aren’t dead.
Sergeant Howie: And what of the TRUE God? Whose glory, churches and monasteries have been built on these islands for generations past? Now sir, what of him?
Lord Summerisle [matter of factly]: He’s dead. Can’t complain, he had his chance and, in modern parlance, blew it.

…

Lord Summerisle: What my grandfather had started out of expediency, my father continued out of…Love. He brought me up the same way - to reverence the music and the drama and rituals of the old gods. To love nature and to fear it, and to rely on it and to appease it where necessary. He brought me up…
Sergeant Howie: He brought you up to be a pagan!
Lord Summerisle: A heathen, conceivably, but not, I hope, an unenlightened one.
Sergeant Howie: Lord Summerisle, I am interested in one thing: the law. But I must remind you, sir, that despite everything you’ve said, you are the subject of a Christian country!

…

Lord Summerisle: What do you think could have happened to her?
Sergeant Howie: I think Rowan Morrison was murdered under circumstances of pagan barbarity, which I can scarcely bring myself to believe as taking place in the 20th century. Now, it is my intention tomorrow to return to the mainland and report my suspicions to the Chief Constable of the West Highland Constabulary. And I will demand a full inquiry takes place into the affairs of this heathen island.
Lord Summerisle: You must, of course, do as you see fit, Sergeant.

…

Sergeant Howie [reading from a book about “May Day festivals”]: “Primitive man lived and died by his harvest. The purpose of his spring ceremonies was to ensure a plentiful autumn. Relics of these fertility dramas are to be found all over Europe…In pagan times these dances were not simply picturesque jigs. They were frenzied rites ending in a sacrifice by which the dancers hoped desperately to win over the goddess of the fields. In good times, they offered produce to the gods and slaughtered animals, but in bad years, when the harvest had been poor, the sacrifice was a human being.”

…

May Morrison [to Sergeant Howie]: You’ll simply never understand the true nature of sacrifice.

…

Sergeant Howie [of the sacrifice]: What do you mean, “right kind of adult”?
Lord Summerisle: You, Sergeant, are the right kind of adult, as our painstaking researches have revealed. You, uniquely, were the one we needed.
Willow: A man who would come here of his own free will.
Librarian: A man who has come here with the power of a king. By representing the law…
Willow: A man who would come here as a virgin…
Librarian: A man who has come here as a fool!

…

Lord Summerisle: I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable or unhappy, all over the earth.

…

Sergeant Howie: I am a Christian, and as a Christian, I hope for resurrection. And even if you kill me now, it is I who will live again, not your damned apples.

…

Sergeant Howie: I believe in the life eternal, as promised to us by our Lord, Jesus Christ. I BELIEVE IN THE LIFE ETERNAL, AS PROMISED TO US BY OUR LORD, JESUS CHRIST
Lord Summerisle: That is good. For believing what you do, we confer upon you a rare gift, these days – a martyr’s death.

…

Sergeant Howie: Now, all of you, just wait and listen to me. And you can wrap it up any way you like. You are about to commit murder. Can you not see? There is no Sun god. There is no goddess of the fields. Your crops failed because your streams failed. Fruit is not meant to be grown on these islands. It’s against nature. Don’t you see that killing me is not going to bring back your apples?!

…

Sergeant Howie: Think! Think what you are doing! For the love of God, think what you are doing!

…

Sergeant Howie [upon seeing the Wicker Man for the first time]: O, God! O, Jesus Christ! O, my God! O, Christ!

…

Sergeant Howie [about to be consumed by the flames enveloping the Wicker Man]: Oh, God. I humbly entreat you for the soul of this, thy servant, Neil Howie who will today depart from this world. Do not deliver me into the enemy’s hands or put me out of mind forever. Let me not undergo the real pains of hell, dear God, because I die unshriven and establish me in that bliss which knows no ending, through Christ.[/b]

Well, both of them can’t be right. And then there is always the possibility that neither of them are.

[iambiguous]

Is she dead or alive? If dead, did he kill her?

In the beginning…

We see her swim to the shore. He stays out on the lake raft. We hear her being attacked on the shore. He swims to shore to investigate. She screams out his name. Then we see him being attacked.

Fade out. Fade in.

It is now eight years into the future. He is trying to rebuild his life. But he reads a newspaper account of two bodies being discovered at the lake where his wife was abducted. It’s all about to come flooding back. And then the emails begin arriving. There’s an attachment. A photograph of his wife. Or someone who looks like her. She appears to be about 8 years older. But there is a warning: TELL NO ONE. THEY ARE WATCHING.

Here we go.

What tales like this always remind us of is how someone who is clever enough [and motivated enough…and rich enough and powerful enough] can create a set of circumstances in which it is made to seem that you are implicated in all manner of nefarious behaviors. They can frame you for crimes that you did did commit. And I know this for a fact because some years ago it almost happened to me. It’s frightening how “reality” can be manipulated – either for or against you.

And in this day and age there are electronic devices that take manipulating reality to whole other levels. And how many of us have access to someone like Bruno? A gangster, in other words.

Other than that this is really basically “just a thriller”. Don’t expect any deep insights from the characters into the human condition. Other than the part about the gap between what people tell us is true and what is actually true instead. And how that can then get all tangled up when the past and the present become hopelessly mired in turn.

To wit: contingency, chance and change. That and endless plot twists. Right up to the very end in this one.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_No_One
FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0362225/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
trailer: youtu.be/MvvY1M8vjzI

TELL NO ONE [Ne le Dis à Personne] 2006
Written and directed by Guillaume Canet

[iambiguous]

Here you gotta throw away all the PC shit and simply go along for the ride. And you can scrap the social and political and economic contexts as well. And the gangbanging stuff. And the dope. And the violence and the crime. None of that is really relevant here. They all manage to at least get by.

You just gotta accept that in certain parts of the Big City there are communities of folks who have their own way of thinking and feeling about things. Their own way of doing things. Their own way of being poor or working class. Their own way of being ethnic.

In other words, their very own unique way of being smack dab in the middle of American pop culture. The culture of Youth. Kids again. But no where near as despicable. Next to Casper and Telly, Victor is practically a goddamn saint.

But mostly it is a journey into the emotional and psychological dynamics of one particular family in one particular community in one particular historical and cultural context. It may or may not have relevance for you because you may or may not have a clue regarding their world as it relates to your own. Some things overlap for all of us and some things just don’t.

The bit about God and religion, for example.

So, is Victor closer to the exception or to the rule? But then what do I know about that, right?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_Victor_Vargas
trailer: youtu.be/DPaqpjtIDTc

RAISING VICTOR VARGAS [2002]
Written and directed by Peter Sollett

[b]Victor [shouting out the window]: Harold, shut the fuck up, man!
Harold: Yo, what the fuck you doing over there? Yo, you’re in the wrong floor.
Victor: Oh, my God.
Harold: Are you up there with Donna?! Are you fucking her?!
Victor: Oh fuck!

…

Victor: Don’t push it. What you did wasn’t funny.
Vicki: Funny. Do you wanna talk about funny? Was it funny when you pissed on my shoes or tried to cut my hair? You know what? It don’t matter, because by the end of this week you won’t be able to step a foot outside without somebody laughing. You’ll always be known as Fat Donna’s man, and that shit will be funny.

…

Victor: Let me ask you a question. I saw you kissing on Juicy Judy yesterday. And I wanted to ask…Yo, nice work. What I’m saying, what’s your secret?
Carlos: She’s my sister, you asshole!

…

Judy: Okay, you’re my new man… but I’m warning you, don’t fuck with me! Go ahead, tell your little friends.

…

Melonie: Him? Him, Judy?
Judy: It’s not even a relationship. I needed to find a way to get the other boys off my back.
Melonie: You know he’s gonna think you guys are really together.
Judy: Look, just think of him as bug spray.

…

Melonie: You can’t tell anybody, okay?
Harold: Okay.
Melonie: I’m serious. Don’t tell Victor.
Harold: Why?
Melonie: Because me and Judy said that we had this thing.
Harold: What thing?
Melonie: That we didn’t need anybody else.
Harold: But she’s with Victor.
Melonie: That’s different.
Harold: How is that different?

…

Judy: You’re so easy to see through, it’s embarrassing.
Victor: You know, fuck you.

…

Social worker: Why are you here?
Grandma: This is my family, but I need help with this one. He do a lot of things wrong that I cannot accept it. And they told me this place. And I come in here to see what you can do for me. And for them, so…
Social worker: Has he committed a crime?
Grandma: No, he don’t do that.
Social worker: Has he stolen anything from someone in the home?
Grandma: That’s not the point. He’s not a criminal.
Social worker: Has he tried anything sexually?
Grandma: No! I says, no. Don’t go that far.
Social worker: What has he done that’s so bad?
Grandma: He’s a bad influences in the house. He show his brother very terrible ideas. Right here, right here in the head. I raised them with love, with manners. But this one is going the wrong way. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. He don’t have to be a criminal to throw out of the house.
Social worker: You realize you can’t just put him out?
Grandma: Why?
Social worker: You never heard of people going to jail for just throwing kids in the street? He can go to the cops. They’ll come and arrest you. Then all three of them could end up in foster care. Is that what you want?

…

Grandma: Tomorrow night Grandma is gonna make a good dinner. We’re going to join together and we’re gonna be a nice family again. We hope, okay? Go ahead, you’re the first one. You be next. Do the candle. You’re the next one, honey. Get some wishes. Pray to God. [/b]

See how easy it is?

[b]Judy [to Victor]: Do you remember when I told you that I had a man? I kind of made the whole thing up…so the boys won’t follow me around. You’re the closest I’ve ever been with a boy.

…

Victor [to Grandma]: Can I…can I have the key to the phone?[/b]

[iambiguous]

You can’t help but wonder at times about the potential for a gap between what most middle aged men will tell you about the sexual feelings they have for young girls and the feelings they really do have instead. Why the very thought of it [many will no doubt insist] fills them with revulsion. But then how many would be willing to take a lie detector test in order to confirm it?

And of course in a world where young girls are becoming increasingly more sexualized one suspects that only a small fraction of most men [of any age] would dare to take one.

Would you?

Not to leave out a same sex attraction of course.

Why is this? What are we to make of it with respect to the manner in which the human sexual libido will always be a profoundly problematic admixture of nature and nurture. Somehow all “civilized” people have to, well, “fit it into” the things that rational and enlightened citizens have been brought up to accept as the norm.

Things do get rather mixed up and messy at times though. Especially regarding those who are wont to put aside the conventions of the day. Those who are more inclined instead to make up their own rules. One in particular: if it feels good, do it.

Here though Lolita bumps into two such men. And they both can’t have her. And she knows well enough what they want. After all, she is rather precocious. And that can sometimes make all the difference in the world. A sophisticated innocence that some men find almost impossible to resist. She’s just a kid…but then there are the times when she’s not. That and the fact that she is drop dead gorgeous.

Still, I much preferred the way in which Quilty’s character was handled in the book. And his turn as the “shrink” was straight out of Dr. Strangelove. But then Nabokov [along with Kubrick] did write the screenplay.

So, imagine how many otherwise sane men [grown men] have allowed themselves “in reality” to sink down into this sort of misery. Love and lust. And then they find themselves having to compete in turn with all of the men [boys] “her own age”. Like Dick. The sheer banality of it all!

Oh well, it’s “just the way things are.”

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita_(1962_film
trailer: youtu.be/zRVqgvW8100

LOLITA [1962]
Directed by Stanley Kubrick

[b]Humbert: Quilty! Quilty?
Quilty: Ah, what? Who’s there?
Humbert: Are you Quilty.
Quilty: No, I’m…Spartacus. You come to free the slaves or sumpn?
Humbert: Are you Quilty?
Quilty: Yeah, yeah, I’m Quilty, yeah, sure

…

Humbert: Read this.
Quilty: What’s this, the deeds of the ranch?
Humbert: It’s your death sentence. Read it. Read it, Quilty.
Quilty: “Because you took advantage of a sinner. Because you took advantage…Because you took…Because you took advantage of my disadvantage. When I stood Adam-naked before a federal law and all its stinging stars. Because you took advantage, because you cheated me, because you took her at an age when young lads…”
Humbert: That’s enough!

…

Charlotte: What was the decisive factor? My garden?
Humbert: It was…I think it was your cherry pies.

…

Jean: Humbert, when you get to know me better, you’ll find I’m extremely broad-minded. In fact, John and I, we’re both broad-minded.

…

Quilty: Didn’t you have a daughter with a lovely name? Yeah, what was it now? A lovely, lyrical, lilting name like…
Charlotte: Lolita.
Quilty: Lolita, that’s right. Lolita, diminutive of Dolores…the tears and the roses.
Charlotte: Wednesday she’s going to have a cavity filled by your Uncle lvor.
Quilty: Yeah.

…

Humbert [writing in his journal]: What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet, of every nymphet perhaps, this mixture in my Lolita of tender, dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity. I know it is madness to keep this journal, but it gives me a strange thrill to do so.

…

Lolita: I guess I won’t be seeing you again.
Humbert: I shall be moving on. I must prepare for my work at Beardsley College in the fall.
Lolita: Then I guess this is goodbye.
Humbert: Yes.
Lolita: Don’t forget me.

…

Humbert [writing in his diary]: The wedding was a quiet affair and when called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover did I experience only bitterness and distaste? No, Mr. Humbert confesses to a certain titillation of his vanity…to some faint tenderness, even to a pattern of remorse daintily running along the steel of his conspiratorial dagger.

…

Charlotte: Do you believe in God?
Humbert: The question is does God believe in me?
Charlotte: I wouldn’t care if your maternal grandfather turned out to be a Turk. But if I ever found out that you didn’t believe in God I think I would commit suicide. [/b]

That’s when the gun makes an appearance. And then we know that he knows where this is going.

Humbert [voiceover]: No man can bring about the perfect murder. Chance, however, can do it. Just minutes ago she had said it wasn’t loaded. What if I had playfully pulled the trigger then?
[then imagining his explanation to the police]
Humbert: “She had said it wasn’t loaded…It belonged to the late Mr. Haze. She was having her morning tub. We had just finished talking about our plans for the future. I decided to play a practical joke and pretend I was a burglar. We were newlyweds and still did things like that to each other. As soon as it happened I called an ambulance, but it was too late…”

But he couldn’t go through with it. And so chance – honest to god fortuity – intervenes for him. She finds the diary…

[b]Humbert: You know, I’ve missed you terribly.
LoIlita: haven’t missed you. In fact, I’ve been revoltingly unfaithful to you. But it doesn’t matter a bit, because you’ve stopped caring anyway.
Humbert: What makes you say I’ve stopped caring for you?
Lolita: Well, you haven’t even kissed me yet, have you?

…

Lolita: Why don’t we play a game?
Humbert: A game?
Lokita: I learned some real good games in camp. One in particular was fun.
Humbert: Well, why don’t you describe this one in particular good game.
Lolita: Well, I played it with Charlie.
Humbert: Charlie? Who’s he?
Lolita: Charlie? He’s that guy that you met in the office.
Humbert: You mean that boy? You and he?
Lokita: Yeah. Are you sure you can’t guess what game I’m talking about?

…

Humbert [voiceover]: I cannot tell you the exact day when I first knew with utter certainty that a strange car was following us. Queer how I misinterpreted the designation of doom.

…

Lolita [in a letter]: “Dear Dad,
How’s everything? I have gone through much sadness and hardship. I’m married. I’m going to have a baby. I’m going nuts because we don’t have enough to pay our debts get out of here. Please send us a check…”[/b]

Out of the blue as it were.

[b]Humbert: Then this isn’t the man who took you from the hospital?
Lolita: No, of course not!
Humbert: Who is the man that I’m looking for?
Lolita: There’s no point in going into that. It’s all over.
Humbert: Lolita, I have to know.
Lolita: I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you.
Humbert: Lolita, I have a perfect right to know this.
Lolita: Crimeny! I should never have written to you.
Humbert: You wouldn’t have written if you hadn’t needed the money. Now, if you’re a sensible girl, and if you want what I’ve come to give you, you’ll tell me what I want to know.
[she considers it]
Lolita: Do you remember Dr. Zemph?
Humbert: Dr. Zemph?

…

Lolita: I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you that when you moved into our house my whole world didn’t revolve around you. I’d had a crush on him ever since the times that he used to come and visit Mother. He wasn’t like you and me. He wasn’t a normal person. He was a genius. He had a kind of, uh, beautiful Japanese oriental philosophy of life.

…

Lolita [trying to console Humbert]: I’m really sorry that I cheated so much. But I guess that’s just the way things are.[/b]

[iambiguous]

As with “modern art”, avante-garde, “progressive” music has its, uh, detractors? To some, hip-hop, gansta rap music sounds like “Moon River” next to it. It’s just “goddamn noise” in other words. And percussionists in particular are often the least intolerated of all.

But who would go so far as to call them “anarchists”. “Terrorists” even.

Here six of them set out to make music utilizing things that most folks don’t exactly consider to be musical instruments. Think the equivalent of Marcel Duchamp, art and urinals.

Four “movements”: in a hospital during a surgical “operation”, in a bank they are “holding up”, by thumping bulldozers outside an opera house and hanging from high tension power lines, playing them like violins. That is their “concert” of, by and for the city.

I’m sure you can think of hundreds more.

Then there is the cop who sets out to track them down. The irony being that he was born into a family that lived and breathed music. His parents named him Amadeus. Yet he came to despise it. Perhaps because he was born into the world utterly tone-deaf.

This in other words: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_deafness

If I understand what that means I think I would rather have been aborted.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_of_Noise
trailer: youtu.be/ZSYQ0IbNsBw

SOUND OF NOISE [2010]
Directed by Ola Simonsson, Johannes Stjärne Nilsson

[b]Sanna [to the assembled drummers]: There are four movements in four locations. I want to be very clear that some things will be illegal. Some will be dangerous. But it’ll be one hell of a work of art.

…

Amadeus [voiceover as we see a photograph of him as a young boy]: Here I am at my mother’s grand piano. It was the last time I sat there before Mom and Dad gave up. But I never wanted to play. All I wanted was silence. I dreamed of music made of silence.

…

Police chief on a news broadcast: They won’t get away with this! We’re going to rid this city of musical scum!!

…

Amadeus [smashing 4 metronomes with a guitar]: Damn musicians! I want silence!!
[then he starts smashing all the other instruments]
Amadeus: I want silence! You idiotic musicians! I just want silence! Don’t you know that you stupid musicians! Just silence…

…

Amadeus: This music will change the world.
Brother: You’re not the first to say that.[/b]

[iambiguous]

There really is only so far most of us can go [in this world] before [one way or another] everything seems to start revolving around money. Not having enough of it usually. There are just so many things we seem to need it for. So, sure, from time to time, when an opportunity arises, most are willing to stretch the parameters of what is strictly legal in order to get more of it. And who better to twist the law into a pretzel than an attorney.

And he is, after all, “a good man”. He "helps old people”. It’s just that now he has this opportunity to take advantage of that. And it’s not like Leo will be living in a cardboard box out on the street somewhere.

But then things start to get complicated. Like out of the blue. Leo’s grandson Kyle shows up. He needs a place to live. So [temporarily] he moves in with Mike and Jackie. And the next thing you know he’s like part of the family. And a damn good wrestler. Though there is something about him that is not, well, all that it seems to be. But not to worry.

So, from Mike’s point of view, things are all starting to fall into place. This is the Win Win part. But then [as they often do] things start get real complicated again. Indeed, only the script manages to keep him from tumbling down into the abyss that is Lose Lose.

IMDb

Alex Shaffer was indeed the New Jersey state high school wrestling champion the year before the film was made. However, he had to quit the sport due to a back injury.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win_Win_(film
trailer: youtu.be/aGDrptiJZcA

WIN WIN [2011]
Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy

[b]Abby: Where’s Daddy?
Jackie [Mom]: He’s running.
Abby: From what?

…

Terry [to Mike who is having an anxiety attack while jogging]: OK dude, how long has that been happening?
Mike: Couple of months. The doctor says it’s stress.
Terry: Seriously? Did he prescribe anything for you?
Mike: Yeah. Jogging.

…

Mike: And it’s not like I’m some, you know, scumbag. I help old people for Christ sake. No offense but your pal, Finley doesn’t give a crap about anything but making money.
Terry: Yeah. But that’s why he makes it.
Mike: No shit, Ter. Thanks for the update.

…

[Jackie locks Kyle in the basement]
Mike: Whare’re you doin’?
Jackie: We have kids, Mike. I’m not taking any chances with Eminem down there.
Mike: There’s not even a bathroom down there, Jack.
[Jackie reluctantly unlocks the door]

…

Mike: When’s the last time you wrestled?
Kyle: A couple years ago.
Mike: Why’d you stop?
Kyle: Just felt like it.
Mike: So let me ask you something, Kyle. How good are you?
Kyle: I’m pretty good.

…

Coach Vig [of Kyle]: I don’t think we can teach him anything.

…

Mike [to the wrestling team]: Now, did you all see what Kyle did the other day? He exploded up, right? Kyle, show the guys what you did.
Kyle: It’s kind of my own thing.
Mike: Well, can you share it with us?
Kyle: But it’s not even a move or anything.
Mike: It’s okay.
Kyle: All right. Well, I just tell myself that the guy on top’s tryin’ to take my head and shove it under water and kill me, and if I don’t wanna die on bottom, I have to do whatever the fuck it takes to get out.
Coach Vig [breaking a stunned silence]: Okay. So the move is “Whatever the fuck it takes.” Let’s go. Let’s work on it.
Terry [chiming in forcefully as if knowledgeable]: WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES! LET’S GO, GENTLEMEN. UP!

…

Jackie [about Cindy]: You’re gonna talk to her, right?
Mike: Yes, I intend to, if you don’t punch her out first.

…

Terry [on the phone to Mike about Kyle]: Dude, this kid really hates his mother. I mean like even more than I hate my ex wife.

…

Mike: Cindy, your father disinherited you from his will. Completely. And I’m afraid that can’t change now that he’s been declared incapacitated.
Cindy: (stunned) Is that true?! Who did he leave it too? Did he leave it to Kyle?!
Mike: No.
Cindy: Then who? You?
Mike: No. Actually, he left everything to the municipal parks system. He wanted the town park dedicated in his name.
Cindy: That scumbag! He never cared about anyone but himself and his fucking money. Did you know about this?
Eleanor: Cindy please!
Cindy: Well, I’m not taking care of him if I’m not getting anything for it.

…

Cindy: I want that commission! That’s supposed to be mine!
Mike: And that’s why you’re doing all this? For fifteen hundred dollars a month? My god.
Cindy: Isn’t that why you took him?

…

Kyle [to Mike]: You’re just like her.

…

Jackie: So why’d you move him if he wanted to stay here.
Mike: Because it would have been too much work to leave him here. I couldn’t have done it.
Jackie: Then you shouldn’t have taken him.
Mike: I had to, alright?
Jackie: Why?
Mike: Because I needed the money! We needed the money.
Jackie: You moved an old man out of his house to make money? Have you lost your freaking mind?
Mike: No! I just didn’t think it would get this complicated.
Jackie: Really? Or you just didn’t think you’d get caught?[/b]

I’m with Mike on this one. But there are just some things you can’t control.