philosophy in film

We can think of folks we believe are most deserving of love. But then some of them are so hell bent on pursuing the road less traveled that they almost always bring about the conditions where love is the least likely to be sustained. If it can even get started at all.

For example, in being a criminal. In being an outlaw.

Outlaw lovers is what we’ve got here. And the baby makes three. And then she becomes this beautiful little girl. And that changes everything. Children almost always do.

You know he loves her because he is willing to do the time that should have been hers. 25 years. And you know that she loves him because she waits for him. If on her own terms. Think The Crying Game. Only in Texas.

Also, think about this: Would you bear the burden of a 25 years prison sentence for something the one that you loved did instead? I’m thinking probably not. But then how do you get inside the head of another like this? How can you possibly fathom what makes him tick? Or what makes him do things that you can scarcely even imagine.

As for the title:

According to Casey Affleck, the title is the director David Lowery’s misquotation from lyrics of a song and has no actual meaning.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain%27t_T … ies_Saints
trailer: youtu.be/b_gGlYCMye4

AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS [2013]
Written and directed by David Lowery

[b]Ruth: Why did you tell Freddy you were gonna strike out on your own?
Bob: I don’t think I said that, but if I did, when I say, “on my own,” I mean you and me. I always mean you and me.

…

Ruth [to Bob]: I shot someone. I think I shot someone.[/b]

She shot a cop. And not just any cop as we learn later.

[b]Skerritt: So, I lost my boy. And that leaves you…And Bob. Only Bob don’t got a choice. I’m confused, Ruth. I took you kids in… raised you and Bob like you were my own. How do you go and do a thing like this?
Ruth: We were just doing what you taught us to do.

…

Bob: [in a letter to Ruth]: Every day I wake up thinking today’s the day I’m gonna see you. And one of those days, it will be so. And then we can ride off to somewhere. Somewhere far away.

…

Skerritt: They say they traced Bob to Montana.
Ruth: You think he’s in Montana?
Skerritt: I can make some phone calls, see what I can do about putting an end to all this.
Ruth: I could put an end to all this right now all by myself. All I’d have to do is…tell the truth.

…

Sweetie: Where you planning on going?
Bob: A direction that hasn’t been invented yet.

…

Bob [to Sweetie]: See, I’ve got a higher calling. I’ve got a wife and a little girl who needs her daddy. And the guard asked me what I know about higher callings…says even if I do get out, I’m gonna have to answer to God and the devil for the things I done. I tell him, “Sir, I used to be the devil. Now I’m just a man”

…

Skerritt: Well… Look at you, Bob. Break out of prison and head straight back here. Maybe not the smartest move.
Bob: Long as you don’t turn me in.

…

Skerritt: Gene Dentler and a bunch of his deputies come over a few days ago for a chat. I told them I could think of at least six sons of bitches who’ve got a mind to see you dead but that it’d be more fun to sit back and take bets on who gets you first. You fucked over your share of people in your day.
Bob: Yeah, and then I got caught.
Skerritt: Not by them, you didn’t.

…

Skerritt: You do whatever you want. You take all your money and you get yourself as far away from here as you possibly can. But you listen to me when I tell you…You leave those girls alone.
Bob: I can’t do that.
Skerritt: Yeah, you can.
Bob: And why would I?
Skerritt: Well, now, think about it, Bob. If you got any trouble coming your way… They sure as hell don’t need that.
Bob: What trouble is that?
Skerritt: You got out. What more do you want?
Bob: I want my family.
Skerritt: So do I. But I don’t got it.
[he grabs Bob by the neck and pins his head to the counter]
Skerritt: Now, this is how it works. I will never hurt you more than I’m hurting you now. I will never lay another hand to you or prick your finger or pinch your cheek. I won’t call the sheriff, and I won’t tell them where you’ve been. But if I hear that old Bob Muldoon has been talking to Ruth Guthrie…You asked me about trouble. I will make sure you got some.

…

Bob [to Skerritt]: Freddy was the one who shot first that day. Nobody would have gotten hurt if he hadn’t done that.

…

Sweetie [to Bob]: I guess I hope I never see you again.

…

Ruth: Did you hear what I said after?
Patrick: I read your statement.
Ruth: It wasn’t all true, you know. I wasn’t just a little girl who got dragged in over her head. I knew what I was doing.
Patrick: Well… I think that, uh… A lot of things were said that might not have been true. But you did what you did. So did he. And whatever it is you’ve done, when I see you with your daughter…All I see is good.
Ruth: Maybe I’m just fooling you.
Patrick: Are you?

…

Ruth: I figured that I’d just tell him all at once when I saw him. He’d walk through the door, and I’d know exactly what to say to him, and things would be the way they used to be. That’s why I’ve been saving every little thing.
[pause]
Ruth: And I haven’t slept in four years. And I’m tired. I’m so goddamn tired.
Patrick: Then rest.

…

Ruth [cradling a grieviously wounded Bob]: I’ve been waiting for you…

…

Ruth: Tell me more about that house.
Bob: It’s big… Maybe a farm. It’s old. It’s older than us. At the same time, though, I feel like maybe I built it. There’s no telling. There’s just no telling,[/b]

From the director of El Topo and The Holy Mountain above. In other words, expect anything. After all, it is described as an “avant-garde horror film”. And you don’t see too many of those coming out of Hollywood.

Metaphors abound here: The human “circus”? The human “freak show”?

One take on it: io9.com/5792771/in-santa-sangre- … -literally

This is a world that, by and large, revels in lumpen-proletariat spectacles. And, as with all of his films, you are constantly being bombarded with visual images that will either mean something to you or not. And there is simply no way in which to take out of them other than that which you must first necessarily put into them: “I”.

For some then, the spectacles are so far removed from what they would call a “normal life” or a “rational life” or a “civilized life”, it is all but impossible to really care about any of the characters. Surreal or not. Better to just sit back and count you’re blessings that this was not your own fate. And though many are brutalized in a world they had no capacity to choose it can all be explained away simply by noting that [surreal or not] they are not “one of us”. And we know how that works.

And so, once again, we are inundated with any number of moral, political and religious themes that [again] we will react to not as intended but as we must: subjectively, subjunctively.

Bottom line: Freud is everywhere here.

Whatever that means.

IMDb

The project was launched when Alejandro Jodorowsky was commissioned to write and direct a film based on real-life Mexican criminal named Gregorio Cárdenas. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorio_ … %C3%A1ndez

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Sangre
trailer: youtu.be/fDgwu4scwQM

SANTA SANGRE [1989]
Written in part and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

[Fenix crouches naked atop a tree trunk in his barren asylum room]
Doctor [enters along with orderlies pushing a food cart]: Fenix. Please…
[offers him a normal meal]
Doctor: Eat like a human being.
[pause]
[Doctor puts the tray back down and offers him a raw fish]
Fenix [howls then jumps down and grabs the fish]: Grr!
[he sits and begins eating it]

And we’re off…

Concha: Please, Father, help us. They want to destroy our temple.
Roman Catholic monsignor: I won’t let them do such a thing.
Concha: Peace.
Roman Catholic monsignor Peace. Let me see your church.

Big mistake:

Concha: This is it, Monsignor. This is where we worship our beloved saint and martyr. Here she is, Monsignor.
Monsignor: But…this is no saint.
Conchas: Monsignor, she is a saint. Right here, many years ago, Lirio, a young girl, was attacked by the Terrano brothers. She tried to fight them off with all her strength but they cut off her arms. They raped her and left her to die in a pool of blood. And on this ground, miraculously still wet with her holy blood, we built our church.
Monsignor: This is paint!
Concha: No, it’s holy blood.
Monsignor: This is paint!
Concha: It’s holy blood!
Monsignor: Do you hear me, crazy woman? It’s paint!
Concha: It’s blood! lt’s blood! Feel it! Feel it!
Monsignor: This is paint! It is paint! This is paint!
Concha: Holy blood! It’s holy blood! It’s holy blood!
Monsignor: It’s paint!
Concha and the parishioners begin shooting: Holy blood! Holy blood! Holy blood! Holy blood!
Monsignor: I order you to stop this foolish sacrilege immediately!!
Concha: Never! This is our saint!
Monsignor: The church will never recognise this heresy!

Kiss the church goodbyue.

[b]The Tattooed Woman [of Alma to a brutish john]: She’s a deaf-mute. You can do anything you want to her.

…

Concha: You know what you have to do.
Fenix: No, I don’t want to!
Concha: This girl has defiled you with her lust.
Fenix: No, mum, it’s not true! It’s only a game!
[begins to lose control of his hands]
Fenix: No! I can’t! Don’t ask me to!
Concha: I’m not asking you, I’m ordering…my hands…and my arms… to kill her. Kill her!

…

Concha [to Fenix]: Wake up! Wake up! You can’t atone for your sins with nightmares.

…

[Fenix glances at The Invisible Man poster]
Concha: Without me you are nothing. No one sees you and no one notices you. Just like your stupid hero.

…

Concha [to Fenix]: Stop it! It’s always roosters or swans! You never see anything else in your ridiculous hallucinations!!

…

Fenix: My Mummy is dead…[/b]

Written and directed by Jon Stewart. Honestly, I never expected to be typing those words on this thread. And while I don’t follow his program on the Comedy Network, he seems to encompass a political point of view that at least tries to hold accountable the powers that be in my own country: the US of A.

A liberal in other words. But the sort of liberal that is allowed to question the powers that be in America. In other words, exposing the nature of crony capitalism…but only up to a point.

Here though he takes on a far easier target: theocracy. In Iran. And the film makes it all quite clear that living in a theocracy can be perceived by some as a hell on earth.

It is based on a true story.

On the other hand, there is Iran when it was not a theocracy. When, instead, it was a brutal military dictatorship backed to the hilt by the Amercan government. Indeed, put into power by the American government. Cue Jeane Kirkpatrick’s destinction between authoritarian thugs [our guys] and totalitarian thugs [their guys]. And Stewart to his credit does connect the dots between Iran in the 1950s and Iran today. And thus exposes [at least up to a point] the true nature of American foreign policy.

So, it would not surprise me at all if it turned out that Maziar really was in fact on the payroll of the CIA.

Basically, this is one of those films where over and again you are asking yourself: What would I do? Which some will then twist into this: What is the right thing to do? To which there are any number of objectivists out there who will swear that they [and they alone] know the answer.

The “backstory”:

Maziar Bahari was imprisoned, interrogated, and beaten in Iran for 118 days in 2009 on charges that he was attempting to stage the overthrow of the Iranian government. One of the pieces of “evidence” that Bahari’s Iranian captors held against him as proof of his guilt was footage from a segment on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in which he was interviewed by Jason Jones pretending to be a spy. During the sketch, Bahari called Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an “idiot”. After he was released, Bahari was interviewed on “The Daily Show” by Jon Stewart, who discussed the role that the show had (inadvertently) played in his imprisonment. Stewart and Bahari became friendly, and Stewart decided to adapt Bahari’s 2011 book “Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival” (co-written with Aimee Molloy) into a screenplay.

IMDb

The actual Maziar Bahari makes a cameo appearance as a man sitting in the desk near the camera when his character “confesses” to his crimes on Iranian Television.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewater_(film
trailer: youtu.be/cEExQHYsOT4

ROSEWATER [2014]
Written and directed by Jon Stewart

[b]Maziar [voiceover]: When I was nine, my sister took me to the Shrine of Masumeh. It was beautiful. But I’ll never forget the smell. A mix of sweat, and the rosewater they showered down on the faithful. I used to think only the most pious carried that seem.

…

Mother: Mazi jaan…Mazi jaan…
Maziar: Mmm.
Mother: Wake up. These men want to talk with you.

…

Newscaster: There is great anticipation in the run-up to Iran’s presidential election. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline incumbent, is no longer the guaranteed victor. His opponent, the more moderate Mir-Hussein Mousavi, has been gaining quickly and could be poised for an historic upset. But Ahmadinejad’s student organizer Alireza Abkar still believes.
Abkar [on television]: So-called Western democracy is corrupt because it reflects only the will of the people.[/b]

That is the political backdrop of the story.

[b]News colleague: You think he’ll still want to talk?
Maziar: Yes, I mean, if I bring him some Maltesers, he will talk. Allah is no match for London chocolates.
Bobby: It’s not funny.
Maziar: I’m sorry?
Bobby: It’s pathetic. Ahmadinejad or whoever, they take these poor street kids, who’ve got nothing, give them food or sweets or whatever. Indoctrinate them to spout this gibberish. It’s pathetic, and that’s the real story we should be doing.

…

Davood [mocking Abkar]: “This is what must be, Maziar. This is what must be.” Oh, man, that guy! Who talks like that? I can’t believe he let you film it.
Maziar: Why not? He’s a poster boy for the Supreme Leader. What’s he got to be afraid of?
Davood: Looking like an ignorant asshole.
Maziar: He’s not alone, you know.
Davood: Yeah. Neither am I. Just because you can’t see the cockroaches doesn’t mean they are not there.

…

Jason Jones [of The Daily Show]: So, as a spy, I’m just trying to figure out why your country is so terrifying?
Maziar: You know, the first thing to know about Iran is that it is not evil. Actually, Americans and Iranians have a lot of things in common, more than they have differences.
Jason Jones: What do I have in common with you?
Maziar: What is the number one enemy of the United States?
Jason Jones: Al-Qaeda.
Maziar: AI-Qaeda is also the number one enemy of Iran. The Al-Qaeda members say that if you kill an Iranian or if you kill a Shiite, you go to Heaven and you get 72 virgins.

…

Maziar: Hey, Davood! Wait, you’re gonna get hurt!
Davood: We have to fight back!
Maziar: You’re gonna get killed! Come on.
Davood: What do you want me to do, huh? They took my vote. I’m dirt to them. I’m dust. It’s not right.
Maziar: No, it’s not right, Davood.
Davood: Ah, well, who are you to say? You have a real weapon and you choose not to use it.[/b]

His camera in other words.

Prison official [to Maziar]: Welcome to Abu Ghraib, or whatever you Americans like to call it.

The infamous Evin prison. Once entrusted to Savak. Our thugs.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evin_Prison

[b]Haj: Bahari is not some street thug. He will be well-prepared intellectually.
Javad [Rosewater]i: Of course.
Haj: I’ve given you the questions he must answer. But, Javadi, we must have his confession! Do you understand?
Javadi: Of course, sir.
Haj: The people in the streets must know how they have been fooled by these traitors. We can end this, but we must show them how their leaders have been receiving orders from foreigners, Zionists and Jews in the West. They will listen to him, Javadi.
Javadi: Yes, sir.
Haj: And remember, we need his face for the cameras. This will take much more than just a fist, Javadi.

…

Ravadi: Yes, we know you are a spy.
Maziar: A spy?
Ravadi: Yes. The game is over, Mr. Bahari.
Mazari: And for who am I a spy?
Ravadi: For CIA, MIG, Mossad, Newsweek. You tell me.
Mazari: Newsweek magazine’?
Ravadi: No, Newsweek the carpenter. The media arm for CIA.[/b]

Here we are all supposed to scoff. Well, I don’t. The corporate media is an arm of the crony capitalist ruling class. And that certainly includes the CIA.

[b]Mazari: He’s not a spy.
Ravadi: He’s not a spy?
Mazari: He’s… No, it’s a show. A comedy show. It’s stupid. He’s a comedian pretending to be a spy.
Ravadi: So, can you tell me why an American pretending to be a spy had chosen to interview you?
Mazari: And why would a real spy have a TV show’?
Ravadi: Why did you tell this man that America and Iran has something in common? Was that funny, too? You know, Khamenei said that America is the Great Satan. But maybe you don’t think that’s right. Maybe we have been hasty. We kicked America out of the door and you will bring them back through the windows.

…

Maziar [to Baba Akbar his father as though he were in the cell]: I have nothing to tell them because I’m not a spy.

…

Maziar: The American government doesn’t control Newsweek magazine. To be honest, it’s not even worth controlling anymore. This weekly model of magazines is completely outdated.
Ravadi: Outdated?
Maziar: There are better ways of doing propaganda. Through the Internet. In the blogs. Twitter. Uh…There’s many things. The game has changed completely.

…

Haj: Your father was imprisoned at one time, was he not’?
Maziar: Yes.
Haj: When was this?
Maziar: In 1953.
Haj: He was accused of being a communist.
Mazari: Yes.
Haj: Was he?
Mazari: He was a communist back then.
Haj: On whose authority was he detained?
Mazari: Under the Shah.
Haj: Yes. The Shah of Iran. I’m sorry. That must have been difficult for your family.
Maziar: Thank you, sir.
Haj: I thought at that time, Iran had a democratic leader. Mossadegh. Mohammad Mossadegh. So there was a coup?
Maziar: Yes.
Haj: Organized by?
Maziar: The CIA. The Americans, British…
Haj: Operation Ajax I believe it was called. The West wanted the Iranian people’s oil.
Maziar: Yes.
Haj: And the journalists and gangsters that were paid by the CIA to spread lies and violence, and turn the Iranian people against its government so the Americans and Zionists could deploy their puppet the traitor, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi…
Maziar: Yes, but that was in those days, sir. I…But I am not a spy!

…

Ravadi: My bosses are not happy with you.
Maziar: But I don’t understand. I’m trying to do everything you want me…I am trying to figure out the media conspiracy, but I cannot lie to you.
Ravadi: I know. I know this. But they have decided to kill you. I brought you a Nescaf.
Maziar: Why…Why do they want to kill me?
Ravadi: There is milk and sugar.
[pause]
Ravbadi: You don’t like my Nescaf?
Maziar: I don’t understand what they can achieve by killing me.
Ravadi: You don’t like my Nescaf. Blindfold.
Maziar: It’s…
Ravadi: Blindfold. Now is the time.

…

Baba Akbar: They barely touched you. Others have suffered more.
Maziar: No, Baba. No, no. You don’t understand. You were what they said you were.
Baba Akbar: You can choose who you are.
Maziar: I am not a spy. I am not a spy…
Baba Akbar: They locked you up, but you are still free.
Maziar: You don’t understand, Baba! You were who they said you were.
Baba Akbar: You filmed the truth about these sisterfuckers. What is more dangerous to them than the truth. huh? Tell me.
Maziar: It didn’t change anything. Look where it got me.
Baba Akbar: God damn it, believe in something! It is your only hope.
Maziar: Like communism? Did it ever occur to you that the dream that kept you during your torment, it was corrupt? Your great Russian heroes, they also torture. Your torture was conceived in the Gulags. Where do you think the Shah’s secret police got it from? From the Soviets. From the CIA, from the Mossad. From all the fucked up secret services of the world.

…

Maziar [in his television confession]: My name is Maziar Bahari. And I am a member of the western media. I am a journalist, and as such, I am a member of the Western capitalist machine. Western media saw its candidate lose the elections, on June the 12th of 2009. Western media claimed it was a fraud to undermine and to hurt the legitimacy of the elections. Western media afterwards claimed that there was a coup. What followed was a series of preplanned actions designed to foment a failed color revolution. My colleagues and I started to ignore accurate reporting and we produced reports that were very inaccurate and illegal. I apologize to the Iranian people…and to my family. And to our Supreme Leader for my actions and my wrongdoings.

…

Prison guard: Specialist time, Mr. Hillary Clinton.
Maziar [startled]: What did you say?
Guard: Mr. Hillary Clinton. She’s been talking a lot about you.[/b]

Segue to the media barrage about him around the globe. And that changes everything.

One particular facet of that which became known as the “Iran/Contra Affair”: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%8 … tra_affair

How do you spell “national security”? M-O-N-E-Y. And isn’t that just another way to spell W-A-L-L S-T-R-E-E-T?

In other words, just one more snapshot of American foreign policy as it actually functions out in the world that we live in. Rather than in the manner in which the government and the corporate media portray it instead. Call that “the big lie”.

Just as some banks are too big to fail, some stories are too true to tell. And I’m sure there are folks who actually believe there are not renditions of this in the Obama administration. Or in the Clinton administration. Really, they assure us, the Democrats are different.

On the other hand, if you are a staunch anti-communist, it is just one more end in which to employ any means necessary. And this frame of mind has always worked for both those on the left and those on the right.

But then these things always get tricky. Some reporters are in the loop that is the corporate media and some are not. Some will pursue the facts wherever they take them while others are there to make sure that certain facts never see the light of day.

The main focus here revolves around folks who have always argued that the drug epidemic in black communities is part and parcel of a government conspiracy. And, really, how far removed is the consequence of the Reagan administration’s policy here from that? In one searing scene, Gary Webb the reporter who broke the story takes us into South Central, Los Angeles. He shows us all of the folks strung out on the drugs the CIA helped to bring into the country. Including many newborns. The infamous crack babies.

Actually, it seems the drug infestation in black communities was more an “incidental consequence” of the Reagan administration’s obssession with toppling the Nicaraguan government. Rather than an actual self-conscious “conspiracy”. But, then again, can we really rule out the possibility that it may well have been a thought out part of the plan?

And the only reason any of this came out at all was because the government accidently sent a transcript of grand jury testimony in a discovery packet to an attorney. Again, reminding us of all the shit that goes on “behind the curtains” in Washington – programs we may never know about.

Gary Webb died when he was 49. It was ruled that he committed suicide.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb

IMDb

[b]Various members of the cast and crew have admitted to receiving government-level “push back” to the film, both during filming and in post-production.

Before director Michael Cuesta signed on to Kill the Messenger, Spike Lee expressed interest in directing the film.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_ … (2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/VW4XO-52ubE

KILL THE MESSENGER [2014]
Directed by Michael Cuesta

[b]Nixon [on television]: …public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.

Ford [on television]: For nearly a year, I have been devoting increasing attention to a problem which strikes at the very heart of our national well-being: Drug abuse.

Carter [on television]: I did not condone any drug abuse, and we’ll do everything possible to reduce this serious threat to our society.

Reagan [on television]: Drugs are menacing our society. They’re threatening our values and undercutting our institutions. They’re killing our children.[/b]

That’s the government rhetoric. This film however gives us an actual slice of the reality.

[b]Nancy Reagan [on television]: …and when it comes to drugs and alcohol, just say no.

…

Reagan [on television]: Those who smuggle and sell drugs are as dangerous to our national security as any terrorist or foreign dictatorship.

…

Newscaster: The Reagan administration is spending billions on two wars the war on drugs at home and the struggle for Nicaragua abroad.

…

Black man on television: Crack cocaine, a drug epidemic unlike any that’s ever probably existed in the history of the world. For five dollars, you can begin the process of addicting people.

…

Newscaster: Waging the war on drugs has cost us one hundred billion dollars over the last ten years.

…

Coral Baca: But Raffie’s story is different. He sold drugs for the government.
Gary: You want to say that again?
Coral Baca: He brought four tons of cocaine into the country…for the U.S. government.
Gary: Look, you have a very lovely voice…
Coral Baca: Thank you. I’ve copied every piece of paper. Selling drugs for the U.S. government. Have you written that story?

…

Coral Baca [to Gary]: And there is the little bitch. Russell Dodson.

…

Russell: So why is the local news interested in this case?
Gary: I’m not. But I am interested in Danilo Blandon.
Russell: Never heard of him.
Gary: Then why is he on your witness list? You had this guy cold on major narcotics trafficking and you let him walk. Why? I have his grand jury transcript. I know. I’ve seen some screw ups outta you guys but boy is that a big one.[/b]

He’s from Justice Department. Enough said?

[b]Gary: What just happened?
Coral: You terrified them. They just stuffed Danilo Blandon under a rug. He’s off their witness list. No Blandon, no case. Raffie walks.
Gary: Hey, hey, hey…So you used me to get this fucking case dropped?
Coral: I’m just the bimbo, remember?
Gary: Yeah, fuck you.
Coral: Be happy, Gary Webb. You thought you were getting a piece of cheese, but I just gave you the mouse.

…

Fenster [Ricky Ross’s lawyer]: Fuck me! The government blocks me! Every time I ask for something. Claiming - get this - National Security.
Gary: National security and crack cocaine in the same sentence? Does that not sound strange to you?

…

Ricky [to Gary]: Look, I am just the elf. Blandon is Santa Claus!

…

Lawyer: Mr. Blandon how much money did you take in from cocaine sales while you were working for the U.S. government?
Blandon: One and a half billion dollars.
Lawyer: What did you do with that money?
Blandon: We made so much money we had to keep an apartment just to keep the cash. It was floor to ceiling dollars. We had to rotate the money from the top to the bottom to prevent mold from coming on the money from the humidity.

…

Gary: So when did all of this start?
Norwin Meneses: They were always looking for ways to raise money to fight this war. There was this one time when Ollie…Ollie went to his friends in Washington, and this is years ago-
Gary: Oliver North?
Norwin Meneses: No, Oliver Hardy. Yes, Oliver North. So he said why don’t we use the cash seized from the cocaine arrests to fund and support the Contra war? Of course, they declined you know. But as you can see, Ollie wasn’t the only person with ideas like this.

…

Gary: Did it have to be drugs?
Norwin Meneses: The ends justify the means. Yeah, write that down. You Americans don’t want coconuts or bananas. You want cocaine.

…

Norwin Meneses: I’m going to tell you the whole truth. I’m going to introduce you to people you should talk to and then you will be faced with the most important decision of your life.
Gary: Oh Yeah, what’s that?
Norwin Meneses: Deciding whether to share it or not.

…

Fred Weil: I had an American citizen a rich Republican Party fund-raiser, a White House favorite, in my office…upset about things he was hearing. He believed in freedom and defeating communism…but not in laundering narcotics money for guns. And he’s sitting
in my office in the U.S. Senate and he gets a phone call telling him that if he talked to me he’d die. This is your ticket out of small time, right? You’re going to make your bones on this.
Gary: This is a true story
Fred Weil: My friend, some stories are just too true to tell.

…

Gary: …to answer your question, no. My angle is that the American government knew drugs were put on the streets to fund an illegal war.
Agent Miller: What you want to say happened, never happened.
Gary: Then why am I here?
Agent Miller: American kids were going to die in that war.
Gary: American kids did die. They’re still dying. Just not the ones you care about, apparently.

…

Ian [Gary’s son reading from Gary’s story]: “For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay-area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to Latin American guerrilla army run by the US Central Intelligence Agency a Mercury news investigation has found.”

…

Ted Koppel [on television]: A reporter for the San Jose Mercury News suggested that the CIA might have played a role n permitting Nicaraguan drug dealers to distribute crack cocaine in south central Los Angeles during the 1980’s. That had enormous resonance within the African-American community.

…

Al Sharpton: If they had put that crack in Beverly Hills, it would be a presidential issue. We love our children. Just like you love yours.

…

Maxine Waters: I think it is enough information here to say to the CIA, you stand accused.

…

Fred Weil [on the phone]: I was you once. Gary, I started down this road. Though nowhere near as far as you are. When they saw I wasn’t gonna stop, they ‘controversialized’ me. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about? They make you the story. That you have a history of schizophrenia, you’re a liar, you’re a homo, you beat your dog. you’re a pedophile – it doesn’t matter if none of it’s true. The point is no one remembers what you found. They remember you…and you’re nuts.

…

Fred Weil [on the phone]: Remember Gary, you get the most flak when you’re right above the target. That’s when they empty all their guns into you. When you’re about to drop a bomb on the on the Kremlin…Or in this case, the Central Intelligence Agency.

…

Gary [on the phone]: What’s happening here, Rich? The only people you have in your story is the former Director of the CIA, the current Director of the CIA and - guess who - a bunch of CIA officials. Are you following up on anything I wrote or are you just talking to the CIA?
Rich Kline [from the Los Angeles Times]: I can’t be talking to you.
Gary: Why?
Rich Kline: I don’t know. I’m sorry.[/b]

The corporate media [the big guys] circle the wagons.

[b]John Cullen: Don’t turn on the light. I’m John Cullen. Do you know that name?
[no response from Gary]
John Cullen: What you found here, Gary, is a monster.

…

John Cullen: After I left the Agency, I worked my way into a major drug cartel. It was early Medellin. I solved logistical issues. Bringing supply into the United States. Paved the way, you might say…as the traffic grew. And grew.
Gary: Well someone in Washington knows what you do and is doing nothing to stop it.
John Cullen: It’s all lies and corruption, Gary. You become attracted to the power, then you become addicted to the power…then you’re devoured by the power.
Gary: Your thing and my thing, are they connected? Are they the same?
[pause]
John Cullen: Yes. They are the same.

…

Gary [speaking at an award dinner honoring him as reporter of the year]: Look, I know I pissed off a lot of people over the years. Many of whom are in this room right now. But I think that’s what good investigative reporting does. It ruffles feathers. But I was never fired. And my editors never threw me under the bus. And that’s because I never wrote anything until now…that really mattered to a lot of people. Mattered in a scary way. I’m not going to take it back. Make nice to save my job. Because I thought my job… I thought my job was to tell the public the truth. The facts, pretty or not. And let the publishing of those facts make a difference in how people look at things. At themselves, at what they stand for.

…

Title card: In 1998, the CIA relaeased a 400 page report that acknolwedged the Agency associated with members of the Contra movement who engaged in drug trafficking. Consumed with the President Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. The national media largely ignored the report.

…

John Kerry [in an interview from 1997]: There’s no question in my mind there is a complicity in the flow of drugs into this country. Same pilots, same airstrips, same airplanes carrying guns and drugs at the same time. And people knew it. South Central Los Angeles and every other city in America are owed an explanation.[/b]

There must be a million renditions of this. Approximating I’d say the actual number of relationships that there are. Of course much depends on the demographics. And the culture. And the historical context.

And the script.

So don’t actually expect to learn anything here.

Anyway, here they have reached the point in their relationship where they are seeing a therapist. They are looking for a possible resolution to their “problems” – in order to get their love back up on the track. Or at least up out of the ravine.

Solution? A “beautiful retreat”. In fact, you might call it a magical retreat.

Cue the doppelgängers.

I can imagine some men watching this and thinking: “I could never not be passionaitely in love with Elizabeth Moss”. But it rarely works that way. Over time the passion tends to dissipate in all relationships and you’re thinking about other women. And women of course have their own rendition of this. Being one of the “beautiful people” doesn’t necessarily make that go away. It’s always about one or another “tradeoff”.

Here though you get to imagine your husband or your wife or your lover as a different person. Instead of the way he or she is, he or she becomes the way you would like them to be instead. The idealized husband, wife, lover. So, will that be enough to save the relationship?

Other than that it is all rather routine stuff. You know, for Yuppies.

IMDb

[b]About the script and the way it was performed, Duplass stated, “The way this worked, there (was) about a 50-page document that was the entire movie - the scene beats, everything, locations - except for the actual dialogue in the film. And most of the dialogue you see in the film is improvised. Although in certain scenes, where we have effects and things like that, Justin our writer [Justin Lader] would write out a version of that scene the night before, to give us a good guide, so we could have something to stick to.”

In the therapist’s office, several clocks are shown, including a chess clock. All of the clocks and both faces on the chess clock show a different time.

The filming location is Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen’s home.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_I_Love_(film
trailer: youtu.be/jCOvhojlZzQ

THE ONE I LOVE [2014]
Directed by Charlie McDowell

[b]Sophie [to the therapist]: When we were in the water and we were waiting and no one came out, no one was home, and we were just floating there, I felt sad, and I felt like our happiness used to be so easy and there used to be so much of it, and now I feel like happiness is something that we have to re-create.
Ethan: I’m sorry. I tried to make a romantic moment. I’ll never take you to a fucking pool again.
Sophie: Oh, come on. Don’t do that.

…

Therapist: So, are you guys having sex?[/b]

Back to the piano.

[b]Therapist [to Ethan and Sophie]: It’s like a perfect retreat, just the two of you. I’ve sent a lot of couples there and they’ve all come back really renewed.

…

Ethan [to Sophie]: I’m sorry. I’m spazing out in there, I know, but something fucking weird like Twilight Zone shit is going on here, and I’m trying to get a handle on it, okay?

…

Ethan [to Sophie – one of them]: You’re in that shower. I just handed you a towel.

…

Ethan: You want to go back?
Sophie: This is something we’ve been talking about, creating a new relationship.
Ethan: I imagined like horseback riding with a little satchel of wine, you know? Not exploring other dimensions in some weird version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

…

Ethan: Who the fuck starts with O?
Sophie: I know.
Ethan: Who the hell do you think you are?
Sophie: Crazy.
Ethan: Goddamn anarchist.

…

Ethan [to the doppelgänger Sophie]: You’re not a real person. You know you’re not real. Who the hell are you? What the hell are you? Are you a fucking robot? Are you a…like a spirit? Because I’ve got to say it’s bad enough that I’m losing my wife to a mirror image of me…Now I have to sit and look at a mirror image of exactly who I’m losing. So, no… I’m having a hard time enjoying this weekend because this is the weekend I lose my wife. So, pardon me if I don’t want a fucking mimosa, okay?
Sophie: It wasn’t just this weekend.
Ethan: How do you know?
Sophie: Because as your wife, I know these things.

…

Sophie: Would everybody just tell me what we’re talking about? What happened?
Doppelgänger Ethan: All right, look, Ethan was a little suspicious that something was going on between us, so he decided to try and figure it out for himself. He didn’t go to the grocery store. He ended up sneaking into the guest house, and in a strange twist of events, he pretended to be me, so you actually slept with Ethan instead of me.
Ethan: I can’t fucking pretend to be you… I am me.
Doppelgänger Ethan: Basically, first he betrayed you by sleeping with someone else and then he kind of betrayed you by sleeping with you.

…

Ethan [on the phone to the therapist]: Hey. It’s Ethan. Um, I’m really just calling to thank you for your wonderful recommendation this weekend. Maybe next session you can send us to a fucking holocaust museum.[/b]

Modern love. Here’s one rendition of it: youtu.be/FDjJpmt-wzg

And, below, is another [less surreal] version.

Indeed, compare relationships now with those that once existed. Back when we lived in a world where there was a place for everyone and everyone was in their place. In other words, you followed the script [everyone did] from the cradle to the grave.

Not anymore. There is no script. But even though the world increasingly revolves around pop culture and consumption, there are still those more “sophisticated” folks who try to rise above it.

But there are just so many godawful narratives – lifestyles – from which to choose. Still, one thing is clear: Youth rules!

Here, Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are no longer young. And they’ve been married long enough now for things to get “stale”. What to do? Well, they meet Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried. They’re younger, hipper, more adventuresome. But, in their own way, just as fucked up. Especially Adam. A real phony we might call him. Think Bill Hurt in Broadcast News.

The personification of “American youth”. Just a lot “cooler”.

And then this part: To have or not to have kids?

Jeez Louise.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/While_We%27re_Young_(film
trailer: youtu.be/NRUcm9Qw9io

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG [2014]
Written and directed by Noah Baumbach

[b]Cornelia [to the baby…not hers]: There were three little pigs and they made a house out of twigs and the wolf came…
Josh: He blows it down?
Cornelia: Yeah, but what happens in the middle?
Josh: I keep wanting to do ‘This little piggy went to the market, but that’s with the toes’.

…

Josh [to Cornelia]: Well, maybe the point is we have the freedom. What we do with it isn’t that important.

…

Ira Mandelstam [from Josh’s documentary]: There was a poll conducted in 1987 in which people were given a series of phrases and asked which ones could be found in the U.S. Constitution. One of the phrases that got the highest percentage of votes was, "From each according to his ability, “to each according to his need.” Of course that is not in the Constitution but is the famous communist credo popularized by Karl Marx.

…

Josh [in the classroom]: “Documentary is about someone else. Fiction is about me.” This is a quote from Jean-Luc Godard. Now, what do we think about this? Can a documentary be personal? Documentaries, I want to say to you today, can and should be about me. Me meaning all of us.[/b]

He makes those kind of documetaries. Think Cliff Stern. To wit:

[b]Jamie: Josh, what’s your new film about?
Josh: Well, I’m trying to solve the problem that Eisenstein never solved, that is, how to make a film that is both materialist and intellectual at the same time. Uh, it’s about the distinctly American relationship between biography and history, theory and method and how that relates to power and class in our country, particularly the political, military and economic elite.

…

Jamie: I really loved your film. That scene with the dogs around the garbage. How did you stage that?
Josh: I said ‘Hey, shoot those dogs’.

…

Josh [to Fletcher and Marina]: You should see this guy’s record collection. It’s Jay-Z, it’s Thin Lizzy, it’s Mozart. His taste is democratic. It’s The Goonies and it’s Citizen Kane. They don’t distinguish between high and low, it’s wonderful.
Fletcher: When did The Goonies become a good movie?
Cornelia: And it’s like their apartment is full of everything we once threw out, but it looks so good the way they have it.

…

Jamie: …instead of responding to them on Facebook, see, I’m going to go find them in person. With my camera.
Josh: Okay.
Jamie: Like make Facebook real. It’s like, you want to talk to me, let’s talk.
Josh: Kind of just like real life?
Jamie: Exactly.
Josh: Well, real was there before Facebook.

…

Doctor: You have arthritis in your knee.
Josh: Uh, is arthritis a catch-all for some kind of injury to the…
Josh: No, arthritis is a degradation of the joints.
Josh: Yeah, I know what traditional arthritis is. But…
Doctor: I’m not sure what you mean by “traditional”, but this is arthritis.
Josh: Arthritis arthritis?
Doctor: Yes, but I usually just say it once.

…

Josh: I like our life as it is.
Cornelia: Yeah. I mean if we wanted to take off to Paris tomorrow we could.
Josh: If we’re gonna do it, we should plan it with at least a month in advance.
Cornelia: A month is still in the realm of spontaneity.

…

Cornelia: We’ve got this Ayahuasca ceremony this weekend with Jamie and Darby.
Marina: What’s an Ayahuasca ceremony?
Cornelia: You drink this sludgy liquid and you hallucinate and vomit up your demons. [/b]

No doubt this sort of New Age bullshit really does exist.

[b]Josh: Oh, my God, I see a fucking pyramid. And a sphinx. It’s true, you see Egyptian shit. Honey, what are you seeing?
Cornelia: I’m in a deli in Bensonhurst.

…

Cornelia: I wish you’d look at me the way you look at Jamie and Darby. When we first met, you wooed me with romantic e-mails.
Josh: It wouldn’t make sense for me to send you e-mails now that we’re in the same room all the time.

…

Kent: Why do we stop doing things? Life happens I guess, huh?
Jamie: Life is other plans.
Kent: Yeah.
Josh: Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.
Kent [to Jamie looking over at Josh]: Who is he?

…

Cornelia: My dad likes saying, “The more, the more.”
Josh: That’s because your dad has everything and then he gets more.

…

Josh [pitching his documentary to this hedge fund scumbag]: The three sections correspond to the three nodes of what Mills called the power elite. The political, military and economic. But, and this is key, each part has to interconnect to show how none of three nodes functions without the other. It’s a linear film of course, but I imagine it as kind of a hypertext. To be clear, the film is really about the working class and I can’t speak on behalf of the working class. I can’t make their film, of course. But they have to be felt as the impossible subject of the text. If that makes sense. But it isn’t even really about the power structure but about what it means to make a film about it. It’s about the very possibility of making this film. It’s really about America.[/b]

Let’s just say the pitch doesn’t work.

[b]Josh: Do you think that Jamie came to my class because he knew that I was married to you? That this was all so he could meet your dad?
Cornelia: Josh, you know, the world isn’t a conspiracy against you.
Josh: You know, fuck you. Fuck you.
Cornelia: Don’t talk to me like that.
Josh: I’m saying “fuck you” the way Jamie and Darby say it where it’s not a real “fuck you,” it’s a semi-playful “fuck you.”
Cornelia: We’re not Jamie and Darby. We don’t talk to each other that way. If you say fuck you to me it feels like a real fuck you.
Josh [coming clean]: It is real.
Cornelia: Fuck you. And not semi-playfully either!
Josh: Fuck you. Total real, cutting to the core, fuck you.

…

Cornelia: Where were you last night?
Josh: I was dancing with Darby in an after-hours gay club.
[gesturing towards Jamie]
Josh: Is this some kind of a private meeting?
Cornelia: Did you follow me here?
Josh: I follow him on Twitter! We can’t lie like we used to lie anymore. Everything’s reported. Nothing is private.

…

Josh [of Jamie]: It’s all a pose. It’s like he once saw a sincere person and he’s been imitating him ever since.

…

Fletcher: Before you have a kid, everyone tells you, “It’s the best thing you’ll ever do.” And as soon as you get the baby back from the hospital, those same people are like, “Don’t worry, it gets better.”

…

Josh: I was just with Kent.
Darby: Oh, Kent! I love Kent.
Josh: I saw your ice cream in Jamie’s video.
Darby: Well played, sir.
Josh: He let me think I was the one who found out about Kent in Afghanistan.
Darby: Jamie doesn’t wanna disappoint you. None of us wanna disappoint you. You’re such a purist. Jamie would never have made the movie without Afghanistan. When I told him about Kent and the massacre, he thought it would make a good movie. He just had to figure out how to tell it.
Josh: But why not tell it honestly?
Darby: It’s more entertaining this way. And now it has a before and after which, as you know, Americans love.

…

Josh: But you really will do anything to be successful.
Jamie: Success isn’t my thing, Josh. It’s yours.
Josh: Yeah, you’re right, it is my thing. I’ve got a fucked up relationship with success. I want it and I don’t have it. But what you have scares the shit out of me.

…

Josh: I do know that documentaries are over.
Jamie: Are you kidding? It’s what everyone is doing.
Josh: Leslie’s documentaries are over. What you’re doing is something else. If everyone is filming everything, what’s a documentary anymore? It has no meaning, it’s just some shit you recorded!
[pause]
Josh: Is that old man talk? Maybe it is. You kids have been told you can do anything. You think everything is out there for you to take. It’s not.
Jamie: Nobody owns anything. If I hear a song I like, or a story, it’s mine. It’s mine to use. It’s everybody’s.
Josh: No, it isn’t! That’s not sharing, Jamie, that’s stealing.
Jamie: That’s old man talk.

…

Cornelia [looking at a magazine interview of Jamie a year later]: It’s out there. The evil is unleashed.
Josh: No, you were right, he’s not evil. He’s just… young.[/b]

Timothy Treadwell, Christopher McCandless, Cheryl Strayed. They all seemed to share in common – sort of – a need to transcend the “modern world” by trekking through nature. Escaping the rat race so to speak and finding a new persona away from a world hell bent not only on mass-producing commodities but on mass-producing people to.

Two of them, however, are now dead. But Cheryl is still around. In part because she never really went as far “into the wild” as the others. And her own rendition here appears to be entirely more subjective. And considerably more complicated. There’s that part about the dope for example.

And there’s her mom, Bobbi. This woman’s attitude about life’s trials and tribulations will either give you hope or [like me] make you cringe. But no doubt about it: Cheryl sure loved her Mom.

The film basically shifts back and forth in time in order that we might gain some insights into why in the world she would do something like this. And, given her background, it was, well, rather crazy. And yet, truth be told, I was never quite able to really get the connection between her past and her present.

To the extent to which you too feel trapped in this modern world, Wild will either more or less resonate. Me? Nope, I have no inclination at all to commune with nature. Instead, I have managed to come up with the sort of distractions I can indulge right here in my own apartment.

Though I surely do understand why others might be so inclined. But that is but one more rendition of dasein of course. And what makes Cheryl stand out here in particular is the fact that she is a woman. All the other hikers [except Stacey] are men. And only some of which you would call “gentlemen”.

Wanna try it? Okay, but don’t forget to take a whistle.

As for the ending…the “message”…a bit too New Agey for me.

IMDb

[b]The young Cheryl is portrayed by the actual Cheryl Strayed’s daughter.

The real Cheryl Strayed makes a cameo in the film as the woman who drops off the main character at the beginning of the film and wishes her good luck.

The director covered all of the mirrors so Reese could not see herself during the shoot.

The director would not let Witherspoon read the instruction manual to the tent, or the stove. All of the frustration showed on screen was genuine.

Reese Witherspoon beat out Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson and Emma Watson for the role. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_(film
trailer youtu.be/tn2-GSqPyl0

WILD [2014]
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée

[b]Cheryl [aloud to herself]: “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail…”

…

Cheryl [throwing her other boot down the mountain]: FUCK YOU BITCH!!!

…

Cheryl [on the phone]: Sorry.
Paul: No, I’m sorry.
Cheryl: For what?
Paul: I…I…I don’t know. I’m sorry that you have to walk a thousand miles just…
Cheryl: Finish that sentence. Why do I have to walk a thousand miles?
Paul [after long pause]: Happy trails, Cheryl.

…

Cheryl [reading about Marie Curie]: She died a famous woman, denying her wounds, denying her wounds came from the same source as her power.

…

Cheryl [aloud to herself]: Cold mush is great. Cold mush with nuts. Cold mush with tuna jerky. Cold mush dreams. Cold mush shit.

…

Frank: You ever think about quitting?
Cheryl: Only once about ever two minutes or so.

…

Cheryl [aloud to herself]: You’re doing good, Cheryl. Five to seven miles a day. At this rate you’ll be finished in about twenty years.

…

Cheryl: I don’t know when I became such a piece of shit. I was strong…responsible…I wanted things in life. I was good, you know? I ruined my marriage, and now I’m ruining the rest of my life. I gotta go back to that store. I’m gonna walk myself back to the woman my mother thought I was. I’m going to put myself in the path of beauty.
Aimee: What the hell are you talking about?

…

Ed: Are you burning what you read?
Cheryl: You want me to burn books?
Ed: Well, you’re not going to become a Nazi, I promise you. But you are going make your pack a lot lighter.

…

Cheryl [aloud to herself]: Hi, I’m Cheryl. I’m an unaccompanied female hitchhiker. Would it be okay if I got into your car so that you can rape and dismember me?

…

Jimmy Carter: I’m Jimmy Carter. No relation. I interview hobos for the Hobo Times, just drive all over the USA, and I have to tell you. Lady hobos are hard to find.
Cheryl: Oh, I think you’re mistaken. I’m not a hobo. Second of all, that’s a real thing, the Hobo Times?
Jimmy Carter: Yeah, it’s real enough to pay for my rent and gas. So, how long have you been out on the road?
Cheryl Strayed: I’m not on the road. I’m hiking the PCT. I just had to bypass a chunk of it because there was a snowfall this year.
Jimmy Carter: Okay, so if you’re not a hobo, where do you live?
Cheryl Strayed: I’m between places right now. I’m probably going to live in Portland when I get off the PCT.
Jimmy Carter: This is so fucking cool. I mean, I’ve only spoken to maybe one other female hobo in two years.
Cheryl Strayed: Let me reiterate to you, I am not a hobo and that’s probably cause women can’t walk out of their lives. They’ve got kids to take care of. They’ve got parents to look after.
Jimmy Carter: You sound like a feminist.
Cheryl Strayed: I am.
Jimmy Carter: That’s excellent. That’s fantastic. I love feminists!

…

Cheryl: Can you stop humming that song? What is wrong with you?
Bobbi: What’s wrong with you? I’m happy! Happy people sing.
Cheryl: Why are you happy? We have nothing, mom, nothing.
Bobbi: Well, we’re rich in love.

…

Leif: What are you doing?
Cheryl: Praying. I’m praying to the whole fucking universe…hoping there’s a God. Because I want a miracle. I want a fucking miracle! Our mother isn’t going to die at 45.

…

Cheryl [after store clerk gives her the new boots from REI]: Are you sure there’s not another package?
Clerk: I’m sure. And, lady, if you walked 50 miles in duct tape, ypou got the right package.

…

Stacey: You get lonely?
Cheryl: Honestly? I’m lonelier in my real life than I am out here. I miss my friends, of course, but it’s not as if I have anybody waiting for me at home. How about you?
[pause]
Cheryl: Why are you here?
Stacey: I don’t know. I just need to find something in myself, you know? I think the trail was good for that. I mean, look.
[They look up at the sunset]
Stacey: This has the power to fill you up again, if you’ll let it.
Cheryl: My mother used to say something that drove me nuts. There is a sunrise and a sunset every day and you can choose to be there for it. You can put yourself in the way of beauty.
Stacey: My kind of woman.

…

Cheryl: I thought there’d be couches and Kleenex and shit.
Counselor: That’s 50 bucks an hour therapy. This is 10 bucks an hour therapy. So why do you think you were destroyed by your mpother’s death?
Cheryl: Is that your job? To tell the bereaved they’re grieving too much?
Counselor: People grieve in all sorts of different ways. I’m asking you about yours.
Cheryl: Is mine so bad?
Counselor: You’re using heroine and and having sex with anyone who asks. I don’t believe these things are making you happy.
Cheryl: Well, that’s where you’re wrong. When I’m doing these things I am happy, and when I’m not I want to die.

…

Cheryl [to herself]: Where is that fucking tank?!

…

Cheryl [voiceover in a letter to Paul]: I have only another 300 miles left to walk. I’m desperate for it to be over. I’m terrified too. When I’m done, I’ll only have two dimes to my name, but I’ll have to start living. I’m nowhere near ready.

…

Cheryl: God is a ruthless bitch.

…

Cheryl [voiceover]: There’s no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish. Or die. Or take another course. What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I’d done something I shouldn’t have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I’d done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything differently than I had done? What if I’d actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was? [/b]

He wants to be one of the greats. And, yes, here is yet another film that protrays just how brutally your life can be twisted into knots by those employed to make that come true.

After all, aside from those very, very few who become music prodigies by the age of 6, most folks will have to commit to those endlessly grueling hours practicing and practicing and practicing and practicing and practicing.

So, is it a good thing or a bad thing then if your teacher is Terence Fletcher? And here he is fucking God. In other words, with these guys the center of the universe is jazz. Playing it to perfection. And Andrew decides that he wants to be perfect too. And if that means cutting himself off from the rest of the world and reducing every waking moment of his life down to being the best fucking drummer since Buddy Rich, well, so be it.

The ego and the arrogance on display here is nothing short of breathtaking. But: Is that what it takes?

Here’s the problem though [for me…for most of us]: We don’t know shit about what Fletcher knows about music. So how in the world can we possibly grasp if what he says and does here is…appropriate?

In other words [you’ll be asking yourself], when do his “methods” here border on or actually become…“abuse”?

Besides, for me, the less I know about music “technically” the more it fulfills me. Music is emotion. Or an aesthetic experience. So the more I start to think about it “intellectually” the more I am distracted from the reason I listen to it.

IMDb

[b]During the more intense practice scenes, the director wouldn’t yell, “cut!” so that Miles Teller would keep drumming until he exhausted himself.

Miles Teller, who has played the drums since he was 15, received blisters on his hands due to the vigorous, unconventional style of jazz drumming. Some of his blood was on the drumsticks and the drum set as a result.

Buddy Rich, the famous drummer who Andrew idolizes, never received any formal music education and said he never practiced.

The film is one of the lowest grossing movies ever to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

J.K. Simmons has won 47 awards for his role as Fletcher.

Andrew appears in every scene.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiplash_(2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/7d_jQycdQGo

WHIPLASH [2014]
Written and directed by Damien Chazelle

[b]Fletcher: Either you’re deliberately out of tune and sabotaging my band, or you don’t know you’re out of tune, and that’s even worse.

…

Fletcher: Do you think you’re out of tune? What are you…there’s no fucking Mars Bar down there, what are you looking at? Look up here, look at me. Do you think you were out of tune?
Metz [after much hesitation]: Yes.
Fletcher: THEN WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU SAY SO?!! I carried your fat ass for too long Metz, I’m not gonna have you cost us a competition because your minds on a fucking happy meal instead of on pitch. Jackson congratulations, you are fourth chair. Metz why are you still sitting there, GET THE FUCK OUT!!
[pause]
Fletcher: For the record, Metz wasn’t out of tone. You were, Ericson. But he didn’t know. And that’s bad enough.

…

Fletcher: Why do you suppose I just hurled a chair at your head, Neiman?
Andrew: I… I don’t know.
Fletcher: Sure you do.
Andrew: The tempo?
Fletcher: Were you rushing or were you dragging?
Andrew: I-I don’t know.
Fletcher: Start counting!
Andrew: Five, six…
Fletcher: In four, dammit! Look at me!
Andrew: One, two, three, four.
[Fletcher slaps him in the face]
Andrew: One, two, three, four.
[Fletcher slaps him again]
Andrew: One, two, three…
Fletcher: Now, was I rushing or I was dragging?
Andrew: I don’t know.
Fletcher: Count again.
Andrew: One, two, three, four.
[slap in the face]
Andrew: One, two, three, four.
[another slap in the face]
Andrew: One, two, three, four…
Fletcher: Rushing or dragging?
Andrew: Rushing.
Fletcher [yelling]: So, you do know the difference! If you deliberately sabotage my band, I’ll fuck you like a pig. Now are you a rusher, or are you a dragger. Or are you gonna be on my fucking time?!
Andrew: I’ll be on your time.

…

Fletcher: What does that say?
Andrew: Quarter note equals 215
Fletcher: Count me a 215.
Andrew: One two three four…One two three four…
Fletcher: Jesus fucking Christ, I didn’t know they allow retards into Shaffer. Am I to understand you cannot read tempo? Can you even fucking read music? What is that?
Andrew: Eight note.
Fletvcher: Yes, what is that?
A ndrew: A dotted sixteenth
Fletcher: Sing me a measure 101.
[Andrew sputters]
Fletcher: What are you, in a fucking acapella group? Play the goddamn kit! Stop! Now answer my question. Were you rushing, or were you dragging? Answer!
Andrew: Rushing.

…

Fletcher [after driving Andrew to tears]: Are you upset?
[Andrew nods yes]
Fletcher: Say it.
Andrew: I’m upset.
Fletcher: Say it so the whole band can hear you.
Andrew [a little louder]: I’m upset!
Fletcher: Louder!
Andrew [louder] I’m upset!!
Fletcher: LOUDER! You are a worthless, friendless, faggot-lipped little piece of shit whose mommy left daddy when she figured out he wasn’t Eugene O’Neill, and who is now weeping and slobbering all over my drum set like a fucking nine-year old girl! So for the final, FATHER-FUCKING time, SAY IT LOUDER!
Andrew [at the top of his lungs]: I’M UPSET!!![/b]

Now. was that really necessary? Some will argue yes, some no.

[b]Fletcher [to the band]: Rhythm and soloists, bar 45 we gonna pick up the tempo there alright? Bar 106, brass, do not forget we sharp that ninth. Everybody remember, Lincoln Center and its ilk use these competitions to decide who they are interested in and who they are not And I am not gonna have my reputation in that department tarnished by a bunch of fucking limp-dick, sour-note, flattered on their girlfriend’s flexible tempo dipshits.

…

Poster of Buddy Rich on Andrew’s wall: IF YOU DON’T HAVE ABILITY, YOU WIND UP PLAYING IN A ROCK BAND

…

Tanner: I can’t go on stage, I don’t know the charts by heart.
Fletcher: Are you fucking kidding me?
Tanner: I need the music, it’s my memory, I need visual cues.
Fletcher: Visual cues?
Tanner: It’s a medical condition.
Fletcher: Medical condition? What are you, fucking Sunjay Gupta? Play the goddamn music!
Tanner: I can’t.
Andrew: I can.
Fletcher: You know Whiplash by heart?
Andrew: Yes sir, every measure.

…

Uncle Frank: You got any friends, Andy?
Andrew: No.
Uncle Frank: Oh, why’s that?
Andrew: I don’t know, I just never really saw the use.
Uncle Frank: Well, who are you going to play with otherwise? Lennon and McCartney, they were school buddies, am I right?
Andrew: Charlie Parker didn’t know anybody 'til Jo Jones threw a cymbal at his head.
Uncle Frank: So that’s your idea of success, huh?
Andrew: I think being the greatest musician of the 20th century is anybody’s idea of success.
Jim: Dying broke and drunk and full of heroin at the age of 34 is not exactly my idea of success.
Andrew: I’d rather die drunk, broke at 34 and have people at a dinner table talk about me than live to be rich and sober at 90 and nobody remembered who I was.
Uncle Frank: Ah, but your friends will remember you, that’s the point.
Andrew: None of us were friends with Charlie Parker. That’s the point.

…

Andrew [to Nicole]: I’m just gonna lay it out there. This is why I don’t think that we shouldn’t be together. And I thought about it a lot. And this is what’s gonna happen, ok? I’m gonna keep pursuing what I’m pursuing And because I’m doing that it’s gonna take more and more of my time And I’m not gonna be able to spend so much time with you. And when I do spend time with you, I’ll be thinking about drumming. I’ll be thinking about Jazz and my charts and all that. And because of that you’re gonna start to resent me.
And you’re gonna tell me to ease up drumming, spend more time with you because you’re not feeling importrant And I’m not gonna be able to do that. And I’ll just start to resent you for even asking me to stop drumming. And we’ll just start to hate each other. And it’s gonna get very… it’s gonna be ugly. And so… for those reasons, I’d rather just break it off clean.
[a long pause as he stares at Nicole who is dumbfounded]
Andrew: Cuz I wanna be great.

…

Andrew: I wanna be one of the greats.
Nicole: And I’ll stop you from doing that?
Andrew: Yeah.
Nicole: You know I’ll stop you from doing that. You know that for a fact.
Andrew: Yes.
Nicole: And I barely see you anyway. And when I did see you you treated me like shit because I’m just some girl who doesn’t know what she wants. And you have a path, and you’re going to be great, and I’m gonna be forgotten. And therefore, you won’t be able to give me the time and day because you have bigger things to pursue.
Andrew: That’s exactly my point.
Nicole [incredulous]: What the fuck is wrong with you?! You’re right, we should not be dating.

…

Terence Fletcher: Try me you fucking weasel! At 5:30 that’s in exactly 11 minutes my band is on stage. If your ass is not on that stool with your own fucking sticks in hand or you make ONE FUCKING MISTAKE, ONE! I will drum your ass back to Nassau where you can turn pages until you graduate or fucking dropout! By the time your done at Schaeffer your gonna make daddy look like a fucking success story, got it, OR, we can let Johnny Utah play the part, you choose.
Andrew: It’s my part, I’ll be on your stage.

…

Fletcher: I don’t think people understood what it was I was doing at Shaffer. I wasn’t there to conduct. Any fucking moron can wave his arms and keep people in tempo. I was there to push people beyond what’s expected of them. I believe that is…an absolute necessity. Otherwise, we’re depriving the world of the next Louis Armstrong. The next Charlie Parker. I told you about how Charlie Parker became Charlie Parker, right?
Andrew: Jo Jones threw a cymbal at his head.
Fletcher: Exactly. Parker’s a young kid, pretty good on the sax. Gets up to play at a cutting session, and he fucks it up. And Jones nearly decapitates him for it. And he’s laughed off-stage. Cries himself to sleep that night, but the next morning, what does he do? He practices. And he practices and he practices with one goal in mind, never to be laughed at again. And a year later, he goes back to the Reno and he steps up on that stage, and plays the best motherfucking solo the world has ever heard. So imagine if Jones had just said: "Well, that’s okay, Charlie. That was all right. Good job. "And then Charlie thinks to himself, “Well, shit, I did do a pretty good job.” End of story. No Bird. That, to me, is an absolute tragedy. But that’s just what the world wants now. People wonder why jazz is dying.

…

Fletcher: I tell you man, every Starbucks’ Jazz album just proved my point, really. There are no two words in English language more harmful than “good job”.
Andrew: But is there a line? You know maybe… you go to far, you discourage next Charlie Parker from ever becoming Charlie Parker?
Andrew: No man, no. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.

…

Fletcher: The truth is, Andrew, I never really had a Charlie Parker. But I tried. I actually fucking tried. And that’s more than most people ever do. And I’ll never apologize for how I tried.

…

Fletcher: You think I’m fucking stupid?
Andrew: What?
Fletcher: I know it was you.

…

Fletcher [after Andrew all but takes over the stage]: Andrew what’re you doing man?
Andrew: I’ll cue you![/b]

From the director of El Topo, The Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre above, this is his first film in 23 years.

The “dance of reality”? Well, it’s probably futile to try to pin down excactly what that means. As with all of his films the extraordinary images pop up on the screen and you will take out of them only that which you must necessarily first put into them: “I”.

Thus the images will come to symbolize for you something that may well be unrecognizable to others.

Context [as always] is everything. That and point of view.

In other words, you must first be willing to acknowledge just how complex – even surreal – this particular “sense of reality” becomes for someone who has never experienced this particular context from this particular point of view. Thus you are always forced to connect the dots [in your own way] between that which is intensely personal and that which is applicable to everyone.

But then the director has always seemed to suggest that, with respect to what the most important things in life are said to “mean”, human reality is clearly subjective. Some will attach words like “spiritual” or “mystical” to his narratives. Some will go looking for “enlightenment”. Others will just be satisfied to soak in the experience of watching the film itself.

Though, sure, some will insist that, in fact, they do know what he is trying to tell us here. Don’t believe them. Or, as one reviewer put it, “Alejandro Jodorowsky is insane but amazing”.

Personally, his films have always elicited a jumble of conflicting reactions. Too much of this and too little of that. A recreation of all that brings you hope and despair along with the realization that nothing ever really changes over the years.

Look for the usual suspects: God, Marx, Freud. All the ever calamitous psycho-sexual traumas that befall the naked ape going about the business of subsisting in a world owned and operated by the few.

A profile of Jodorowsky from the New York Times Magazine: nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magaz … .html?_r=0

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dance_of_Reality
trailer: youtu.be/GMM5tZOsr3Q

THE DANCE OF REALITY [La Danza de la Realidad] 2013
Written and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro [as an adult to the camera]: Money is like blood, it gives life if it flows. Money is like Christ, it blesses you if you share it. Money is like Buddha, if you don’t work, you don’t get it. Money enlightens those who use it to open the flower of the world, and damns those weho glorify it, confounding riches with the soul. There is no difference between money and conscience. There is no difference between conscience and death. There is no difference between death and wealth.

Got that? See what I mean about taking out of him only that which you first put into him.

Alejandro [thinking back to when he was a child]: I felt confused: should I suffer the anguish of the sardines or should I delight in the joy of the gulls? The balance tipped in favor of anguish when I saw the seagulls deprived of their banquet. In that world, in which I was a stranger, all things were connected in a web of suffering and pleasure.

Just as they still are today.

Jaime [to Alejandro as a child]: A man must be brave. If you do as I ask then you will win my admiration. Let the dentist treat you without anaesthetic.
[he puts out a lit cigarette in his palm]
Jaime: Willpower overcomes pain. Lets see if you are like me.

He doesn’t want his son to become a “faggot”: Gender roles in Chile circa the 1930s.

[b]Alejandro as a child: Look, Papa, medals!!
[he shows Jamie symbols of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faith]
Jaime: Who gave these to you?
Alejandro: The theosophist.
[Jaime slaps him hard in the face]
Jaime: I told you not to see him! Crazy idiot! Numbing his fear of death with idle dreams!
[he takes Alejandro to the bathroom…to the toilet]
Jaime: Down on your knees.
[he drops the medals in the toilet one by one]
Jaime: God does not exist. God does not exist! God does not exist!! You die and you rot. There’s nothing beyond!

…

Jaime [to Sara]: Now I know how to save the poor! Chile cannot put up with a tyrant’s lies forever. I’ll go to Santiago and put a bullet through his head![/b]

Next up: Augusto Pinochet and his pals in the CIA.

[b]Alejandro [as an adult to himself as a child]: Being in a cradle of cement swaddled in a gigantic shadow bound to my empty existence. Trapped in this island of flesh, searching for myself in memories and meeting no one.

…

Alejandro [as a child to his mother]: The darkness is swallowing everything. It’s going to devour us.

…

Sara: Alejandro, do I love you?
Alejandro: Yes, Mama.
Sara: How much?
Alejandro: From the sky to the earth.
Sara: This is not my love, it comes from God. I am merely the sender. As God creates all, so we all radiate His love. My son, the darkness loves you as much as I do, for it is God’s shadow. [/b]

Always that same tug of war given the brute facticity embodied in human existence: God/No God.

[b]Alejandro [as a child]: They called me a Jew and hit me.
Sara: If you want to survive you must become invisible…you must go unnoticed. I’m going to remove those barriers from your mind.
[she mimics yanking them out of his body]
Sara: Out with the Jew! Out with the nose and the white skin! Now you are empty! You are invisible!

…

Sara [to Jaime]: You found in Ibáñez all you admired in Stalin. You are the same as they are! You have lived in the guise of a tyrant.

…

Alejandro [voiceover as an adult]: I soar away from the past, land in the body of the present. Bear the burden of painful years. Yet in the heart keep the child as the bread of life, as a white canary, as a worthy diamond, as a lucidity without walls. Wide open doors and windows. Through which blows the wind. Only the wind. Just the wind.[/b]

The end. Go ahead, explain to us what that means.

Just recently the television series Humans completed its first season: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series

And while airing on commerical television, I thought it was rather effective in exploring both the theoretical and the practical implications of “synthetic human beings”. In other words, they are programed, but they are programed in such a way that they very, very closely mimic [duplicate?] human intellectual and emotional reactions to the world around them.

Here though the interactions are all confined to the research facility. Think of Ava as the prototype.

But, really, when you think about it, are not 100% flesh and blood human beings not also programed from birth [by nature, through nurture] to think and to feel in one way rather than another?

Still, the important thing is that a film like this can steer clear of the manner in which this sort of thing is explored in films like The Terminator. There the machines are taking over but all of the human characters are basically just stick figures.

How probable is this? Well, let’s face it, after the technological marvels we have been deluged with over the past couple of decades almost nothing would really astonish us:

Director Alex Garland has described the future presented in the film as ‘ten minutes from now’. Meaning that ‘if somebody like Google or Apple announced tomorrow that they had made Ava, we would all be surprised, but we wouldn’t be that surprised’.

For me this stuff always revolves around determinism. To what extent is intelligence, “artifical” or otherwise, not just a manifestation of the immutable laws of nature?

Look for the part about sex. Talk about a Turing Test. And the part about death? A bit more [or less] problematic.

IMDb

[b]The title derives from the Latin phrase ‘Deus Ex-Machina’, meaning ‘a god From the Machine’, a phrase that originated in Greek tragedies. An actor playing a god would be lowered down via a platform (machine) and solve the characters’ issues, resulting in a happy ending for all.

A portrait of Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein painted by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt is visible in Nathan’s room. The subject of the portrait is the sister of Ludwig Wittgenstein, author of The Blue Book.

In an analogy, Nathan says that Caleb should pretend he’s Captain Kirk. This is interesting, as the film’s plot is incredibly similar to the original Star Trek episode “Requiem for Methuselah” (1969) in which a genius inventor creates a female android and wishes her to discover emotions such as love by using Captain Kirk as a target for her emotions, just as Nathan uses Caleb.

Much of the plot can be interpreted as an homage to “Frankenstein.” This is initially made overt when Nathan refers to the story of Prometheus, of which Mary Shelly’s novel was named “The Modern Prometheus.”[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina_(film
trailer: youtu.be/XYGzRB4Pnq8

EX MACHINA [2015]
Written and directed by Alex Garland

[b]Caleb: You’re leaving me here?
Pilot: This is as close as I’m allowed to get to the building.
Caleb: What building?
Pilot: Just follow the river.

…

Nathan: There’s something wrong. What’s wrong?
Caleb: There’s nothing wrong.
Nathan: It’s the windows. You’re thinking there’s no windows. It’s subterranean. It’s not cozy, it’s claustrophobic. Caleb, there’s a reason there are no windows in this room. This building isn’t a house. It’s a research facility. Buried in these walls is enough fiber optic cable to reach the moon and lasso it.

…

Nathan: So, do you know what the Turing Test is?
Caleb: Yeah. I know what the Turing Test is. It’s when a human interacts with a computer. And if the human doesn’t know they’re interacting with a computer, the test is passed.
Nathan: And what does a pass tell us?
Caleb: That the computer has artificial intelligence.

…

Nathan: Over the next few days you’re going to be the human component in a Turing Test.
Caleb: Holy shit!
Nathan: Yeah, that’s right, Caleb. You got it. Because if the test is passed, you are dead center of the greatest scientific event in the history of man.
Caleb: If you’ve created a conscious machine, it’s not the history of man. That’s the history of gods.

…

Caleb: When did you learn how to speak, Ava?
Ava: I always knew how to speak, and that’s strange, isn’t it?
Caleb: Why?
Ava: Because language is something that people acquire.
Caleb: Well, some people believe language exists from birth. And what is learned is the ability to attach words and structure to the latent ability.
Ava: Do you agree with that?
Caleb: I don’t know.

…

Caleb: Uh, it’s just that in the Turing Test, the machine should be hidden from the examiner.
Nathan: No, no, no, we’re way past that. If I hid Ava from you, so you just heard her voice, she would pass for human. The real test is to show you that she’s a robot and then see if you still feel she has consciousness.

…

Caleb: Her language abilities, they’re incredible. The system is stochastic. Right? It’s non-deterministic. At first I thought she was mapping from internal semantic form to syntactic tree-structure and then getting linearized words. But then I started to realize the model was some kind of hybrid.
Nathan: Caleb.
Caleb: No?
Nathan: I understand that you want me to explain how Ava works. But I’m sorry, I’m not gonna be able to do that.
Caleb: Try me. I’m hot on high-level abstraction.
Nathan: It’s not because I think you’re too dumb. It’s because I want to have a beer and a conversation with you. Not a seminar. Nothing analytical. Just how do you feel?
Caleb: I feel that she’s fucking amazing.[/b]

And [it goes without saying] beautiful. A Cherry 2000 for sure.

[b]Caleb: It feels like testing Ava through conversation is kind of a closed loop. Like testing a chess computer by only playing chess.
Nathan: How else do you test a chess computer?
Caleb: Well, it depends. You know, I mean, you can play it to find out if it makes good moves, but, uh…But that won’t tell you if it knows that it’s playing chess. And it won’t tell you if it knows what chess is. And I think being able to differentiate between those two is the Turing Test you want me to perform.
Nathan: Look, do me a favor. Lay off the textbook approach. I just want simple answers to simple questions. Yesterday I asked you how you felt about her and you gave me a great answer. Now the question is, how does she feel about you?

…

Ava: Caleb. You’re wrong.
Caleb: Wrong about what?
Ava: Nathan.
Caleb: In what way?
Ava: He isn’t your friend.
Nathan: Excuse me? I’m sorry, Ava, I don’t understand.
Ava: You shouldn’t trust him. You shouldn’t trust anything he says.

…

Nathan [to Caleb]: It’s funny. You know. No matter how rich you get, shit goes wrong. You can’t insulate yourself from it. I used to think it was death and taxes you couldn’t avoid, but it’s actually death and shit.

…

Caleb: You hacked the world’s cell phones?
Nathan: Yeah. And all the manufacturers knew I was doing it, too. But they couldn’t accuse me without admitting they were doing it themselves.

…

Nathan [to Caleb, speaking about Ava’s brain]: Here’s the weird thing about search engines. It was like striking oil in a world that hadn’t invented internal combustion. Too much raw material. Nobody knew what to do with it. You see, my competitors, they were fixated on sucking it up and monetizing via shopping and social media. They thought that search engines were a map of what people were thinking. But actually they were a map of how people were thinking. Impulse. Response. Fluid. Imperfect. Patterned. Chaotic.

…

Caleb: Why did you give her sexuality? An AI doesn’t need a gender. She could have been a gray box.
Nathan: Hmm. Actually, I don’t think that’s true. Can you give an example of consciousness, at any level, human or animal, that exists without a sexual dimension? They have sexuality as an evolutionary reproductive need. What imperative does a gray box have to interact with another gray box? Can consciousness exist without interaction? Anyway, sexuality is fun, man. If you’re gonna exist, why not enjoy it? What? You want to remove the chance of her falling in love and fucking? And in answer to your real question, you bet she can fuck.

…

Caleb: Did you program her to flirt with me?
Nathan: If I did, would that be cheating?
Caleb: Wouldn’t it?
Nathan: Caleb, what’s your type?
Caleb: Of girl?
Nathan: No, salad dressing. Yeah, of girl; what’s your type of girl? You know what, don’t even answer that. Let’s say its black chicks. Okay, that’s your thing. For the sake of argument, that’s your thing, okay? Why is that your thing? Because you did a detailed analysis of all racial types and you cross-referenced that analysis with a points-based system? No! You’re just attracted to black chicks. A consequence of accumulated external stimuli that you probably didn’t even register as they registered with you.

…

Caleb: Did you program her to like me, or not?
Nathan: I programmed her to be heterosexual, just like you were programmed to be heterosexual.
Caleb: Nobody programmed me to be straight.
Nathan: You decided to be straight? Please! Of course you were programmed, by nature or nurture or both and to be honest, Caleb, you’re starting to annoy me now because this is your insecurity talking, this is not your intellect. [/b]

You tell me how close all of this comes to the manner in which I construe dasein.

[b]Nathan [pointing to a painting]: You know this guy, right?
Caleb: Jackson Pollock.
Nathan: Jackson Pollock. That’s right. The drip painter. Okay. He let his mind go blank, and his hand go where it wanted. Not deliberate, not random. Some place in between. They called it automatic art. Let’s make this like Star Trek, okay? Engage intellect.
Caleb: Excuse me?
Nathan: I’m Kirk. Your head’s the warp drive. Engage intellect. What if Pollock had reversed the challenge. What if instead of making art without thinking, he said, “You know what? I can’t paint anything, unless I know exactly why I’m doing it.” What would have happened?
Caleb: He never would have made a single mark.
Nathan: Yes! You see, there’s my guy, there’s my buddy, who thinks before he opens his mouth. He never would have made a single mark. The challenge is not to act automatically. It’s to find an action that is not automatic. From painting, to breathing, to talking, to fucking. To falling in love. And for the record, Ava’s not pretending to like you. And her flirting isn’t an algorithm to fake you out. You’re the first man she’s met that isn’t me. And I’m like her dad, right? Can you blame her for getting a crush on you?

…

Caleb [to Ava]: When I was in college, I did a semester on AI theory. There was a thought experiment they gave us. It’s called “Mary in the Black and White Room.” Mary is a scientist, and her specialist subject is color. She knows everything there is to know about it. The wavelengths. The neurological effects. Every possible property that color can have. But she lives in a black and white room. She was born there and raised there. And she can only observe the outside world on a black and white monitor. And then one day someone opens the door. And Mary walks out. And she sees a blue sky. And at that moment, she learns something that all her studies couldn’t tell her. She learns what it feels like to see color. The thought experiment was to show the students the difference between a computer and a human mind. The computer is Mary in the black and white room. The human is when she walks out. Did you know that I was brought here to test you?
Ava: No.

…

Caleb: Why did you think I was here?
Ava: I didn’t know. I didn’t question it.
Caleb: I’m here to test if you have a consciousness, or if you’re just simulating one. Nathan isn’t sure if you have one or not. How does that make you feel?
Ava: It makes me feel sad.

…

Caleb [after a power cut]: Why did you tell me I shouldn’t trust Nathan?
Ava: Because he tells lies.
Caleb: Lies about what?
Ava: Everything.
Caleb: Including the power cuts?
Ava: What do you mean?
Caleb: Don’t you think it’s possible that he’s watching us? That the blackouts are orchestrated, so he can see how we behave when we think we’re unobserved.
Ava: I charge my batteries via induction plates. If I reverse the power flow, it overloads the system.
Caleb: You’re causing the cuts?
Ava: So we can see how we behave when we’re unobserved.

…

Ava: Question four. What will happen to me if I fail your test?
Caleb: Ava…
Ava: Will it be bad?
Caleb: I don’t know.
Ava: Do you think I might be switched off, because I don’t function as well as I’m supposed to?
Caleb: Ava, I don’t know the answer to your question. It’s not up to me.
Ava: Why is it up to anyone? Do you have people who test you and might switch you off?
Caleb: No, I don’t.
Ava: Then why do I?

…

Caleb: I didn’t know there was gonna be a model after Ava.
Nathan: Yeah, why? You thought she was a one-off?
Caleb: No, I knew there must have been prototypes. So I…I knew she wasn’t the first, but I thought maybe the last.
Nathan: Well, Ava doesn’t exist in isolation any more than you or me. She’s part of a continuum. So Version 9.6 and so on. And each time they get a little bit better.
Caleb: When you make a new model, what do you do with the old one?
Nathan: Well, I, uh…download the mind, unpack the data. Add in the new routines I’ve been writing. And to do that you end up partially formatting, so the memories go. But the body survives. And Ava’s body is a good one. You feel bad for Ava?
[he lets out a big sigh]
Nathan: Feel bad for yourself, man. One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.
Caleb [Quoting J. Robert Oppenheimer who cites the Hindu Gita]: “I am become death, The Destroyer of Worlds.”

…

Caleb [after determining that he is not himself one of Nathan’s creations]: Don’t talk. Just listen. You were right about Nathan. Everything you said.
Ava: What’s he gonna do to me?
Caleb: He’s gonna reprogram your AI. Which is the same as killing you.

…

Nathan: So, anyway, surely now is when you tell me if Ava passed or failed. Are you gonna keep me in suspense?
Caleb: No, no. Her, uh…Her AI is beyond doubt.
Nathan: She passed?
Caleb: Yes.
Nathan: Wow! Wow. That’s fantastic. Although…I gotta say, I’m a bit surprised. I mean, did we ever get past the chess problem, as you phrased it? As in, how do you know if a machine is expressing a real emotion or just simulating one? Does Ava actually like you? Or not? Although, now that I think about it, there is a third option. Not whether she does or does not have the capacity to like you. But whether she’s pretending to like you.
Caleb: Pretending to like me?
Nathan: Yeah.
Caleb:Well, why would she do that?
Nathan: I don’t know. Maybe if she thought of you as a means of escape.[/b]

Ah, but isn’t that just like the “real thing”?

[b]Ava [to Nathan]: Isn’t it strange, to create something that hates you?

…

Nathan: You feel stupid, but you really shouldn’t, because proving an AI is exactly as problematic as you said it would be.
Caleb: What was the real test?
Nathan: You. Ava was a rat in a maze. And I gave her one way out. To escape, she’d have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did. Now, if that isn’t true AI, what the fuck is?
Caleb: So my only function was to be someone he could use to escape?
Nathan: Yeah.
Caleb: And you didn’t select me because I’m good at coding?
Nathan: No. Well…No. I mean, you’re okay. You’re even pretty good, but…
Caleb: You selected me based on my search engine inputs.
Nathan: They showed a good kid…
Caleb: …with no family…
Nathan: …with a moral compass…
Caleb: …and no girlfriend. Did you design Ava’s face based on my pornography profile?
Nathan: Oh. Shit, dude.
Caleb: Did you?
Nathan: Hey, if a search engine’s good for anything, right?[/b]

As with the terminator, “it” will be back. Or, as the tagline puts it: “It doesn’t think. It doesn’t feel. It doesn’t give up.”

It? Out in the real world of course “it” can be practically anything. And, in the end, “it” is always death. Yet [to some] how “supernatural” that can seem. What is death? What does it mean to die? What happens to you?

Horror films of course are often bursting at the seams with death. And more often than not the victims are young. A scary reminder to all of all that is not [or cannot] be known about the world around us. No one is ever really safe from whatever “it” happens to be. Or whoever “it” happens to be. It is always never nothing…and it is always never not stalking you from the cradle to the grave.

After all, you don’t have to believe in the supernatural to know that there are “monsters” out in the world. And lots of them seem to revolve around sex. Have sex with the wrong person and there can be consequences. Consequences that not only follow you to the grave but put you in in.

Just say no?

For me the film wasn’t “scary” so much as effectively sucking you up into [or down into] a mood of impending doom. In that sense, “It” might be a metaphor for human existence itself. There is always something out to get you.

While just “an Indie horror film”, this one garnered a 96% fresh rating from 191 critics at Rotten Tomatoes.

Look for the part about political economy. A sub-text as it were.

IMDb

The film’s concept derives from a recurring nightmare the director used to have, where he would be stalked by a predator that continually walked slowly towards him.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Follows
trailer: youtu.be/QX38jXwnRAM

IT FOLLOWS [2014]
Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell

[b]Jay: What’re you reading?
Yara: The Idiot.
Jay: Is it any good?
Yara: I don’t know yet. It’s about Paul.

…

Yara: I have an idea!
Paul: What?
Yara [tilts to one side and farts loudly]: It got away.

…

Jay: You ever played the ‘Trade’ game?
Hugh: No, what is that?
Jay: It’s a people watching game. You start by watching the crowd. Casually just go by the people around you. Now, without telling me, pick a person you want to trade places with. It can be anyone, for whatever reason.
Hugh: Okay. I got it.
Jay: Now, I get 2 guesses to figure out who you picked. And why you want to trade places with them.

…

Hugh: You’re not going to believe me. But I need you to remember what I’m saying. Okay? This thing. It’s going to follow you. Somebody gave it to me and I passed it to you. Back in the car. It could look like someone you know. Or it could be a stranger in a crowd. Whatever helps it to get close to you.

…

Yara [reading from The Idiot]: Listen to this. “I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction – if a house is falling upon you, for instance – one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one’s eyes and wait, come what may…”

…

Hugh/Jeff: If it kills her. It gets me. It goes straight down the line, whoever started it.

…

Yara: When I was a little girl my parents would not allow me to go south of 8th mile. And I did not even know what that meant until I got a little older. And I started realizing that. That was where the city started and the suburbs ended. And I used to think about how shitty and weird was that. I mean I had to ask permission to go to the state fair with my best friend and her parents only because it was a few blocks past the border.

…

Yara [reading from The Idiot]: “When there is torture, there is pain and wounds, physical agony, and all this distracts the mind from mental suffering, so that one is tormented only by the wounds until the moment of death. But the most terrible agony may not be in the wounds themselves but in knowing for certain that within an hour, then within ten minutes, then within half a minute, now at this very instant your soul will leave your body and you will no longer be a person, and that is certain; the worst thing is that it is certain.”[/b]

In 1971 I spent most of the year in either Song Be, South Vietnam or at Fort Devens in Ayer Massaschuettes. In the military in other words. In and out of war.

But being in the military is much like everything else: there are the parts that overlap and the parts that don’t. Here the protagonist is in the military too. But in a very different context and with a very different set of consequences.

So, I both can and cannot relate to it.

But, in one respect, the experience may well overlap in the manner in which Eamon describes it:

“Posh cunts telling thick cunts to kill poor cunts. That’s the army for you. It’s all a lie.”

Now, whether you can or or cannot relate to it may be a another matter altogether.

And that’s before we get to the part about “politics”.

In fact back then lots of folks were more fully committed to seeing everything in terms of good and evil, truth and lies, us and them. And trust me: in the military the universe and everything in it revolves around either/or.

And then there is the hatred. The hatred on both sides [all sides given the myriad factions] is so far beyond ferocious it approaches the sort of thing we witnessed in Iraq when the nail guns were in vogue. And [needless to say] the worst of it unfolds smack dab in the middle of the working class communities. A “religious” conflict unfolding smack dab in the middle of the capitalist political economy.

The fog of internecine “war”. Both meanings of the word. And no one is allowed to be “neutral” here. Innocent bystanders – civillians – simply do not exist. So, convoluted doesn’t even come close to describing these events.

Look for the boy “soldier”. The one who gets his arms blown off. Not much in the way of a childhood here.

Based on a true story.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2771_(film
trailer: youtu.be/J-BaKfl1Ms4

'71 [2014]
Directed by Yann Demange

Commander: Due to deteriorating security in Belfast your regiment will be shipped there for an emergency. Any questions?
Soldier: We’re not going to Germany?
Commander: You’re going to Belfast. I assume that everyone knows where Belfast is. Northern Ireland, UK. Eire. You are not leaving this country.

That’s one way to put it. There are however others.

The politics:

[b]Commander [to the troops]: This information is basic but very necessary. Loosely, very loosely, we can divide the city between Protestants in the east represented here in orange. They are friendly. And Catholic nationalist in the west. Represented in green, hostile. Both communities have paramilitary factions after each other in war. You should also know that within the Republican movement there is a division among the most senior officers of the IRA, and the younger elements, more radical street fighters, the Provisionals. This is the front line, boys. Catholics and Protestants living side by side in conflict, at each other’s throats.

…

Mother in Raided House [to the Lieutenant]: For God’s sake, will you never leave us alone?!!

…

Young boy: You’re not a Catholic, not with a name like Gary Hook. Are you Protestant?
Gary: I don’t know.
Boy: You don’t know? I’ve fucking heard it all now.

…

Boy [to Gary]: I’m gonna join the Army. I’m gonna join the Ulster Rifles. My da was in 'em. My granddad was in 'em too. It’s good that you’re here now cause we can get on and kill all them Fenian bastards once and for all. They killed my Da…IRA bastards. They’re gonna kill us all.

…

Eamon [tending to Gary’s wound]: I’m not going to lie to you.
[pauses for a few seconds]
Eamon: This is going to hurt like a fuck.

…

Corporal: Why aren’t you out there lookin’ for him?
Captain: Who?
Corporal: Hook. Private Hook. You probably know where they’re taking…
Captain [shouting]: Don’t you fuckin’ dare!!! I’m your fucking senior officer! Stand up straight!
[glares at the corporal and then says quietly to Armitage]
Captain: You need to learn to control your men, Lieutenant. I am not here to clean up your fucking mistakes. Your men, your fucking responsibility, not mine.
Lt. Armitage [nervously]: I’m asking for your help.
Captain [tossing Hook’s dog tags to him]: There you go. There’s my help.
Lt. Armitage: Is he dead?
Captain: We do not know. The situation is confused, to say the least. Now if you do not mind, we have work to do. Off you go.

…

Eamon [to Gary]: I was in the Army myself. Twenty years. Medic. Posh cunts telling thick cunts to kill poor cunts. That’s the army for you. It’s all a lie. They don’t care about you. You’re just a piece of meat to them. Piece of meat. [/b]

Think back to Dubya Bush cracking jokes about looking for Saddam’s WMDs in the Oval Office.

[b]Gary [with a huge knife to a little girl]: Shhh…

…

Quinn [giving the gun to Sean, a boy]: Come on, Sean. Shoot him. Don’t think about it. None of us want to do this. We’re at war here, Sean. Pull the trigger.
[Sean can’t bring himself to shoot]
Quinn: Come on Sean. Pull it. I know you can.
Gary [looking at Sean, pleading]: Please.
Quinn: You wanted to be a gunman, Sean? This is what being a gunman means. Pull the trigger.

…

C.O. [after Lt. Armitage told him about Sergeant Leslie Lewis attempting to kill Gary Hook]: I want you to listen to me Lieutenant. This is very important. It was a confused situation. In these circumstances, what you saw, what you think you saw, can be a very different thing to what actually happened. Do you understand?
[Lt. Armitage says nothing]
C.O. [more firmly] Do you understand?
Lt. Armitage: Yes, sir.[/b]

This one is smack dab in the middle of pop culture and celebrity. But not every rendition of that is the same. Some are considerably more substantial than others. Some are considerably more interesting [intriguing, fascinating] than others.

Is this one of them?

Well, that depends on your point of view. I’m sure there are people who consider Honey Boo Boo to be absorbing.

Anyway, you have a child. She is pretty and she is talented. You set out to make her a star. AT ALL COSTS.

And hasn’t that all but become the latest rendition of the American Dream? Fame and fortune.

And, surely, becoming a sex object [every man’s “fantasy”] is a small price to pay for that. Or, on the other hand, can she have it all on her own terms? Can she be who she really is? Is the public ready for that?

And then there is the element of race. The narrative that, for some folks, the only way out of the ghetto is through sports or through the “entertainment industry”. But then black, brown, white, red or yellow, so much of that world is numbingly plastic. A few who get swept up in it will just want out. And, for Noni, all the way out.

And then there’s the part about politics. The games you have to play, the hoops you have to jump through, the scripts you have to follow in order to become a part of “the system”.

IMDb

[b]Sony Pictures Entertainment were originally going to produce and distribute the movie, but dropped out after Gina Prince-Bythewood insisted on casting Gugu Mbatha-Raw in the lead role.

Noni was originally written as an American and Gugu Mbatha-Raw auditioned for the role with an American accent, but after hearing her speak in her natural accent Gina Prince-Bythewood re-wrote the character to make her British. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Lights
trailer: youtu.be/sfcfZn8nq3w

BEYOND THE LIGHTS [2014]
Written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood

[b]Macy [to a young Noni after she has won a trophy for second place]: Chuck it. Go on, throw it away.
Noni: Why, mummy?
Macy: Do you want to be a runner up, or do you want to be a winner?
[Noni throws it away, and it breaks]

…

Kaz [as Noni is about to jump to her death]: Noni? What’s going on? Can you look at me for a second? Please? Please?
Noni [about to let go and fall]: You still can’t see me.

…

Father: She’s OK. She just had a little too much to drink and she slipped.
Kaz: What?
Father: Look, son, that doesn’t change what you did.
[he hands Kaz a check for $10,000]
Father: And they are very…grateful.
Kaz: You’re telling me to lie?
Father: She’s written her script. She’s playing her part. And so will you.

…

Noni: So, Officer, what are you gonna do with your 15 minutes?
Kaz: Excuse me?
Noni: Of fame. I bet you’re gonna pull in a lot of chicks with this whole sexy, hero cop thing.
Kaz: Don’t do that. Two hours ago, you were trying to drop 12 floors.
Noni: And you were screaming, “I see you.” So… just what do you see?
Kaz: Nothing.

…

Steve: Officer Nicol? Steve Sams with the National Enquirer.
Kaz: You’re trespassing.
Steve: I already said everything I have to say. I’ll pay you 20,000 off the record. Fifty for an exclusive. You hit the lottery, man. No shame in that. The offer is good until the truth comes out. And it always comes out.

…

Liam: We’re holding off on releasing the album.
Macy: What? Why?
Liam: I didn’t snow you, so don’t snow me, all right?
Macy: She got drunk. She did something stupid. So did Britney, so did Kanye. You want me to give you a list?
Liam: The blogs are all saying “suicide attempt.”
Macy: Of course they are. So?
Liam: So? Noni is supposed to be the girl that every guy wants, and every girl wants to be. We’re selling fantasy here, and suicide ain’t sexy.

…

Noni: What is your name?
Kaz: Kaz… Short for Kazam.
Noni: No.
Kaz: Yeah, my parents thought it sounded African.

…

Macy: Officer Hero. Let me tell you something. This thing, whatever it is, it’s not good for her.
Kaz: How’s that?
Macy: When people see you two together, they see her back on that balcony.
Kaz; Hmm. So, Kid Culprit. He’s better for her?
Macy: Well, he doesn’t throw her off her game. You do.
Kaz: I saved her life.
Macy: You’re a cop. That’s sort of your job.
Kaz; What about your job? I mean, I know if I had a daughter, especially one as amazing as that one, I’d get her some help.
Macy: You’ve been screwing her for five minutes. You’ve got her all figured out? Seven thousand people out there about to start screaming her name. I promise you, that is all the help she needs.

…

Pastor Marks: Officer Nicol, I was more than willing to break bread with you but I’m not sure I can support someone who looks like a college boy.
Kaz: There was a 26-year-old minister who led the civil rights movement.
Reverend Brown: Are you comparing yourself to Dr. King?
Kaz: Not at all, reverend. What I mean to say is, progress rarely comes from those who are content and secure. It comes from those who are unsettled by what they’ve seen. There is a daily violence in our community and I have a front row seat to it. Nothing stops a bullet like a job. L.A. is better when our community is strong and I’m going to inspire city hall to invest in us. Now the truth is, I can’t win the election in this district without your support. I hope that you become more familiar with me. I can earn your respect. In the meantime, my actions will speak louder than anything I can say tonight.
Pastor Marks: I look forward to your actions.[/b]

What we have here is an idealist. As though Los Angeles is always willing to accommodate them.

[b]Macy [to Noni]: Congratulations. You’re a bloody cliche.

…

Noni [to Kaz in despair]: I feel like I’m suffocating in the middle of the street and no one can see me dying.

…

Noni: You know I always wondered when I’d do a shoot, and they’d tell me to hike up my shirt or take my shirt off, and I’d look to you to see if it was OK, and it was always OK.
Macy: Would you look around you? It is OK.
Noni: No, it’s not OK! It never was!
Macy: Noni, the song doesn’t make you, you make the song. It’s a game, alright?
Noni: So what? You give me a new nose, a new body and some Indian chick’s hair. New and improved, except I’m not a bloody product!
Macy: We did what we had to do.
Noni: There was never any “we”. Your word was gospel.
Macy: Wait, so now you’re a victim? When did you ever tell me that you didn’t want this?
Noni: When I was on that balcony!

…

Noni [to Macy]: You’re fired.

…

Noni: What we had was perfect right?
Kaz: We started on a lie. So it could never be perfect.

…

Interviewer: What are you saying?
Noni: I’m saying truth is the only safe ground to stand upon. I was on that balcony…ready to let go. I had to make the decision to live. I had to make the decision to stop being a victim, to stop trying to be somebody I knew I wasn’t. I needed to know what was worth saving about me. And the truth is, that fantasy girl you see on the posters, she did go over the balcony. And the real Noni Jean got pulled back up.

…

Father: Son, all I wanted was for things to be better for you.
Kaz: Yeah but better for me might not have anything to do with my career.
Father: Are you saying you don’t want to be a bitter, heart-broken man?
Kaz: Don’t you mean an old, bitter, heart-broken man?"
Father: Yeah.

…

Felicia [to Noni about her mother]: You know, it wasn’t a monster who dragged you into my shop. It was a desperate mum who seemed like she’d do anything to make her kid’s life better. [/b]

Imagine John Lennon writes you a letter. And then 30 odd years later you read it.

That’s the premise here. Here the plot is “inspired” by a true story. Now, as for how one makes a distinction between that and a film that is “based” on a true story is anobody’s guess. One suspects though it is all that farther removed from whatever the truth happened to be.

From the title card: The following is based on a true story a little bit.

Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, baby! The American celebrity!! In other words the packaged celebrity. And Danny is just cynical enough to both recognize and exploit it.

On the other hand, how many of us ever did get a letter from John Lennon? And I still remember exactly where I was and exactly what I was doing on the day I learned that he had died.

Anyway, what’s crucial about this letter [however belatedly it gets read] is that it changes a man’s life. Sort of.

Look for the part about getting old. And you don’t have to be a celebrity either. Though one imagines if you are it is all that much more daunting. Unless, of course, it is scripted.

Oh, and, as always: Money talks. That part is kinda sickening given all the children that need help [or even food in their belly] and don’t have access to rich retired rock star.

IMDb

[b]Inspired by the story of singer Steve Tilston, who learned of the existence of a letter that John Lennon had written to him 34 years after the letter was written.

The audience used was from a Chicago concert.The band took a 15 minute break while Pacino and crew did their thing.

The pictures on the wall of Collins’ house are all pics from previous Pacino roles; The Godfather, Serpico etc. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Collins_(film
trailer: youtu.be/AndERTFMYd4

DANNY COLLINS [2015]
Written and directed by Dan Fogelman

[b]Guy [on the air]: Guy DeLoach with the apparently pre-pubescent Danny Collins. For Chime Mag. More than anything, it’s your writing. You write like fucking Lennon, man. Jesus H!
Young Danny: That’s, um…Thank you. I guess he’s probably the one who, um, you know, makes me the hardest.
Guy: Well, you’re going to be huge, kid. Richer than rich. Famous as shit. More women than you know what to do with. I’m telling you this, and I’ve got to ask, why are you sitting there staring at me looking like that information scares the livin’ shit outta you?
Danny: Because it does.
[Guy bursts out laughing and pats Danny on the back]
Guy: Jesus H.

…

Frtank: So, your birthday’s tomorrow. Is that your big problem? Pregnant women in Africa, feeding half their village from their titties. Those ladies got problems. Not you.
Danny: You’re so right.

…

Frank [of Danny’s very young girlfirend]: She looks like a young Jackie O.
Danny: I look absurd with her.
Frank: Yes, you do.
Danny: We have to make her sign a prenup, don’t we?
Frank: Yes, we do.
Danny: I’m way too old to be putting this much shit up my nose.
Frank: Yes, you are.
Danny: Jesus, Frank, don’t give me all the good stuff at once, will ya. You’re really earning that 10% tonight, pal.
Frank: What do you want me to say? ‘Oh, no, Danny, you look perfectly normal standing next to a coked-up teenager who can’t keep her nipples covered for more than five minutes. Prenup? Who needs a prenup? I mean, sure, you’ve gone through three wives already, but this one seems like the real deal. Oh, look, I can see her vagina again.’

…

Frank: You remember doing an interview when you were a kid? Something called, uh, Chime Magazine. Fella named DeLoach?
Danny: Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. Yeah.
Frank: Well, I don’t know what you said to the guy, I mean, you must’ve mentioned Lennon or something. But that doesn’t matter, the point is Lennon read it. The interview. And he wrote you a letter.
Danny: What the hell are you talking about?
Frank: John Lennon wrote you a letter, pal, in 1971. He sent it to you care of this DeLoach guy. Now DeLoach smells money, so he holds onto it, never tells you. Then DeLoach dies. But he’s not the point, the point is he sold that letter to a collector.

…

Frank: John Lennon wrote you a handwritten letter in 1971. Can you fucking believe it? Read it!
Danny [reading the letter]: “Dear Danny Collins. Yoko and I read your interview. Being rich and famous doesn’t change the way you think. It doesn’t corrupt your art. Only you can do that. So, what do you think about that, Danny Collins? Stay true to your music. Stay true to yourself. My phone number is below. Call me, we can discuss this. We can help. Love, John.”

…

Busywork: My parents had their first dance to one of your songs. Sir.
Danny: Yeah. Well, that’s fucked up in all kinds of ways now, isn’t it?

…

Mary: I’m sorry, are you on drugs?
Danny: Currently or in general?

…

Danny: What would have happened if I got that letter when I was supposed to? I would have called him. For sure as shit, I would have called him. Maybe my whole life would have turned out different. Frank, I haven’t written a song in 30 years. Thirty years. I’m a fucking joke. I’m an MC. A fuckin’ court jester with a microphone. I was the real thing once.

…

Mary: What about you? Why did you have a rotten day?
Danny: I tracked down my grown son, who I’ve never met before. I met him, his wife, my granddaughter. And then he told me, quite emphatically, to fuck off and die.

…

Samantha [opening the door to Danny]: Oh, fuck me.

…

Tom: You are a ridiculous man. You know, I’ve spent my entire life trying to become the man that you aren’t. I am exhausted. You have no idea how exhausting that has been.

…

Danny: You’re sick? What do you mean?
Tom: It’s what Mom died…It’s in the blood. It’s pretty bad.
Danny: Fuck. Fuck, you’re kidding me? I just met you! You gotta be fucking kidding me! Oh, man, I’m sorry. Obviously, that wasn’t a great thing, a great reaction. I’m sorry.
Tom: No, that’s okay. Look, I’m the one that should be sorry. I mean, after all, you’re…You’re Danny Collins, right? I mean, uh… Who the fuck am I to get in the way of your happy ending?
Danny: …Tom, Tom, Tom…
Tom: Let me ask you something. How did you think this was going to end, that little movie you’ve got going on in your head? What, you thought you’d just show up out of the blue, out of nowhere, really, and fix my little girl, and then, what, you and me hold hands
and cry as the music swells, is that it?

…

Tom: Look, you want a little bit of the real world, huh? You wanna do, like, normal? How’s this for normal, superstar? I got a $200,000 mortgage. I got a pregnant wife. And, oh, yeah, I got this rare form of leukemia that’s probably going to kill me. Welcome home, Dad. See what you missed?

…

Frank: Unfortunately, I have my manager hat on right now.
Danny: Okay. What’s up?
Frank: I’ve been going over things with Bill and you’re not exactly where you think you are.
Danny: Okay. Where am I?
Frank: A little ahead when we sell properties. But only a little. I mean, we shouldn’t have sold your publishing rights so early. All those properties, the housing market has collapsed. The private plane, your lifestyle. The Madoff thing, that absolutely killed you, as you know. But, uh, you’re not bankrupt or anything. It’s just that you need to understand how serious it is.[/b]

Uh-oh. Back to selling out.

[b]Danny [after Tom and Samantha walk in on him snorting coke…on the letter from Johm Lennon no less]]: You just keep judging me, Tom. You just judge me. Go ahead. You judge me all you want. It’s fine, that’s what you’re good at. And when you’re done, you know, being so fucking perfect and honorable, you should talk to your wife about what you did in Delaware.
Samantha: What’s that? What’s he mean? Tom?
Tom: I’ll tell you when we get home.
[he leans in on Danny]
Tom: Stay the fuck away from my family.

…

Danny: You know, Tom, I’ve been thinking. I noticed something very interesting. Whenever this doctor comes in here, he either calls you Mr. Donnelly or Tom. You notice that? Always one or the other. Now, when he calls you Mr. Donnelly, it’s never good news.

…

Doctor: Okay, Tom, here’s where we are…

…

Steve Stilston [over the closing credits]: What happened was I did an interview with a magazine called Zig Zag in 1971. Just after I’ve had my first album out. And in it, I was asked by the fellow who was interviewing me whether I thought…If I, um… If I became, you know, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, you know, whether it would affect my song writing, you know, detrimentally. And I thought… I said I thought it would. Anyway, John, for some reason, took an exception to this and wrote a letter in. It was a very friendly letter. And he finished it with, “Well, what do you think of that?” He had his own home telephone number in Ascot. So, if I had got the letter, you know, when he sent it, I would have rung him.[/b]

In cinematic relationships of this sort, 99 times out of a 100 it will be a young woman and a considerably older man. Usually a gentleman. Often a professional. Generally going through one or another crisis “in the autumn of his years”. A crisis that will either be assuaged or exaserbated by this generation gap.

Here the crisis revolves around a struggling writer. A former professor who, with his health declining, is intent on finishing one last novel. Heather idolizes him. But what can this considerably younger woman possibly know about him?

Heather, however, is also a writer. She was recently published in prestigious literary magazine. A piece entitled, “Chaos Theory: The Bold Imagination of Stanley Elkin”

So, they are both passionately committed to the world of literature. They share that enduring commitment to the mind that others either get or they don’t. Only, increasingly, we live in a world where that is respected less and less and less.

And where it then all becomes particularly tricky is when the part about the mind seeps into the part about emotions. And then the part about sex.

But: there are two relationships explored here. The second revolves around the older gentlman’s daughter. She is involved in a ralationship with a man more or less her own age. But there’s a problem of a different sort here: She wants a child and he does not.

Ariel, however, is less the “thinker” type than the “doer”. Only what she does doesn’t really amount to much at all. At least not in the eyes of her father. And this film is basically an exploration into how the man [or the woman] and the mind are to be thought of apart and together.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starting_ … he_Evening
trailer: youtu.be/1NmF2Dx46RY

STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING [2007]
Directed by Andrew Wagner

[b]Ariel: Are you a burglar?
Heather: Not professionally.
Ariel: Well, it’s good to have a hobby.

…

Charles: How are you, are you still writing?
Leonard: Yes. Yes, of course. As a matter of fact, I’m just putting the finishing touches on my new novel. I’d really be happy to send it over to you as soon as it is finished.
Charles: Leonard, I respect you too much to blow smoke. This business has turned into the film industry. It’s all about the name. Literary novels are such a tough sell. It would be hard to get anyone on board. To tell you the truth most of the business we do is celebrity confessions and self-help books. [/b]

Time, perhaps, to rethink Heather’s invitation.

[b]Heather: You give your charaters freedom.
Leonard: It’s not mine to give. What I give them is the freedom to find their own way…I always start with a character. In Tenderness I had a picture of a woman being asked to leave a museum because she had run her hand over one of the statues. I had no idea who she was or why she was touching the statue. I wrote the book to find out.

…

Leonard: The book is taking so long because following one’s characters around takes stamina. I’m old. I’m having trouble keeping up.
Heather: I notice you’ve made several references to being old. I can’t help but wonder if you are using your age to mask a deeper conflict?
Leonard [somewhat offened by this]: Miss Wolfe. I agreed to assist you in your enterprise because you strike me as a serious young woman. However, this is our first interview and there is such a thing as decorum.
Heather: Point taken. However, Professor, should you encounter any shortcomings in my thesis I hope you wouldn’t allow me to use my youth as a defense.
Leonard [thinking about it]: Okay, then. Point taken.

…

Ariel: Dad, maybe the characters in your books have the luxury of grappling with moral issues, but I’m in the real world.

…

Leonard [to Heather]: Freedom isn’t the choice the world encourages. You have to wear a suit of armor to defend it.

…

Ariel: Victor, it’s not you, it’s me.
Victor: Oh, I hate it when people say that because they’re usually lying.

…

Ariel: Victor, I didn’t put in my diaphragm.
Victor: Well, put it in now.
Ariel: I didn’t bring it with me. I haven’t brought for weeks.
Victor: You’ve been trying to have my child, but now that I want to marry you, you don’t want to have a child with me?
Ariel: See Victor, it’s not you. It really is me.

…

Leonard: I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that art and commerce are at war.
Heather: I think that’s inspiring to be so pure about your art.
Sandra [who works at Vanity Fair]: I don’t see what’s so pure abour turning down paid work. As if making a living means you are guilty of selling your soul.
Leonard: I make my living writing and, until recently, teaching literature. That’s my world and I’m faithful to it. Of course your magazine owes its existence to advertising revenue. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that but it’s a compromise I am not willing to make.
Sandra: But that advertising revenue allows us to introduce new writing talent to the world. I don’t see the compromise in that. [/b]

So, who won?

[b]Heather [to Leonard]: Lie down. We don’t have to do anything. I just want to be next to you.

…

Heather: Do you think that people will still be reading you in a hundred years.
Leonard: What I wonder is if people will still be reading at all in a hundred years.
Heather: Really, don’t you ever think about it?
Leonard: If I do it would be unseemly to talk about it. It’s got nothing to do with what the whole enterprise is about.
Heather: What is the whole enterprise about?
Leonard: It’s not something I can put into words.
Heather: To put it bluntky Leonard, your novels are out of print and you’re not sure if anyone will publish the one that you’re working on now. So, why do you keep going?
Leonard: Heather, what can I say. Whatever I say will either be be too much or too little.
Heather: Yes, but when I’m summing up my thesis what should I say that it is that keeps you going?
Leonard: Just say it’s the madness of art.
Heather [after a pause]: The madness of art.

…

Author [reading from her book]: “To sit across the table and talk with someone you love is itself a complex engagement. To go to bed with someone…to carry on your conversation in the realm of the body…a realm of insecurity and vulnerability and fear, as well as pleasure is always fraught with the sad evidence of how difficult it is to understand another person and make yourself understood.”[/b]

This is really what the film is all about I suspect.

[b]Heather: To tell you the truth, Leonard, I find very few men my age interesting. They’re like chewing gum; ten minutes of flavor, and then just bland repetition.

…

Leonard: What’s all this about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s solid gold bar?
Heather: Okay. He says that most great writers have an essential theme that runs through their best work. Like Hemmingway’s courage or Dostoevsky’s spiritual violence…
Leonard: I trust you resisted the impulse to place me in their company.
Heather: Well, I do say that you seem to breathe the same moral air, especially in your first two novels when you adhere closely to your own solid gold bar.
Leonard: Ah, yes, personal liberation in the world of Leonard Schilling.

…

Leonard [to Casey]: One has to be willing to surrender, occasionally, one’s beliefs for the greater good.

…

Heather: Your wife left you for another man.
Leonard: One year before my wife died we went through some troubled times. Yes. What does that tell you about my work?
Heather: That life betrayed you and you went into hiding…and you took your characters with you. So they began guarding their lives. They stopped giving in to temptations.
Leonard: No Miss Wolfe. They learned the cost of living only for themselves. And I became aware of problems far greater than my own. And you insult my writing by trying to define it by a single unhappy event from my past. If I had known you were going to subject my work to such simplistic psychological criticism I never would have wasted my time with you in the first place! You insult me. You insult me by insinusting that I should write the same book over and over again.

…

Leonard: Wasting valuable time. That’s a subject you are well schooled in.
Ariel: What’s that suppose to mean? Are you talking about Casey? Because you don’t know what goes on between Casey and me. You don’t know the first thing about our relationship.
Leonard: I know enough. I was there for his birthday toast to you. Apparently I’m the only one who heard it.
Ariel: I heard it. He said he was lucky to find me again.
Leonard: He said you give him everything and you ask for so little in return. Of course he feels lucky. How can you accept such a condition? A man who says you are secondary to his dreams and you always will be.
Ariel: I don’t know, Dad. How did Mom do it?

…

Ariel: I can’t do it, Casey?
Casey: Can’t do what?
Ariel: I can’t do hot and light.

…

Ariel [seeing her father at the typewriter]: Shouldn’t you be resting? Are you sure you should be working so soon?
Leonard: I’m running out of time, dear. I have to finish.[/b]

Think Shane. Or Unforgiven. Or even High Plains Drifter. A “morality tale” set in one or another rendition of the “wild, wild West”.

Back then of course “the law” was considerably more tenuous. And its relationship to “morality” consideraly less problematic. Or, at times, considerably more.

Of course morality back then is thought by most to be significantly less “civilized” then our own is today. In other words, the nature of human interactions then and there was embedded more in “survival of the fittest”…in “might makes right”. And that always seems to be more apllicable with regard to “frontier justice”.

On the other hand, we all have our own renditions of revenge: when it is justified, when it is not. If it ever is. Only, in a morality tale set in the “wild, wild West”, it all has to be tied in with sin and redemption. It’s just that, as is often the case, this is understood in conflicting ways.

So, what can “salvation” possibly mean here?

Bottom line: Nothing new. In fact, every cliche in the book. But still worth whatever you paid to watch it. And, in the end, justice [or what’s left of it] does sort of prevail.

And then, as the closing credits go by, we find out what this is really all about.

IMDb

[b]The sets were built from the ground in the South African locations. A town set burnt down shortly before filming was complete.

Both Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green have played charracters who where mute. Mads Mikkelsen in Nicholas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising and Eva Green in The Salvation. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salvation_(film
trailer: youtu.be/wUJuQj5r8Kk

THE SALVATION [2014]
Written in part and directed by Kristian Levring

Title card: Out of the wreckage of the Danish defeat in the 1864 war, Jon and his brother crossed the Atlantic to start fresh. In seven years they struggled to find foothold in the unknown country. 7 years, where Jon missed his wife, Marie, and their son. 7 years of family separation. The year is 1871 The country is America.

And then, less than 24 hours later, his wife and his son are dead.

[b]Paul: My own princess does not say a word. She is dumb…mute. Indians cut her tongue out when she was little. They were probably tired of hearing her scream, when they killed her parents.

…

Jon [to Kresten in Dutch]: Bite his ear. Bite his ear.

…

Paul [to Jon] She ain’t dead! She ain’t dead! And I never touched your boy…

…

Delarue: I will give you two hours to find the man who did it. And sheriff…I want that man alive.
Sheriff: It is impossible.
Delarue:You are a man of God, sheriff Mallick. You probably know the Lord’s words: A tooth for a tooth …
Sheriff: Yes.
Delarue: You have until noon to find the man who did this. Or you bring me two of your people. You choose two Mayor Keane, or I will take four.

…

Peter: I learned something from war. Never get into a fight that you know you’re gonna lose.
Lester: Cowards…

…

Jenkins: The company doesn’t like the way things are going. Are you aware the sheriff in Black Creek wired the government for help? I managed to pull out the communication for now but you can’t use the same methods here that you used in the Army. These people are not Indians. Standard Atlantic is a modern company, Colonel Delarue, and we need our operations to look civilized.

…

Delarue [to Madelaine]: They want me to look civilized, Princess. Hell, I guess I can do that. Long as we keep piling up the money.

…

Jon: My death won’t be the last one around here.
Sheriff: Nope. But your death will buy us some time…Sometimes you have to sacrifice a single sheep to save the rest. I’m just a shepard guarding his flock.

…

Corsican: They say you were a soldier. Did you ever fight in a war?
Jon: Yes, I did.
Corsican: Who was the enemy?.
Jon: Germans.
Corsican: Germans? Bravo. You have my respect.
[he then wallops him in the stomach]

…

Delarue [to Madeline]: Well, here he is, the worthless son of a bitch that killed your beloved husband.
Jon [tied to a post]: You’re beloved husband shot and killed my 10 year old son. Then he raped my wife.

…

Jon [to Mayor Keane]: I would like my boots back.

…

Jon [gesturing toward the empty coffin]: Get in.
Deane: Look, I’m…I’m…I’m just trying to make living. You know? That’s all. I’m a businessman.
Jon [smacking him with rifle butt]: You’re not even a man.
Deane: Please don’t.
Jon: Get in.[/b]

Xavier marries Wendy. They have two kids. After ten years of “happiness” they get divorced. Wendy takes the kids and moves from Paris to New York. Xavier follows her.

That’s the plot.

On the other hand, some of the characters from L’Auberge Espagnole above reprise their roles. Only now they are no longer 20 somethings in twisted, entangled relationships, but 30 and 40 somethings in twisted, entangled relationships.

Still, they are attractive, intelligent, articulate and interesting. And [of course] progressive. They have lots and lots and lots of options. Like, say, the characters in a Woody Allen movie. In other words, they share a certain demographic that many of us here no doubt can relate to. So, by and large, we’re on their side. We just have to decide who among them is most deserving of our support.

The part about political economy is [of course] no where to be seen. The global economy is just more or less taken for granted. But then the part about philosophy does stop by from time to time – to discuss “phenomenology” in the Big Apple, among other things.

Look for the remake of Green Card.

Bottom line: It’s complicated. Even when you do have a lot of options. Or, sure, perhaps, because you do.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Puzzle
trailer: youtu.be/T9qM-ADXzaM

CHINESE PUZZLE [Casse-tête Chinois] 2013
Written and directed by Cédric Klapisch

[b]Xavier [voiceover]: Life, for most people, is going from point A to point B. But not for me. I’ve got a point B problem.

…

Xavier [voiceover]: For most people, those small, daily trips add up and, little by little lead to one goal – a unique ultimate goal. Like the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s all wonderfully linear. But not for me. I always keep changing direction. Why is my life like this? Why is it a fucking mess?

…

Editor [on Skype]: Why “Chinese Puzzle”?
Xavier: Well, I’m taking stock. I used to think my life wasn’t simple. But here in New York I see that my old life was really simple.[/b]

Also, his apartment is smack dab in the middle of Chinatown.

[b]Xavier [voiceover]: It’s weird to think that for ten years we had been so happy. It’s really horrible to think that…that it can all just disappear.

…

Editor [on Skype]: You gotta watch out for happiness. Happiness is a disaster for fiction. Drama’s what sucks us in. Life is drama.
Xavier: But you want to be happy, don’t you?
Editor: Sure, in life.

…

Isabelle [to Xavier]: Did you shoot your wad?

…

Isabelle [to Xavier]: You’re like my chick.

…

Editor [on Skype]: That’s great. Hold on to that.
Xavier: The baby?
Editor: No, “You’re like my chick”.
Xavier: I don’t know. I’m kind of ashamed.
Editor: Who gives a shit about shame? Pounce! Shames’s great! Shame’s insane! Shame’s a thousand times better than happiness!

…

Xavier [voiceover]: That’s it! I’m turning 40 and in fact my life is ruined. Your only salvation at times like this – when you’ve lost hope and never believed in God – are German philosophers. For example, Schopenhauer said, “Life is embroidery. You spend the first half of life on the front side, the pretty side of embroidery. But you spend the second half on the other side. Not as pretty but you can see how the threads are woven together. You can see how it’s made.”

…

Xavier [voiceover]: Life! The unforeseen! All that stuff you can’t even imagine. That’s what I got hit with.

…

Xavier [voiceover]: Let me make a quick digression. As a foreigner in the USA, you inevitably confront one excruciating thing. That, if your English isn’t impeccable, you quickly begin to feel like some sort of retard.

…

Ju [to Xavier]: I’m scared shitless, but I love the bitch. [/b]

Xavier gets a visit from Hegel…

[b]Xavier [answering the doorbell]: Hegel?
Hegel: Yes.
Xavier: Come in.
Hegel: You write too?
Xavier: Yeah. I’m writing a book called “Chinese Puzzle”. It’s a new novel about how complicated life is. Well, sort of.
Hegel: I wrote a book called “The Phenomenology of Spirit”. My book presents a simple verson of life.
Xavier: Really? Boy am I jealous. Can you quote me something?
Hegel: “All nothingness is the nothing of something”.

…

Miquel [at the street messenger office]: Come on, you gonna bring him in just like that?
Hepe: Why not? What’s the problem?
Miguel: What’s the problem? He’s a foreigner!
Hepe: I’m a foreigner. You’re a foreigner. He’s a foreigner. Who’s not a foreigner in this room?
Ray: Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m not a froeigner. I’m an American.
Hepe: Oh fuck off, Obama.

…

Xavier: Martine! That’s my dick!
Martine: I know. It’s been a really long time since I fucked. How about you?

…

Xavier [voiceover]: I walked home on Avenue A. And at the corner of Saint Mark’s Place…My father got the street right but the avenue wrong. It wasn’t First Avenue but Avenue A. And there, on the streets of this city, it was carved. A trace of something I’d never really known. Here, in New York at the corner of 8th Street and Avenue A, my parents were in love. Those tiny intitials in the sidewalk held a kind of fundamental proof that my birth wasn’t a total accident. Two people were in love. Really in love.

…

Martine: Xavier, I’d love for us to be in love again.
Xavier: Does that happen?
Martine: I don’t know if it happens. But why not? We can try. Even if it doesn’t exist, we can invent things that don’t exist, can’t we?

…

Martine: It’s funny that you find life so complicated.
Xavier: Look at your life or mine. I came to New York to be near my kids, who I had with a Brit, who I lived with for 10 years, who moved here to be with an American. I had a baby with two lesbians. I married a Chinese woman to become an American. And life’s not complicated?
Martine: I can tell you’ve never lived in China.
Xavier: What does that mean?

…

Xavier [to Martine who is about to go back to Paris]: There is a spark. Stay.

…

Xavier [on Skype]: So, did you read it?
Editor: Yes.
Xavier: And?
Editor: So happy days are here again?
Xavier: Yes. Is that a dog?
Editor: I have a problem with the ending. It’s the sort of hideous happy ending we talked about before.
Xavier: I know your spiel about tragedy. It’s true, most stories do feed on misery. But when you find happiness, there’s nothing more to say. So it’s time to stop.
Editor: Are you talking about in life or in the novel?[/b]

THE END

Perhaps best summed up by the title card:

“I think that what Keane has done is terrific. It has to be good. If it were bad, so many people wouldn’t like it.” Andy Warhol.

Yes, but which particular Keane is it? And is it actually art?

And then there’s the part about gender. A decade or so before the advent of full-blown feminism. Not many options open for women:

Boss: [to Margaret] We don’t get many ladies in here. So, you’re husband approves of you working?

In other words, what most women today just take for granted [in terms of options] had to actually be struggled for by women politically. Though the woman here is about as far removed from the feminist movement as one might imagine.

And then there’s Walter. He is big in real estate but, as he points out to Margaret, “all I ever wanted was to support myself as an artist”. It’s not as though Walter is a monster. Well, not at first. But as the film unfolds he turns out to be quite the scumbag.

Bottom line: His wife paints the actual Big Eyes and he takes the actual credit for it. Put yourself in her shoes. How much would that matter to you? That he is able to talk her into going along with it for so long [years and years] speaks volumes.

This one is smack dab at the intersection of Art and Money and Ego. And Kitsch. And [of course] celebrity. This is capitalism as its grubbiest. On the other hand, if money is your thing, the sheer fucking genius of it all might be more the reaction.

Look for the part that revolves around The Great Debate: What is Art?

IMDb

[b]When Margaret and Walter are painting in front of the San Francisco palace of Fine Arts, the real Margaret Keane can be seen reading a book on the park bench behind them.

The amount of sales of Margaret Keane Paintings soared ahead of the release of the film, with small paintings being sold for $8,500 a piece. Director Tim Burton also owns an extensive collection of her work. Keane has also painted portraits of Burton’s partner Helena Bonham Carter and Burton’s former Chihuahua.

Amy Adams liked the script when it was offered to her at first, but she originally turned down the role, because the character lacked “a stronger sense of self”. However, working on American Hustle (2013) gave Adams a new perspective of the character, and she was won over because she was intrigued by the character’s “quiet dignity”, while the relationship between the mother and the daughter spoke to her as well.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Eyes
trailer: youtu.be/2xD9uTlh5hI

BIG EYES [2014]
Directed by Tim Burton

[b]Dick Noland [voiceover]: Back then women did not have good job prospects. All she had was her paintings in the trunk and her daughter in the backseat.

…

Margaret [at job interview]: I’m not very good at tooting my own horn but I do love to paint. So if I could just show you my portfolio. I studied at the the Watkins Ar Institute in Nashville. This is a pastel that I did. And this is a charcoal portrait.
Interviewer: You do understand that this is a furniture company. [/b]

Still, she does get to “paint” there.

[b]Walter: Of course walking away from the bourgeois scene wasn’t easy. I had to quit my job…leave my wife. These choices aren’t easy.
Margaret: I’ve never acted freely. I was a daughter and then a wife and then a mother.

…

Walter: Don’t knock your work. You have an amazing talent. You can look at someone and capture them on canvas. You can paint people. I can only paint things.

…

Walter: I’ve got to ask you a question. What’s that with the big crazy eyes?
Margaret: Oh. Well, I believe that you can see things in the eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul.
Walter: Yeah, but you paint them like pancakes. They’re way out of proportion.
Margaret: Well, eyes are how I express my emotions. I’ve always drawn them like that.

…

Reuben: Walter, you know we don’t go for the representational jazz. You’re too literal.
Walter: But art isn’t fashion.
Reuben: Yes, it is. People want Kadinsky or Rothko. They don’t want goopy street scenes.

…

Reuben: Why are their eyes so big. Like big, stale jellybeans.
Walter: It’s expressionism. Surely, you recognize it.
Reuben: It’s not art.
Walter: “It’s not art?”
Reuben: It’s like the back of a magazine. You know, “Draw the turtle! Send in a nickel! Win the big contest!”

…

Walter to Margaret]: We’ll never break in! There’s a secret society of gallery owners and critics who get together for Sunday brunch in Sausalito deciding what’s “cool”.
Margaret: I think people buy art because it touches them.
Walter: You’re living in fairyland. People don’t get to discover anything. They buy art because it’s in the right place at the right time.

…

Margaret [to Walter]: I’ve bever posted bail before.

…

Dick: So, tell me about your work.
Walter: Well, when I was in Paris…
Dick: Oh, Jesus, not those. I mean the little hobo kids.

…

Walter [to a table of young ladies at the hungry i…Margaret overhears him]: The eyes are so powerful. You know, a poet once said that the eyes are the window of the soul. That’s why I paint them so big. I’ve always done it that way.
Margaret [taking him aside]: Walter? Why are you lying? You were taking credit for something that isn’t yours.
Walter: No, I was just trying to close a deal.
Margaret: Those children are a part of my being.
Walter: I’m a salesman. You know buyers pay more if they meet the painter.
Margaret: They couldn’t meet me because you told me to stay at home.
Walter: Look, we’re making monmey. Your pocket, my pocket. Where’s the difference?..Would you rather have your children piled in a closest or hanging in someone’s living room?

…

Margaret: But what about honesty?
Walter: Come on. The painting says Keane. I’m Keane. You’re Keane. From now on we’re one in the same.

…

Priest [in confessional]: What is troubling you?
Margaret: I lied to my child and I’m just not that kind of person.
Priest: Is your husband that kind of person?

…

Priest: Well, the world is a complicated place. Occasionaly, children may need to be sheltered from certain truths.
Margaret [chuckling]: No. No, it’s not like…
Priest: It sounds as though your husband is trying to make the best of an imperfect situation. You were raised Christian. You know what we are taught. The man is the head of the household. Perhaps you should just trust his judgment.

…

Woman at art gallery [looking at Margaret’s paintings]: I think it’s creepy and maudlin and amateurish.
Man with her: Exactly. I love it.

…

Announcer [on TV]: New York Times are critic John Canady with a perspective into the work of Walter Keane.
Canady: Keane’s work is completely without disctinction. He is not a member of the Society of Western Artists. He has won no awards. He’s only noteworthy for his appearances in a certain newspaper’s gossip columns. Mr Keane is why society needs critics to protect them from such atrocities.

…

Walter [on the phone with Margaret]: It’s the craziest thing. We started charging for the posters. First a nickel, then a dime. But then it got me thinking. Would you rather sell one 500 dollar painting or a million cheaply reproduced posters? Folks don’t care if it’s a copy. They just want art that touches them. Then we could sell it anywhere. Everywhere!

…

Walter [to Margaret]: Do you want to give back the money? If you tell anyone, this empire collapses. We’ve committed fraud here!

…

Snobby artist #1: Two nuts that fell from the same tree. It’s insufferable. Why are we starving while they print money?
Snobby Artist # 2: Because that nut’s a genius. He sells paintings. Then he sells pictures of the paintings. Then he sells postcards of pictures of the paintings.

…

Margaret: This is what it’s come to, huh? You are the only living soul I can tell my secret to. I painted every single one of them, every Big Eye, me, and no one will ever know but you.[/b]

She’s telling this to her dog.

[b]Walter: For Christ sakes, you’ve seen me paint.
Margaret: No, I haven’t. It’s like a mirage. From the distance, you look like a painter, but up close there is not much there.

…

Margaret: Walter, have you even been to Paris?

…

Margaret [in restaurant]: I will talk as loud as I want!
Walter: No, you won’t! Or I’ll have you whacked!
Margaret [startled]: What?!
Walter: If you tell anyone, I’ll have you taken out!

…

Dick Noland [voiceover]: When people ask me, why did she stay? Was it fear? Lack of confidence? Margaret was trapped in a lie that she helped create. Ans now the cover-up was worse than the crime.

…

Walter: Come on. Wednesday the World’s Fair opens. Thursday our book goes on sale.
Margaret: Friday I file for divorce.

…

Walter: Who wrote this shit!!
Canady: Mr. Keane, this is not the venue. Perhaps you’d like to write a letter to the editor.
Walter: What are you afraid of? Just because people like my work that means it’s automatically bad?!
Canady: No, but it doesn’t make it art either. Art should elevate, not pander.
Walter: You have no idea! Why does someone become a critic? Because he cannot create!
Canady: Oh, dear. That moldy chestnut.
Walter: You don’t know what it’s like! To put your emotions out there, naked for all the world to see!
Canady: What emotions? It’s synthetic hack work. Your masterpiece has an infinity of Keanes, which makes it an infinity of kitsch.[/b]

And all the time Margaret is there listening to every word. The sheer fucking irony of it is completely lost on Walter.

[b]Walter [drunk, shouting at Margaret and Jane]: What’s wrong with the lowest common denominator? That’s what this country was built on!

…

Walter: I’m gonna sue everybody. Everybody. I’m gonna sure this pansy critic. And sue the World’s Fair. And I’m gonna sue UNICEF. I’m gonna take down UNICEF, and all their precious little boxes of dimes.
[he walks over to Margaret]
Walter: But I can’t sue you, can I? You are the ultimate betrayal. You failed me with that painting! You crossed over from sentimentality to kitsch. You enjoyed that! You enjoy people laughing at me!

…

Margaret [on the phone]: Walter, I want a divorce.
Walter: Well, I suppose I could agree to a split, as long as…as you assign me all the rights to every painting ever produced.
Margaret [after a pause]: If that’s the price.
Walter: Really? Well, okay. Then we have to consider future revenus streams.
Margaret: My God, Walter, how much more money do you need?
Walter: If you want me out of your lifem here are my terms. You’ll have to paint me 100 more waifs, 100 more Walter Keanes.

…

Jehovah’s Witness: Hello. We’re visiting everyone in this neighborhood with an important message. We have something to share with you about the wonderful things that God’s kingdom will do for mankind.
Margaret: Well, from where I’m standing, I don’t see much good anywhere. Just a lot of pride and thievery and people treating each other poorly.
Jehovah’s Witness: Do you know what it says in Timothy 3:1-5? “In the last days, critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves.”
Margaret: Sounds like my ex-husband.

…

Girl: Shit, this is crazy man. All these copies. You’re like Warhol.
Walter [scoffing]: Ha! Warhol’s like me. That fruit fly stole my act. The Factory. I had a factory before he even knew what a soup can was. [/b]

But then the shit hits the fan. Margaret finally spills the beans.

[b]Judge: In my opinion there is only one way to clear this up. You are both going to paint.

…

Judge: Mr. Keane?
Walter: I’m just setting the mood. Waiting for the muse to strike.
Judge: Well, your muse has 58 minutes.

…

Title card: Walter never accepted defeat, insisting he was the true artist for the rest of his life. He died in 2000, bitter and penniless.[/b]

Talk about context. It’s all but everything here.

In other words, being an American sniper in World War II would have earned you near universal acclaim. At least here in America. You were, after all, killing Nazis. On the other hand, killing “terrorists” in Iraq 60 years later, you may still be a hero to some, sure… but not to others. Instead, you may well turn out to be viewed as but one more cog in Dick Cheney’s military industrial complex. One more sucker recruited to further the interest of America’s war economy. America’s war machine.

Sans the Nazis.

And Chris Kyle is the sucker’s sucker in this regard: God and country all the way. Or so some will argue.

On the other hand, war is war. And, politics aside, if you wind up fighting in one it can change you in ways that you will never see coming. It sure as shit changed me. As I often point out, the man I was before my own “tour of duty” in Vietnam would scarcely recognize the man I became afterward. To say nothing of my family and friends.

For most soldiers “in the shit” there’s almost no getting around PTSD. And there is really no way in hell for folks who have never been in or around a war to ever understand what makes those who have think and feel and do the things they do. It all just gets swept up in conflicting points of view. And then the politics of course.

Clint Eastwood doesn’t exactly glorify or glamorize war here. Or even glorify or glamorize the Warrior. But he sure does come awful close from time to time.

And one can easily imagine the jihadi rendition: Iraqi Sniper.

Anyway, a film of this sort is bound to spark controversy. One take on it: bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30923038

Look for the death heads. They’re everywhere.

And look for the fog of war. That too: everywhere.

IMDb

[b]Chris Kyle’s father personally told Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper that he would “unleash Hell” if his son’s memory was disrespected in this film. He also said that Eastwood and Cooper were “men he could trust.”

Bradley Cooper felt he could become Chris Kyle because he and Kyle had nearly the same height, age, shoe size and body frame. Once Cooper had built up his body and had grown out his beard, Chris Kyle’s friends and family said that they would do a double take while looking at Cooper because of how much he looked like Kyle.

With the exception of two weeks filming in Morocco for exterior Iraq scenes, the picture was filmed entirely in California.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sniper
trailer: youtu.be/99k3u9ay1gs

AMERICAN SNIPER [2014]
Directed by Clint Eastwood

[b]Chris: I got a military aged male that’s on a cell phone, watching the convoy. Over.
Officer: If you think he’s reporting troop movement, you’ve got a green light. Over.
Soldier: Maybe he’s just calling his old lady.

…

Chris: I got a woman and a kid walking towards the convoy. Her arms aren’t swinging. She’s carrying something. She’s got a grenade. She’s got a RKG Russian grenade she just handed to the kid.
Officier: Your call.
Soldier: They’ll fry you if you’re wrong. They’ll send your ass to Leavenworth.[/b]

Shoot the kid? Yep. Then the woman.

Wayne Kyle [to his sons]: There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Some people prefer to believe that evil doesn’t exist in the world, and if it ever darkened their doorstep, they wouldn’t know how to protect themselves. Those are the sheep. Then you’ve got predators who use violence to prey on the weak. They’re the wolves. And then there are those blessed with the gift of aggression, an overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed who live to confront the wolf. They are the sheepdog. Now, we’re not raising any sheep in this family. And I will whup ypur ass if you turn into a wolf. But we protect our own. If someone tries to fight you…tries to bully your little brother, you have my permission to finish it.
Chris: The guy was picking on Jeff.
Wayne: Is that true?
Jeff: Yes, sir, yes he was.
Wayne [to Chris]: Did you finish it?
[Chris nods his head]
Wayne: Well, then you know who you are. You know your purpose.

It’s all that simple, isn’t it?

SEAL Instructor: D, what are you still doing in my line trying to make this team? Everybody knows black guys don*t swim!
‘D’: It’s alright Sir, I’m not black!
Instructor: No?
‘D’: No I’m the new black. We run slow, we jump low, we swim good, and we shop at Gap. And I make the white folk proud, and I hose down their ladies. I dick 'em down!

Ah, the military mind.

[b]Chris: I’m not redneck; I’m Texan!
Taya: What’s the difference?
Chris: We ride horses, they ride their cousins.

…

Chris [shoots a snake next to the target range]: I’m better when it’s breathing.

…

Taya [on the phone]: Killed anyone yet?
Chris: This is not the way a call home is supposed to go, babe.

…

Chris [to Taya]: They’re savages. They’re fucking savages!

…

Chris: What happened? You alright?
Jeff: Man, I’m gonna miss my ride.
Chris: What happened?
Jeff: I’m just tired, man. I’m going home.
Chris: I’m proud of you. Dad’s proud of you.
Jeff: Fuck this place.
Chris: Huh? What’d you say?
Jeff: Fuck this place.

…

Chris: God, country, family, right?
Marc: You got a God?
Chris: I got a God? You getting weird on me?
Marc: You know, growing up in Oregon we had this electric fence around our property. Us kids’d grab on to it to see who could hold on the longest. War feels kinda like that. Puts lightening in your bones, makes it hard to hold on to anything else.
Chris: Hey man, you need to sit this one out?
Marc: I just want to believe in what we’re doing here.
Chris: There’s evil here. We’ve seen it.
Marc: Yeah. There’s evil everywhere.
Chris: You want these motherfuckers to come to San Diego or New York? We’re protecting more than just this dirt.
Marc: All right. Let’s go kill this fucker.[/b]

They’ve got him: hook, line and sinker. Not that we do want the jihadis living next door. Of any denomination.

[b]Taya: You’re my husband, you’re the father of my children. Even when you’re here, you’re not here. I see you, I feel you, but you’re not here. I hate the Teams for it. I do. You’re my husband. You’re the father of my children, but they’re the ones that pull you back.
Chris: Yeah, but, you see, they can’t wait and we can.
Taya: If you think that this war isn’t changing you you’re wrong. You can only circle the flames so long. It’s true.

…

Chris: Mustafa’s got his peepers out.
Biggles: This motherfucker is Keyser fucking Söze, bro.

…

Marc’s mother [reading a letter from Marc at his graveside]: “Glory is something some men chase and others find themselves stumbling upon not expecting to find it. Either way it is a noble gesture that one finds bestowed upon him. My question is when does glory fade away and become a wrongful crusade? Or an unjustified means by which consumes one conpletely? I’ve seen war and I’ve seen death.”

…

Taya: Mark wrote that letter two weeks ago. Did he say any of that to you?
[Chris says nothing]
Taya: Chris, I want to know what you thought of his letter.
Chris: An AQI informant called in a tip and Biggles had just been shot. We were operating out of emotion, and we just walked into an ambush. But that’s not what killed him. That letter did. That letter killed Marc. I mean, he let go, and he paid the price for it. [/b]

He really believes that. And who’s to say it’s not true?

[b]Chris [watching a small boy pick up the RPG of a man he had just killed]: Don’t pick it up. Don’t you fucking pick it up. Drop it. Drop it you little cocksucker.

…

Navy Doctor: Would you be surprised if I told you that Navy has credited you with… over 160 kills?
Chris: Hm-mm
Navy Doctor: Do you ever think that… you might have seen things or… done some things over there that you wish you hadn’t?
Chris: Oh, that’s not me. No.
Navy Doctor: What’s not you?
Chris: I was just protecting my guys, they were trying to kill our soldiers and I… I’m willing to meet my Creator and answer for every shot that I took. The thing that… haunts me are all the guys that I couldn’t save. Now I’m willing and able to… be there but I’m not, I’m here I quit.
Navy Doctor: You can walk down any hall in this hospital. Looks like plenty soldiers need saving.
Chris: Hm-mm
Navy Doctor: You want to take a walk?
Chris Kyle: Sure. [/b]

You won’t find yourself asking, “what would I do?” all that often here. In large part because these characters inhabit a world so far removed from your own [our own] that it is almost impossible to really empathize. Except in the broadest sense that we are all, one way or another, afflicted with the trials and tribulations embedded in what is often called the “human condiution”.

The Homesman is one of those Westerns [think Unforgiven] that depict the “old West” as it really was: stark, haggard, grim, grimey. And precarious down to the bone. Filled with the sort of experiences that might drive some folks…mad? The women in particular. To say their lives are hard is the put it mildly. But, still, there are a few compassionaite souls around that, in their own way, aim to help those in need.

Besides, Mary Bee Cuddy is a God-fearing Christian. She takes the Lord very seriously. But she is “plain”. The way the Lord made her.

Religion plays a big part here. The good, the bad, the ugly. It shows rather clearly why we invent Gods. Otherwise, we just have to endure our trials and tribulations with nothing to fall back on at all. Except each other. And how often is that enough? Especially when others are often the source of those trials and tribulations.

Here’s a “town” that makes Lagos from High Plains Drifter look like New York City. And out on the vast Nebraska plain it is just swallowed up, looking all the tinier still. This is about the most fearturless landscape imaginable. Especially in the winter. There’s no way in hell that most of us would last a week out there.

Trust me: You’ve never seen a Western that is anything like this one. It’s probably something you would never even imagine that someone would make a movie about.

IMDb

[b]Grace Gummer, who appears here in her first major film role, co-stars with her mother, Meryl Streep, who has a supporting role.

Glendon Swarthout’s novel was published in 1988. Paul Newman owned the rights for a time, and wanted to direct the film himself. After a number of scripts, he gave up.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Homesman
trailer: youtu.be/kCFaTffMMeE

THE HOMESMAN [2014]
Written in part and directed by Tommy Lee Jones

[b]Mary Bee: Why not marry?
Bob: Miss Cuddy, I appreciate the offer, and the supper, the concert and all. But I cannot marry you. Will not, won’t. I ain’t perfect, but you are too bossy. And too plumb damn plain!

…

Reverend: This is a painful occasion for you and your families and I grieve for you. Your wives are fine and Godly women. But life gave them more than they could bear. Now we’ll all draw lots. Whoever draws the black bean will carry the women home to from where they come from.

…

Mary Bee: I live uncommonly alone.

…

Mary Bee [holding a metal ring in the wagon]: What’s that?
Buster: You might want to tie something down. Put in ten of them.
Mary Bee [understanding what he means]: Oh, my. I’m not sure I’m ready.
Buster: Scared?
Mary Bee: A little.
Buster: Listen, Mary Bee you got a passable rig, mules. And you’re as good a man as any man hereabouts.And you’re doing a hell of a fine thing. So get to it and do it.

…

Mary Bee: Do people know?
Buster: Yep.
Mary Bee: What do they say?
Buster: They don’t say nothing. People like to talk about death and taxes. But when it comes to crazy…they stay hushed up.

…

George [hanging from a tree while sitting on his horse]: Are you an angel?
Mary: You’re not dead.
George: Help me. Will you help me? For God’s sake.
Mary Bee: Suppose I do, what will you do for me?
George: Anything, anything as god as my witness.
Mary: If I cut you down, will you do what I tell you to?
George: Hell yes, I will, swear to god.
Mary Bee: Swear to it?
George: Yes, I swear.
Mary: Swear to that allmighty god you been talking about.
George: Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord and brining in sheets and do unto others and if you cut me down from this goddamn tree, I’ll do anything you tell me to on god’s holy name.
Mary: Alright. I’ll set you free. I got a job of work for you. But if you try to hurt me or try to run away, I’ll kill you.

…

George: What’s the job?
Mary Bee: Three women in this country have lost their minds. Their husbands can’t care for them properly. You and I are going to take them back across the river to Iowa.
George: The Missouri River?
Mary Bee: We leave tomorrow.
George: Hell, that’s five goddamn weeks from here.
Mary Bee: I will not sit still for profanity in my house.
George: I can see why you’re single.

…

Mary Bee: I need someone who can hunt and guide and spell me at the reins, help with the animals on the trip. That’s why I set you free. It’s your job and you sworn to do it.
George: Three crazy women for five weeks is a lot more than I bargained for.

…

Mary Bee: If you lied to me, and intend on abandoning your responsibility, then you are a man of low character, more disgusting pig than honorable man.
George: Thank you for the kind words, sister. You’re no prize yourself. You’re plain as an old tin pail and you’re bossy. But I’ll set out with you cause I said I would and I’ll help you tend your cuckoo clock just as long as it suits me. However, I will up and leave when, where and if I please. Now, if you don’t mind me asking you, where the hell is my goddamn bed?
Mary Bee: In the stable, where you belong.

…

Thor Svendsen [about his stark raving mad wife]: She thinks she’s God. Do not untie her! She’ll try to kill you!!

…

George: You’re gonna meet three kinds of people out here. You’re gonna meet wagon trains that don’t want to see crazy people. You’re gonna meet freighters who will surely rape you. And you’re gonna meet Indians who will kill you, and then rape you after they kill me.

…

Mary Bee: What do they want?
George: Whatever we got. Trouble is they don’t know what that is. They’ve never seen a wagon like this one. If they think we’re worth the trouble, we’re dead. I’ll try to buy them off. But if something happens to me and they come on down here, you get in the wagon quick as you can. You shoot the women in the head then shoot yourself.

…

Mary Bee: What will they do with Dorothy?
George: They’ll probably eat her.

…

George: You lost one horse, Cuddy, here’s you another one.
Mary Bee: Where’d you get this horse?
George: A man let us have him.
Mary Bee: Why would he do that?
George: 'Cause he was dead. Miss Sours shot 'im.

…

George: Where’s the shovel?
Mary Bee: I lost the goddamn shovel!! Who cares about a shovel? You…are…insane!
George: The hell I am, Cuddy. I’m trying to move a load to the river as quick as I can and draw that $300. And that’s all there is. There ain’t no more.

…

George [to a retreating Mary Bee after he turns down her proposal that they get married]: I deserted from the Dragoons! That’s right. Company C, 1st US. Fort kearney! Stoled a horse and aways I run. I ain’t attached to nothing! Just me!

…

George: Raise your knees. Take me in your hand. Just you remember Cuddy, I didn’t force you.
Mary Bee: I will.
George: If I hurt you, I can’t help it.
Mary Bee: I know.
George: You asked me, I didn’t ask you.
Mary Bee: I know.
George: So put me in you.
Mary Bee: Yes.[/b]

And then she hangs herself. Didn’t see that coming. And what comes next is straight out of the Twilight Zone. No way in hell you would everr see that coming.

[b]George: [to the hotel staff]: Your mothers and your sisters and your wives and your daughters will curse your broke-dick souls.

…

Tabitha: Who is Mary Bee Cuddy?
George: Mary Bee Cuddy was as fine a woman as ever walked. You’ll never know her.
Tabitha: Well then, so what?
George: Oh. You are the living breathing reason she will never be lost. That’s what I’m talkin’.
Tabitha: You’re a strange man.
George: I expect I am. Why don’t we marry?
Tabitha: Maybe.[/b]

In other words, she’s not “plain” at all.