philosophy in film

iambiguous · April 12, 2013, 2:36am

They run away from home and become prostitutes. Or they are shoved into it by others. Then others start poking around in it. Trying to determine, for example, how much of it they brought on themselves.

That was a stupid thing to do!

But what can they possibly know about all that came before though? What do they know about sets of circumstances that always nudge different people in different directions for different reasons. And these are fucking kids.

Men who do these things to children should have their balls cut off and then be locked away for…forever. In the prison GP. Yes, they have their own sets of circumstances…their own nudges. But I can’t see anything less than a really brutal punishment as a deterrent to others. I’m the eye for an eye sort here.

That and scrapping both the working class and poverty. In other words, it’s hopeless.

The only consolation being the brutal things they often do to each other. Of course none of the characters here are what you’d call sympathetic. And the “blokes” who pay for these little girls? Let’s just say that some of them are part of the “establishment”. It’s straight out of Mona Lisa.

You do see the ending a mile away but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying.

[b]Note: Some explicit dialogue[/b]

trailer: youtu.be/KU3G7EEFnwQ

LONDON TO BRIGHTON [2006]
Written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams

[b]Kelly: Can you put a toy in it please?

…

Derek [to girl]: All right, come on. Stop this now. All right? Come on. You’re the most beautiful girl I know. Do you know that? When I first saw you, I thought you was like a star or something. You know? And do you know what’s more? Hmm? We’ve got a future, you and me. Something really good. Do you believe me? Come on. Do you believe me? Yeah. Right, good. So, get in there and fuck 'em for me. All right? They’ve come down a long way. They’re good friends of mine.

…

Kelly: Why the fuck did you run away?
Joanne: Becasue living at home was shit. Mom’s dead. And my dad was a bastard, beat me. He’s always pissed. The other week I nicked his fags and he kicked me in the ribs.
[she shows Kelly the bruise]
Kelly: It’s big.
Joanne: Massive last week.

…

Derek: Duncan Allen. He wants a girl.
Kelly: All right. Book me.
Derek: No. He wants a young girl, don’t he?
Kelly: How young?
Derek: Younger than you. I don’t know. 10, 11.

…

Derek: Look, I’ll give you 200 quid.
Kelly: It’s a little girl, Derek
Derek: Look, If I don’t find her, he’s gonna get one from somebody, so I might as well do it or he won’t come back to me, will he? I don’t want to fuck him off, do I?
Kelly: I don’t know. Where would I find someone? Can’t go out and fucking kidnap some kid.
Derek: You don’t have to, do you? All right? You’re gonna give her some money. Go down Waterloo and the Embankment. You find a runaway. They’ll need the money.

…

Derek: How old are you?
Joanne: Nearly 12.
Derek: I need someone like you. Someone with a bit of fucking brains. Someone who can take care of herself.
Joanne: Well, how can I help you?
Derek: Has anyone got to you yet? Since you’ve been out? You been with anyone?
Joanne: What? What do you mean?
Derek: Are you a virgin? Do you know what a virgin is?
Joanne: Yeah.
Derek: So, are you one? Come on. Are you a virgin? Have you fucked anyone? You just told me you knew what a virgin was. So, are you one? Yes or no?

…

Karen: Kelly needs to work.
Paul: Work as what?
Karen: On the street.
Kelly: I need to get some money. Just tell me where to go.
Paul: Face like that, no one’s gonna pick you up.
Kelly: Trust me. They will.

…

Customer: What happened to your face?
Kelly: It’s a long story. Can I help you?
Customer: Can I fuck you?
Kelly: 30 quid.
Customer: No way.
Kelly: Fuck off, mate. It’s 30 quid.
Customer: 30 without a johnny.
Kelly: You’re fucking taking the piss. 40 without.
Customer: All right, get in.

…

Joanne: Is this your house?
Duncan: It is.
Joanne: Are you a millionaire?
Duncan: Mm-hmm. What’s your name?
Joanne: Joanne.
Duncan: Joanne. So, are you gonna come upstairs with me, then?

…

Joanne: Kelly! Kelly! Kelly! Kelly, help me, please! Help me!
Kelly: Joanne?
Joanne: Aah!
Kelly [bursts into the bedroom]: Fucking hell! It’s all right, darling!
Joanne [crying]: He’s in the bathroom, Kelly!
Kelly [to Duncan]: You fucking cunt! She’s a little kid!!!

…

Stuart: I found some cigarettes that belonged to my dad once. I was probably not far off your age. I took one and I smoked it in the toilet upstairs. He caught me. As a punishment he made me eat the whole packet. Everything. The filters. The cardboard. The little bit of silver paper you get inside. He sat there, and he watched me eat the lot. I was throwing up every two seconds. He just watched me. Didn’t look away. I never smoked again.

…

Stuart [to Joanne]: I want you to tell me what happened. What did my father do to you?[/b]

iambiguous · April 12, 2013, 9:49pm

Chariots of the Gods? The Elephant Man? The Grim Reaper?

People invent stuff like this because it is probably as close as we are ever going to come to actually imagining the answers: Why are we here? How did we get here? What’s it all mean? When, where did it all start? You and I will almost certainly be long dead and gone before any real answers begin to emerge. But it’s always fascinating and fun [entertaining, profitable] to speculate about it.

Still, folks from each new generation manage to convince themselves it’s not all just a movie. They will be the ones to TOE it.

Here at least everything is out in the open: it’s funded by “the company” and so the denouement will be what “the company” wants. Well, if anyone from the company survives.

And it’s not so much us looking for ETs…we are from ETs. It’s either that or God. But then how does it fit into the evolution of life on earth? You know, Darwin and all that stuff?

And, most crucially of all, what does it have to do with saving our “soul”? After all, that’s the part that goes on forever, isn’t it? Got to have a cross in there somewhere.

Where the film stumbles though is in the characters. They are just no where near as interesting and entertaining as the personalities in Alien and Aliens. More like the ones in Alien3. Easily forgettable. I mean, did you actually care about any of them? Except maybe Elizabeth. A little.

Especially the stock characters at the end chuckling nobly in the face of death. That shit always rankles the hell out of me.

IMDb

[b]Director Ridley Scott named the film “Prometheus”, seeing the name aptly fit the film’s themes: “It’s the story of creation; the gods and the man who stood against them.” In Greek mythology, the Titan Prometheus was a servant of the gods, who stole and gave to mankind the gift of fire, an immeasurable benefit that changed the human race forever (for better AND worse).

According to Ridley Scott, the film’s plot was inspired by Erich von Däniken’s writings about ancient astronauts: “Both NASA and the Vatican agree that it is almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today, without there being a little help along the way. That’s what we’re looking at: we are talking about gods and engineers, engineers of space. Were the Aliens designed as a form of biological warfare, or biology that would go in and clean up a planet?”

The Vatican’s official newspaper L’osservatore Romano gave a negative review of this film saying that it “mishandles the delicate questions raised by… the battle eternal between good and evil.” [/b]

FAQs at IMDb imdb.com/title/tt1446714/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(film

PROMETHEUS [2012]
Directed by Ridley Scott

Young Elizabeth: How do you know that Heaven is beautiful?
Father: Because that’s what I choose to believe.

It works the same way here doesn’t it?

[b]Meredith: Good morning. I am Meredith Vickers, and it is my job to make sure you do yours.

…

Weyland [as a holographic recording]: Hello, friends. My name is Peter Weyland. I am your employer. I am recording this, 22 June, 2091. And if you’re watching it, you have reached your destination. And I am long dead. May I rest in peace. There’s a man sitting with you today. His name is David. And he is the closest thing to a son I will ever have. Unfortunately, he is not human. He will never grow old and he will never die. And yet he is unable to appreciate these remarkable gifts for that would require the one thing that David will never have. A soul. I have spent my entire lifetime contemplating the questions: Where do we come from? What is our purpose? What happens when we die? And I have finally found two people who convinced me they’re on the verge of answering them. Doctors Holloway and Shaw, if you would please stand. As far as you’re concerned, they’re in charge. The Titan Prometheus wanted to give making equal footing with the gods and for that, he was cast from Olympus. Well, my friends, the time has finally come for his return.

…

Fifield: So you’re saying we’re here because of a map you two kids found in a cave, is that right?
Elizabeth: No. Not a map. An invitation.
Fifield: From whom?
Elizabeth: We call them Engineers.
Fifield: Engineers? Do you mind, um, telling us what they engineered?
Elizabeth: They engineered us.

…

Meredith: Weyland found you impressive enough to fund this mission. But I’m fairly certain your Engineers are nothing but scribblings of savages living in dirty little caves. But let’s say I’m wrong, and you do find these beings down there, you won’t engage them, you won’t talk to them. You will do nothing but report back to me.

…

Charlie: Um, Miss Vickers, is there an agenda that you’re not telling us about?
Meredith: My company paid a trillion dollars to find this place and to bring you here. Had you raised the monies yourself, Mr. Holloway, we’d happily be pursuing your agenda. But you didn’t. And that makes you an employee.[/b]

Bingo.

[b]David: There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.

…

David: I was designed like this because you are more comfortable interacting with your own kind. If I didn’t wear a suit, it would defeat the purpose.
Charlie: They’re making you guys pretty close, huh?
David: Not too close, I hope.

…

Meredith: Son of a bitch. They were right.
Janek: What did you want them to be? Wrong?

…

David: Big things have small beginnings.

…

Charlie: What we hoped to achieve was to meet our makers. To get answers. Why they even made us in the first place.
David: Why do you think your people made me?
Charlie: We made you because we could.
David: Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?
Charlie: I guess it’s good you can’t be disappointed.

…

David [to Elizabeth]: I didn’t think you had it in you.
[she looks at him suddenly]
David: Sorry, poor choice of words.

…

David: They were in the process of leaving…before things went to pot.
Elizabeth: Leaving to go where?
David: Earth.
Elizabeth: Why?
David: Sometimes to create, one must first destroy.

…

David’s talking robot head [watching Elizabeth put on her cross]: Even after all this, you still believe don’t you?

…

Elizabeth: Final report of the vessel Prometheus. The ship and her entire crew are gone. If you’re receiving this transmission, make no attempt to come to its point of origin. There is only death here now, and I’m leaving it behind. It is New Year’s Day, the year of our Lord, 2094. My name is Elisabeth Shaw, last survivor of the Prometheus. And I am still searching.[/b]

You know what that transmission leads to. A sequel among other things.

iambiguous · April 13, 2013, 8:04pm

India. 1938. Gandhi. Change.

But it is still religion and the plight of women then that is embodied in this film. At least from the perspective of many of us on this side of the historical divide.

What it took to even make the film speaks volumes regarding religion in the modern world. Alas, for some though, the more modern [ambiguous] the world gets the more they cling to the clarity and the certitude of the past.

You are just left to marvel at the things people are willing to believe – and do – in the name of God.

For example, in order to sustain the ashram, some of the younger [prettier] “widows” are forced into prostitution. The rest of them? They beg in the streets.

And yet to change things you have to change how people view God and religion. And here those who are most oppressed are often the most devout.

This film is set in the 1930s. Here is an article on the plight of widows in India today—pretty much the same: womenundersiegeproject.org/b … ias-widows

IMDb

[b]The shoot in Varanasi was stopped due to threats and demonstrations orchestrated by Hindu fundamentalist groups supported by the leadership of the state government in Uttar Pradesh.

George Lucas took out a full-page ad in “Variety” to support Deepa Mehta in her struggle to make this film when Indian authorities made clear their intentions to shut the production down.

Four years after production was shut down in India, filming resumed in Sri Lanka. The movie was shot under the fake title “Full Moon” to avoid attention.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_(2005_film
trailer youtu.be/2R0pRl18js8

WATER [2005] (Hindi: वाटर)

Written and directed by Deepa Mehta

Title card: “A widow should be long suffering until, death, self-restrained and caste. A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died goes to Heaven. A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb of a Jackal.”
The Laws of Manu…Chapter 5, verse 156…Dharamshasras [Sacred Hindu Texts]

It should be pointed out that the “wife” here can be a little girl.

[b]Chuyia’s Father [to young Chuyia]: Child. Do you remember getting married?
Chuyia: No.
Chuyia’s Father: Your husband is dead. You’re a widow now.
Chuyia: For how long, father?

…

Chuyia: I want my mother.
Madhu: Our Holy Books say, a wife is a part of her husband, while he’s alive. And the husband dies, God help us, wives also half die.

…

Rabindra: My father doesn’t even bother with the names of the widows. There’s the old one, the fat one, the young one, the new one.

…

Narayana: Passive resistance. An intriguing concept.
Rabindra: Forget it. Romantics make terrible Nationalists.

…

Chuyia: Where is the house for male widows?
A chorus of reaction from the women: “Good God!”…“What a terrible thing to say!”…“God protect our men from such a fate.”…“May your tongue burn.”…“Pull out her tongue and throw it in the river.”

…

Priest: Sakuntala, you’ve been doing this service for many years. So many years of sacrifice and devotion. Do you feel closer to self liberation?
Shakuntala [after long reflection]: If self liberation means detachment from worldly desires, then no, I’m no closer.
Priest: Whatever happens never lose your faith. Never lose your faith.[/b]

For what? What’s the alternative?

[b]Gulabi: Did you know this Gandhi is going to sink India.
Madhu: What’s he done now?
Gulabi: He says Untouchables are the children of God.
Madhu: Disgusting! Before he came everything ran like an English clock. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

…

Narayana: Say you had a wife.
Rabindra: I’m not married.
Narayana: Say you had…and she died. And everything you’ve cared for is taken from you.
Rabindra: If you hadn’t met that widow you wouldn’t be such a champion of their cause.[/b]

That young and very beautiful widow. But what does that really have to do with being snatched from the world you know as a child…or being forced into prostitution.

[b]Chuyia: I was going home.
Shakuntala: You can’t go home.
Chuyia: I know.
Shakuntala: Forget that life.
Chuyia: Auntie ate a ladoo.
Shakuntala: Don’t worry. After eating the ladoo, she’ll go to Heaven. God willing she’ll be reborn as a man.

…

Narayana: When did you become a widow?
Kalyani: I don’t remember. Maybe when I was nine.
Narayana: Was your husband good to you?
Kalyani: I never met him.

…

Narayana: If my mother had her way, I’d be married with a daughter as old as Chuyia.
Kalyani: Your mother’s right. That’s how things are.
Narayana: That’s how things were. Times are changing. All the old traditions are dying out.
Kalyani: But what is good should not die out.
Narayana: And who will decide what is good and what is not?
Kalyani: You.[/b]

And God of course.

Shakuntala: You have studied the Holy Scriptures. Is it written that widows should be treated badly?
Priest: The scriptures say that widows have three options. They can burn with their dead husbands, or lead a life of self-denial or, if the family permits, marry their husband’s younger brother.
[Shakuntala gets up to leave]
Priest: However, a law was recently passed which favors widow remarriage.
Shakuntala: A law? Why don’t we know about it?
Priest: We ignore the laws that don’t benefit us.

And, with eternal damnation at stake, of what use is a law that violates the tenets of the faith?

[b][Narayana finds out Kalyani is a prostitute who slept with his father]
Father: So you’ve found out she is not a goddess. Don’t marry her. Keep her as a mistress.
Narayana: I respected you so much.
Father: Brahmins can sleep with whomever they want, and the women they sleep with are blessed.
Narayana: Do you know Lord Ram told His brother never to honor those Brahmins who interpret the Holy Texts for their vown benefit?
Father: You’re not a hero in an epic play ready to wage war for love.
Narayana [walking away]: You disgust me.

…

Shakuntala [after Kalyani commits suicide]: Why are we widows sent here? There must be a reason for it.
Narayana: One less mouth to feed. Four saris saved, one bed, and a corner is saved in the family home. There is no other reson why you are here. Disguised as religion, it is about money.

…

Priest [after learning the British have released Gandhi from jail]: Gandhi is one of the few people in the world who listens to the voice of his conscience.
Shakuntala: But what if our conscience conflicts with our faith?

…

Gandhi [speaking at train station]: My dear brothers and sisters, for a long time time I believed that God is Truth. But today I know that Truth is God.[/b]

iambiguous · April 14, 2013, 5:28pm

When you live out in the middle of nowhere [anywhere] and decide [as an “alienated” youth] to rebel what are the options? Well, as with most things, it will depend in large part on whatever it is [as dasein] you happen to think of. But in the age of the internet you can be prompted [by others] to think of lots and lots and lots of things.

And the new things Niroka starts to think about all revolved around new friends on line. And they lived in Tokyo.

The mystery is always this: Why do some feel compelled to “rebel” and others do not? You know my own thoughts. But it’s one thing to know what you want to lose and another thing altogether to know what you want to find. And the young are impressionable. And that can be dangerous.

The thing about identity [for some] is this: if you don’t like the one given to you, you make up one of your own. But once you start down this path you can begin to recognize how who you think you are is always just a fabrication of one sort or another.

Here [briefly] they even explore the role that capitalism in modern Japan plays in reconstructing identities of old. Survival of the fittest in a world that can be bursting at the seams with ancestral “truths”.

But how some arrive at suicide here [from premises largely unintelligible to me] is the further mystery. I can’t make that leap. Not now, anyway.

trailer: youtu.be/xRmpIwJQLFw

NORIKO’S DINNER TABLE [Noriko No Shokutaku] [2005]
Written and directed by Shion Sono

[b]Noriko [voiceover]: I was a teenager stuck in the boondocks.

…

Noriko [voiceover]: Tokyo. Tokyo. Tokyo. I had no idea what was in Tokyo, but I decided to gamble. I was born to breathe but I wasn’t breathing just because I was born.

…

Noriko [voiceover]: I wanted to live, challenge, wish, forget, learn, know, ask, see, stare, understand, hear, listen, speak, meet…and be there.[/b]

Well, that narrows it down. Except for the part about what and where.

[b]Noriko [voiceover]: I’ve been pretending to be busy until today; now I feel naked.

…

Noriko [voiceover to Yuka]: Everything is our own made up story. Isn’t that wonderful?

…

Yuka [voiceover]: After three months of investigation, my father wrote the following: 1] the Suicide Club exists 2] Members meet at Haikyo.com 3] The dots on Haikyo.com represent suicides. The white ones are men. The red ones are women.

…

Suicide Circle member to Noriko’s Father: It’s time for you to wake up to your role. Who are you? You said you were connected to yourself but are you really? You’re not believable as a reporter or as a father. The world is so full of lies that people can’t play their roles convincingly. They fail as husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, children etc. So, the only way to figure out what we can be is to lie openly and pursue emptiness.

…

Tetsuzô: Corny acting. Was this what their lonely, desperate clients wanted? But here I was lonely, desperate…hiding in the closet.

…

Kumiko [voiceover]: I’d made up my past and stuffed it all into that cold, metal locker. But reality is soft like a cardboard box. So fragile it would dissolve in the rain. An outline. Humans have only an outline.

…

Kumiko: Someone has to play the role of the victim. But everyone wants to be the champagne, not the glass. Everyone wants to be the flower, not the vase. But the world needs glasses and vases. These roles need to be filled. Like a master servant relationship. Maybe that’s how capitalism is.
Friend: What’s capitalism?
Kumiko: I’ll tell you later.

…

Kumiko [voiceover]: Some will kill, some will be killed. That’s the circle of life, though there are contradictions. There are no perfect circles anywhere in nature. But if you draw a circle with a compass and a big fat marker, a thick outline will make it seem perfect. I’ll give you a sense of perfection, Tetsuzo. You can be a lion. I’ll be a rabbit. I don’t need thick outlines. My metal box is starting to rot. I’m gonna go to a higher level. A rabbit, a suicide, a killer, evil, water overflowing from a glass…I’ll be whatever no one else wants to be. I’m sick of shameless outlines of people seeking happiness. They don’t wanna be rabbits. They just wanna eat rabbits. There’s no such jungle.[/b]

What it means is beside the point. The point is does it mean something to you?

iambiguous · April 14, 2013, 8:27pm

From the director of L.I.E. above. So you know it is going to be grim and gritty. Chunks of it anyway.

For example: Rudy dies when local bullies set fire to a tree house. While he is in it.

[No they thought it was empty]

And you know the point of view here will often come from children. But of a certain demographic to be sure. Boys of that demographic in particular. But here a very mixed up girl too.

Then the idea is to peruse the film for other snapshots of America. There must be a million of them.

Some hopeful, most not. A few really, really excruciating.

trailer: youtu.be/5Agbf5VzXH0

12 AND HOLDING [2005]
Directed by Michael Cuesta

[b]Leonard: Why were you saving piss?
Rudy: Just in case. Pretty smart, huh?

…

Ashley [the mother, to Jim]: You tell him!
Jim [the father, to Jacob]: The boys who killed Rudy cut a deal. They got a year in juvenile hall and five years’ probation.
Ashley: One year. That’s what his life is worth. One year.
Jim: Just calm down.
Ashley: How can you be so unaffected by this? Your son was murdered!
Jim: It was an accident. It was an accident. And those boys are juveniles.
Ashley: So that makes it okay?[/b]

This is a tough one. It revolves around intention and maturity.

[b]Jacob: Is your cell small.
Kenny: Yes.
Jacob: So is a coffin.

…

Ashley: Jeff Laskey is dead.
Jim: What?
Ashley: He committed suicide in his jail cell last night. Justice is served.

…

Kenny: Jacob, the entire time I was in here you are the only one who came to see me.

…

Jacob: No offence, but I never thought my future brother would be a…well, a “brother”.
Keith: I never thought my future brother would have a Kool-Aid stain, smeared across his face.
Jacob: Fuck you, it’s a birthmark!

…

Mother: Is that what this is about, food?
Leonard: I’m trying to save your life, Mom.
Mother: I don’t need you to save my life, Leonard. I need you to OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!

…

Gus [to Carla his psychologist]: One of the last fires I ever fought was a brownstone. Whole families wiped out. During the inspection, I went upstairs. And I found a little girl. The whole right side of her face was burned off. But her eyes were open. She was still alive.
[pause]
Gus: Uh…the pain…You know that the–the pain must’ve been excruciating. You know?
[long pause, stuggling to speak]
Gus: She was–she was begging me to–to kill her.
Carla: What did you do?
Gus: I did what she wanted me to do. I killed her.
[he breaks down]
Gus: I kept telling myself that that was the right thing to do. You know…it’s–it’s just…But I’ve never been sure.
Carla: That was devastating. But what does it have to do with Malee?
Gus: When I saw her last night…she had the same look on her face as that little girl. She just wanted me to take her pain away.

…

Ashley: You are my son and I love you. I would do anything for you. I would kill for you, I’d die for you!
Jacob: Rudy used to say the same thing.
Ashley: And he was right. And as un-Christian as it sounds, I still want the…the boy that killed Rudy dead.[/b]

So be it.

iambiguous · April 15, 2013, 8:53pm

Stumbling about in desert. Dressed in a suit. And no one knows why. Not even him apparently. And you can be sure we aren’t going to find out. But we do learn he fucked up a once in a lifetime relationship with the greatest woman on earth. And then miraculously he is able to stumble back into her life. And into the life of his son. But there is no putting this thing back together again. Least ways not how it used to be.

True love disintegrating in the modern world.

And even when we find out why they did what they did then [and do what they do now] we only come to realize how far removed we still are from really understanding anything. And not just about them. If you are perceptive enough you trace it all the way back to yourself.

Most don’t though. Not because they can’t, but because they won’t. There’s just too much at stake to give up believing they can figure these things out. Or even fix them.

The ending however becomes increasingly disconcerting. To me anyway. There’s Walt and Anne hundreds of miles away. There’s Jane and Hunter in the hotel. There’s Travis gone again. This time surely forever.

I just don’t buy it anymore. Years ago I wanted Hunter to be with Jane. But now I want him back again with Anne.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris,Texas(film

trailer: youtu.be/ic_s0DDNoB8

PARIS, TEXAS [1984]
Directed by Wim Wenders

[b]Sign in a bar in the middle of the desert: The dust has come to stay. You may stay or pass on through or whatever.

…

Walt: Anne, honey…I just got this strangest phone call.
Anne: Who from?
Walt: From some hospital in south Texas, place called Terlingua. They say they’ve found Travis.

…

Walt [finding Travis walking in the desert]: Travis! Hey. Don’t you recognize me? It’s Walt. It’s your brother, Walt. What the hell happened to you anyway? You look like fourty miles of rough road.

…

Walt: Trav? Would you mind telling me where you disappeared to for the last four years? Uh…have you seen Jane? Or talk to her? Gee, Anne and I uh … we sort of gave up on you, we actually…we thought you were dead, boy.

…

Walt [after Travis once again takes off walking]: You mind telling me where you’re headed, Trav?
[He points to the horizon]
Walt: What’s out there? There’s nothing out there.

…

Walt: Travis, do you remember your little boy, Hunter? Well he’s with us. He’s been living with Anne and me ever since you disappeared. We didn’t know what else to do. So, we just kept him. One day, he was just standing at the door. All he could tell us was someone brought him there in a car. He didn’t know what’d happened to you, or Jane. So we tried everything we could think of to find you, or Jane. Tried to locate her, she’d vanished too. We didn’t know what else to do.

…

Walt: What’s the matter?
Travis: Where’re we going?
Walt: We’re gonna fly to L.A. You are not afraid of flying, are you?
Travis: …leaving the ground?

…

Walt: I-I told him you are his father. But see … well you’ve been gone a long time, Trav.
Travis: How long have I been gone, do you know?
Walt: Four years.
Travis: Is four years a long time?
Walt: Well, it is for a little boy. It’s half his life.

…

Walt: We live in the Los Angeles suburbs, but I’ve got my business in town
Travis: Oh yeah? What’s your business?
Walt: I make billboard signs for advertising.
Travis: Oh yeah? So you’re the one who makes those signs, I love those. Some of them are beautiful.
Walt: Uh, I’m not the only one who makes them, Trav.

…

Anne: I’m just afraid.
Walt: You’re afraid of Travis?
Anne: No. I’m afraid of what will happen to us if we lose Hunter.
Walt: We’re not gonna lose Hunter.
Anne: Then why do you keep pushing them together? It’s almost as if you wanted him to leave. You keep promoting this father-son business between them.
Walt: It’s not business! Travis is his father! And Hunter is his son! That’s a fact. We’ve known that all along. And Travis happens to be my brother.
Anne: I know he is.
Walt: Then what’s this promotion bullshit? You want us to go on pretending that we are the parents of my brother’s son? How long do you expect Hunter to buy that?
Anne: I was never pretending! I love him just like he was my own flesh and blood.
Walt: So do I.

…

Anne: Travis, there’s something I have to tell you. I was not going to, because somehow it makes things easier that nobody knows. I never even told Walt or Hunter. After Hunter came to live with us, Jane used to call, asking about him. She made me promise not to tell anyone she was calling.
Travis: Did she ask about me?
Anne: Yes, in the beginning.
Travis: Where did she call from?
Anne: Places in Texas.
Travis: What places?
Anne: Let me finish, Travis. After what happened between you and Jane, she decided Hunter should be with us. She said she couldn’t be a mother to him any more.
Travis: She stopped being a mother to him a long time before that.
Anne: Travis, I don’t want to feel I’m hiding something from you anymore.
Travis: She was young. She wanted something, I just couldn’t figure out what it was. I just didn’t realize how much rage I had.
Anne: A little more than a year ago, she stopped calling. I haven’t heard from her since then.
Travis: Nothing?
Anne: Not a word.[/b]

But then Anne tells him about the bank account.

[b]Walt: I thought you were afraid of heights.
Travis: I’m not afraid of heights. I’m afraid of fallin’.

…

Hunter: Left, Dad.

…

Travis [in a tape recording to Hunter]: “Hunter, it’s me. I was afraid I’d never be able to say the right words to you…in person. So, I’m trying to do it like this. When I first saw you, this time, at Walt’s, I was hopping for all kinds of things. I was hoping to show you that I was your father. You showed me I was. But the biggest thing I hoped for, can’t come true. I know that now. Your belong together with your mother. It was me that tore you apart. And I owe it to you to bring you back together. But I can’t stay with you. I can never heal up what happened. That’s just the way it is.”

…

Travis: I knew these people…
Jane: What people?
Travis: These two people. They were in love with each other. The girl was…very young, about seventeen or eighteen, I guess. And the guy was…quite a bit older. He was kind of ragged and wild. She was very beautiful, you know. And together they turned everything into a kind of an adventure, and she liked that. Just an ordinary trip down the grocery store was … full of adventure. They were always laughing at stupid things. He liked to make her laugh. And…they didn’t much care for anything else, Because all they wanted to do was be with each other. They were always together.
Jane: Sounds like they were very happy.
Travis: Yes, they were. They were real happy. And he, he loved her more than he ever felt possible. He couldn’t stand being away from her, uh…during the day when he went to work. So, he quit. Just to be home with her. Then he got another job when the money ran out, then he quit again. But pretty soon, she started to worry.
Jane: About what?
Travis: Money, I guess. Not having enough. Not knowing when the next check was coming in.
Jane: Yep. I know that feeling.
Travis: So he started to get kind of…torn inside.
Jane: How do you mean?
Travis: Well he knew he had to work to support her, but he couldn’t stand being away from her, either. And the more he was away from her, the crazier he got. Except now, he got really crazy. He started imagining all kinds of things. He started thinking that she was seeing other men on the sly. He’d come home from work and accuse her of spending the day with somebody else. He’d yell at her, break things in the trailer.
Jane: The trailer?
Travis: Yes. They lived in a trailer home…He started to drink real bad. And he’d stay out late to test her.
Jane: What do you mean “test her”?
Travis: To see if she’d get jealous. He wanted her to get jealous, but she didn’t. She just worried about him, but that got him even madder.
Jane: Why?
Travis: Because he thought if she never got jealous of him that she didn’t really care about him. Jealousy was a sign of her love for him, and then one night, one night she told him that she was pregnant, she was about three or four months pregnant and he didn’t even know and then suddenly everything changed, he stopped drinking, he got a steady job, he was convinced that she loved him now that she was carrying his child and he was going to dedicate himself to making a home for her. But a funny thing started to happen, he didn’t even notice it at first, she started to change. From the day the baby was born, she began to get irritated with everything around her. She got mad at everything. Even the baby seemed to be an injustice to her. He kept trying to make everything all right for her. Buy her things. Take her out to dinner once a week. But nothing seemed to satisfy her. For two years he struggled to pull them back together like they were when they first met, but finally he knew that it was never going to work out. So he hit the bottle again. But this time it got… mean. This time, when he came home late at night, she wasn’t worried about him, or jealous, she was just enraged. She accused him of holding her captive by making her have a baby. She told him that she dreamed about escaping. That was all she dreamed about: escape. She saw herself at night running naked down a highway, running across fields, running down riverbeds, always running. And always, just when she was about to get away, he’d be there. He would stop her somehow. He would just appear and stop her. And when she told him these dreams, he believed them. He knew she had to be stopped or she’d leave him forever. So he tied a cow bell to her ankle so he could hear at night if she tried to get out of bed. But she learned how to muffle the bell by stuffing a sock into it, and inching her way out of the bed and into the night. He caught her one night when the sock fell out and he heard her trying to run to the highway. He caught her and dragged her back to the trailer, and tied her to the stove with his belt. He just left her there and went back to bed and lay there listening to her scream. And he listened to his son scream, and he was surprised at himself because he didn’t feel anything anymore. All he wanted to do was…sleep. And for the first time, he wished he were far away. Lost in a deep, vast country where nobody knew him. Somewhere without language, or streets. He dreamed about this place without knowing its name. And when he woke up, he was on fire. There were blue flames burning the sheets of his bed. He ran through the flames toward the only two people he loved…but they were gone. His arms were burning, and he threw himself outside and rolled on the wet ground. Then he ran. He never looked back at the fire. He just ran. He ran until the sun came up and he couldn’t run any further. And when the sun went down, he ran again. For five days he ran like this until every sign of man had disappeared.[/b]

iambiguous · April 16, 2013, 12:54am

Not exactly one man one vote here. But it’s probably as close as gangsters are ever likely to come to it. And you don’t see this sort of thing much at all over on my side of the globe.

These things do happen. The elections. And you can imagine just how convoluted the “alliances” are. The ever shifting complexities embodied in power. And it takes vote buying to a whole other level.

And here the smart cops know you can never end this sort of criminality. The Triads are merely offering to sell what millions of folks want to buy. Instead, the idea is to minimize the violence and keep collateral damage as far away as possible.

And always the turbulent balance between “tradition” [that deemed sacred] and “whatever works” [that deemed expedient]. “Whatever works” only really works though if there is someone ready, willing and able to make it work at all cost. It’s a dictatorial approach rooted in a naked quest for power. But in such an environment, instability is almost always the rule. Very few men are able to make it work for long. And that can lead to factions always at war with each other. And that can’t be good for business. And the police are less likely to look the other way.

Follow the baton. Then the ceremonies, rituals and oaths. And then the [at times] sheer banality and senselessness of the violence. Of it all really.

Some dressed in robes. Some dressed in suits. Some dressed in blue jeans and t-shirts.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_(2005_film
trailer: youtu.be/quMLN0SHTfM

ELECTION [Hak Se Wui] 2005
Directed by Johnnie To

iambiguous · April 16, 2013, 7:49pm

Based on a true story of sexual obsession, Ruth Ellis becomes entangled in an illicit affair that, in the end, leads to her execution. The last execution in England. Said to have “shocked the world.” Other than that though it’s all rather ordinary.

To wit: A wealthy man who is meant to marry one sort of woman and keep another sort as his mistress. Lots and lots of them in fact. The spurned mistress wants more but cannot procure it. The mistress kills him. Your typical fists and flowers relationship.

Again and again: “In love” we can talk ourselves into believing the most preposterous things. If we perused it only with the least bit of effort we’d double over in laughter. It is human emotion in the end that counts. Especialy when the chips are down. Or in the “spur of the moment”. In the blink of an eye whole lives change.

And then there is Desmond. He seems content to be her pet. Or, rather, resigned to be. I love the scene where David takes Ruth out on the dance floor and Desmond is left behind. The music playing in the backround? “How Much is that Doggie in the Window”.

Really, a tale of two utterly self-absorbed people.

Ruth Ellis at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Ellis

trailer: youtu.be/DdrynRqBm7E

DANCE WITH A STRANGER [1985]
Directed by Mike Newell

[b]David: I love you.
Ruth: Everybody does. Why should you be different.

…

David: Has Desmond slept in this bed with you.
Ruth: No. Come to think of it, he must be the only man in London who hasn’t.
David: Some people have no shame.
Ruth: Some people have enough for everyone.

…

Ruth [from a card sent with flowers to David]: “Congratulations on your forthcoming marriage. Please return front door key immediately.”

…

Ruth: Don’t get snotty with me, Christine. You take them all too seriously.
Christine: I don’t take any of them seriously. They’ve still got their mother’s milk dribbling down their chins.

…

David: I’ll send you a postcard from France.
Ruth [disgusted]: France isn’t far enough. Get out!

…

Ruth: …it’s a finishing school in Switzerland.
Andy [her son]: What do you do there?
Ruth: Well, young ladies go there to finish their education. And to cook and sew. And to fill in divorce papers.

…

Ruth: I see you helped yourself to the scotch.
David: Ah, it’s all part of your villanous employers generous home entertainment allowance.
Ruth: It still has to be paid for. Neither he nor I are working to maintain the idle aristocracy.
David: You exaggerate my social standing.
Ruth: I don’t give a fiddlers-fuck about your social standing…now on your way.

…

David: I hate everything you did before you met me.
Ruth: Well, take two aspirins and tell me about it in the morning. I’m going to bed. I’ve got a business to run.
David: I want you to marry me.
Ruth: Why? Are you pregnant?
David: I shan’t have any peace until I have you.
Ruth: I’ve never had any peace.[/b]

Two scenes later he is slapping her across the face.

[b]Ruth: I’m pregnant.
[pause]
Ruth: Shall I have an abortion?
David: No.
Ruth: Why not? One more won’t make any difference now.

…

Carol: As long as you’re involved with that woman you’ll be quarreling with everybody.
David: She’s had a rough life.
Carol: We’ve all had rough lives. If you marry her she will drive you down to her level because she is incapable of rising to yours.

…

Desmond [to Ruth]: The whole thing’s filthy! He’s treating you like a tart and the kid’s left to fend for himself. It’s rot.

…

Desmond[ to Ruth]: Is he still hitting you?
Ruth: I don’t know.
Desmond: Surely, even you must know when someone is beating the living daylight out of you!

…

Ruth: Get out of the way, Clive!

…

Title card: Ruth Ellis was hanged on July 13th 1955 at H.M. Prison, Holloway, London. 27 years later her son. Andria, killed himself.[/b]

You can see the execution enacted in the film Pierrepont: The Last Hangman.

iambiguous · April 17, 2013, 12:48am

This is a true story.

As someone who loves music with a passion the most frightening thing imaginable is going deaf. Really, I think I would rather be dead.

Here it’s not just listening to it but revolving your whole fucking life around it. What must that be like?

Though in part congenital, the other part he brought on himself. Years and years of being around very, very loud music. It’s a tough call though for some: From day to day to day they thrive on the sound. The louder the better. But down the road the ears can’t take it anymore. Some get tinnitus. Some lose hearing altogether.

It’s like, say, someone who loves to stuff his face with the junk food. He knows it’s not healthy but it tastes so good in the moment he rationalizes the future away. Until the future is now and his heart finally takes him down for the count. It’s a trade-off some are willing to make. Same with booze and drugs. And lots of other things where the risk of losing something important to you is involved.

I once listened to music myself VERY LOUD. Then I stopped. I don’t enjoy it as much but at least I can still hear it. And gradually my own chronic tinnitus dissipated as well. You’ve just got to be practical about these things. Or take your chances going to the edge.

Frankie’s genius is that he learned to do with sight [and touch] what he once did with sound. Until he dropped out altogether.

IMDb

[b]When Frankie is having the extensive hearing tests, the instrument that the doctor uses has markings that go up to 11. This is a reference to Nigel Tufnel’s Amp in “This Is Spinal Tap”

Paul Kaye is not a fan of dance music and, whenever a scene has him in head phones, he instead listened to punk rock like Sex Pistols or The Clash.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It’s_All_Gone_Pete_Tong

trailer: youtu.be/WGsCzaI5qrM

IT’S ALL GONE PETE TONG [2004]
Written and directed by Michael Dowse

[b]Frankie: I was thinking, you know Paul Newman’s got his salad dressing and that? So why not Frankie Wilde Hummus?

…

Friend: Frankie’s problem was quite a common problem amongst DJ’s…an occupational hazard. They work in the clubs. The noise just takes its toll.

…

Jack: His hearing was fucked. But he tried to keep working and plow through. You know, put the horse blinkers on. Ignore the problem, and it’ll go away.

…

Jack: Well, denial is a river in Frank, and it runs deep. And his sets were shambolic at times. Clearly, could only be the work of a man who couldn’t hear.

…

Frankie: I tell you, I really fucked up last night, man. It’s my call. I picked the wrong set.
Max: It stunk. It stunk like shit, Frank. It stunk like…Well, like you shit your pants…and you just sat in it for a week, and then you shit yourself again. That’s how fucking bad it stunk, Frank.

…

Frankie: I couldn’t hear a fucking thing.
Max: Right. Because you might be deaf, Frank.
Frankie: What’s that?
Max: You could be deaf, Frank.
Frankie: What you saying?
Max: You are deaf.
Frankie: Can’t hear you, Max.
Frankie: YOU’RE FUCKING DEAF, ASSHOLE!!!

…

Max: You’re talking like a 95 year old war vet. Frank, you need professional help.

…

Doctor: I don’t want you to panic, Frank. I’ve got some bad news for you, though. You’re going deaf. Completely deaf. As you know, your right ear is completely shot. Your left ear has got 20 percent left. You were born with little holes in them…and slowly the fluid pressure is dropping.
Frankie: Can’t you just plug it up with some ear putty or something?
Doctor: It doesn’t work like that. The ear organism, it’s way too sensitive and delicate. Surgery doesn’t work. Cochlear implant doesn’t work. You’ve gotta stop exposing yourself to so much noise.
Frankie: What do you mean?
Doctor: It means that if you listen to absolute silence your ears are gonna last a little bit longer. They’re crumbling as we speak.

…

Doctor: Stop the drugs, Frank. Stop the drinking. Go to bed at a decent hour. We can give you a hearing aid that gives you temporary hearing…but that damages the ear even further. These are the facts, Frank. These are the facts. We can’t change them. You are deaf, man. You are a deaf man.
Frankie: This is costing me thousands of fucking euros an hour. Chuck me a fucking bone!
Doctor: This is your hearing aid, Frank. Use it only when you have to. Only when you have to.

…

Frankie [to Sonya]: I was thinking this morning, maybe I should write a book. That might take years though, perhaps a pamphlet or a brochure.

…

Jack: I didn’t want a deaf DJ on the label. I didn’t want the company to be touched with the deaf stamp. Well, business is tough and sometimes you have to make awkward decisions and I’ve made harder decisions than dropping the deaf DJ.

…

Repoter: Where’s Frankie Wilde today?
Max: I haven’t talked to him in almost a year now. I’ve heard some stories. This guy supposedly saw him in New York wearing a garbage bag for a hat and shoeboxes on his feet and he had a rock, and he was trying to eat it like a sandwich.

…

Jack: The first time I heard “Hear No Evil”, I was like “whatever”. But Max told me Frankie’s story and the penny dropped. People love a good tragedy. People love handicaps, frankly. It gets them emotional. I’ll get on that deaf train with a wheelchair ramp, no problem. First-class ticket, please.

…

Max [putting a Frankie Wilde bobble head on the table]: This is just the beginning.

…

Frankie: What’s with the fucking ear sculpture?
Max: The ear, that represents your deafness, okay. Deaf people hate their ears, see. Don’t they? So it’s symbolic. So you’re gonna smash it. The deaf kids are gonna go fucking nuts.
Frankie: It’s wank. I’m sucking deaf cock for you, mate…and I’m fucking choking on it.
Max: All right, first off, okay, you’re sucking show-biz cock. But look, this is gonna be good money. This is all about cash. Shitloads of cash, Frank. And better than that…Sonya can’t get her grubby fingers on this fucking money, understand? This is Sonya-free cash!

…

Max: That was it, gone. Frankie Wilde, bye-bye. Gone. I’ve heard a story that he’s running a record shop in Oxford. There’s a story that he went to Fiji and then died of syphilis. But nobody knows. You know, I don’t know where he is. He was another deaf guy with a deaf guy’s needs. And he went off to a quiet place. Although, I suppose that wouldn’t make much difference.[/b]

iambiguous · April 17, 2013, 8:39pm

His neighbors are possible extremists. His neighbors are possible terrorists. His neighbors are possible nuts?

On the contrary, just ask them.

He teaches a course on terrorism that was once academic. But then his wife – an FBI agent – was killed by a right wing terrorist organization. Or so the FBI believed. Not false flags though. Just wrong flags. Or sort of wrong flags.

This film came out a few years after the Oklahoma City bombing [and the incident at Ruby Ridge]. It invents its own facsimiles of both. The politics here are clearly liberal. The terrorists/idealists are right wingers. The message is this: there really is a vast right wing conspiracy out there to bring down the government. One apparently not connected to Talk Radio or Fox News.

But I don’t think Boston is a part of it.

[I think in part it touches on the role that politics can play in relationships. You can befriend someone [a neighbor, say] and share much in common. But if over time you become considerably at odds politically then [eventually] something [some event] will drive a wedge between you. This is just an extreme imagining of it.]

One too many conincidences for me though. And if the real terrorists were actually this clever I’d say we all have something to worry about. Unless, of course, you are one of them.

trailer: youtu.be/69Cjv1JMrCQ

ARLINGTON ROAD [1999]
Directed by Mark Pellington

[b]Michael [to Brooke]: Why would he tell me it’s a mall when it wasn’t?

…

Oliver: Never wiser than when we’re children. They say it and it’s true. We’ll never see things that clear again.

…

Brooke [to Michael]: You have invaded his privacy. So maybe he lied about where he went to college. Big deal. People lie about things all the time. You don’t have the right to spy on them. God, you of all people. Are you teaching the Bill of Rights this semester…or did that not make the program?

…

Michael: Fenimore.

…

Brooke: What are you doing?
Michael: Pretending to wait for a locksmith. Pretending to be locked out.

…

Michael: Brooke, the guy was testing me. He wanted to see if I was an enemy or an ally.

…

Michael: What the hell have you done with my son?!
Oliver: If you want to be his father, you will walk to your house, sleep in your bed, teach your classes, and live your life!
Michael: What are you doing? How many people are you going to kill?
Oliver: Well, if I see any strange cars on my street, if you feel compelled to talk to someone, a federal agent perhaps, I imagine we’re just going to kill one.
Michael: He’s nine years old!

…

Oliver: I’m a messenger Michael, I’m a messenger! There’s millions of us, waiting to take up arms, ready to spread the word… millions of us!
Michael: No! The government’s not who you’re killing!
Oliver: Yes. Yes… they’ll pay. They’ll pay for their sins. Their lies.
Michael: You’re killing children! Children die!
Oliver: Children…I know that. This is war, Michael. In a war, children die.

…

News announcer: And so after an exhausting hundreds of thousands of man-hours and leads, federal investigators are finally ready to say that just as in the IRS bombing two years ago, the attack on the FBI was the work of one man and one man alone, Michael Farraday.[/b]

iambiguous · April 18, 2013, 7:15pm

You don’t get much further removed here from the sci-fi we get out of Hollywoord. Not many explosions, for example. And the special effects aren’t the main reason you watch it.

The premise is familiar enough though. Something very strange is happening somewhere “out there” and we want to find out what it is. Someone reports what he saw. Is it just a hallucination? Is it just a natural phenomena twisted by his imagination into some sort of psychological projection? Is it just the point of view of an amateur—one not qualified “scientifically” to assess what he thinks it might be? And then the gap between how it behaves and how it ought to behave if it wishes to be understood as a civilized, moral entity.

Or are we at the “boundaries of human knowledge” instead—at a place beyond which we cannot go in grasping what we can in fact confirm [empirically] to have been perceived?

For example, Solaris is a planet where the entire ocean may be a thinking organism.

Yet what is often demoralizing about films like this is how they imagine the future they protray as more or less right around the corner. Think of the gap between Clarke’s imagined 2001 and the reality of it. These films came out at or around the time of the Moon missions. It was thought by many that we’d be exploring the stars by now. And not just through telescopes or satelites. Instead, it will be years now even before the Mars missions begin. Space [and reality itself] seem to be vaster than we ever could have imagined. And possibly vaster than we ever will imagine.

IMDb

[b]It is quite common to hear this film compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey, however, Tarkovsky had not seen that film before shooting Solaris. When he did get round to seeing 2001, he criticised it for being “sterile”.

Stanislaw Lem was scathing of the adaptation of his novel, and complained that he did not write it about people’s “erotic problems in space.”[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(1972_film

trailer: youtu.be/R4vSPEDxGic

SOLARIS [Solyaris] 1972
Durected by Andrey Tarkovskiy

[b]Burton: You want to destroy that which we are presently incapable of understanding? Forgive me, but I am not an advocate of knowledge at any price. Knowledge is only valid when it’s based on morality.
Kelvin: Man is the one who renders science moral or immoral. Remember Hiroshima?

…

Snaut: Dr Kelvin, if you see something out of the ordinary, something besides me and Sartorious, try not to lose your head.
Kelvin: What would I see?
Snaut: I don’t know. That sort of depends on you.
Kelvin: Hallucinations?
Snaut: No, Just remember.
Kelvin: Remeber what?
Snaut: That we’re not on Earth.

…

Gibarian [in a recording to Kelvin]: Kris, by now you are at the station and know what happened to me. What happened to me is not important. Or rather, it cannot be explained. I’m afraid what happened to me is only the beginning. This could happen to you too. And the others. Here, it could probably happen to anyone. Just don’t think I’ve lost my mind. I’m of sound mind, believe me, Kris. You know me. If I have enough time, I’ll tell why I did everything. I’m telling you this so that, if it does happen to you, you’ll know it’s not madness. That’s the most important thing.

…

Gibarian [in a recording to Kelvin]: It’s all so senseless. They won’t understand me. They think I’ve gone crazy.
[a girl gives him a glass of milk—a girl that is not supposed to exist]
Gibarian: Do you see, Kris, how it’s not entirely absurd? I have to do this because I’m afraid they will come in here. I mean Snaut and Sartorius. They themselves do not understand what they are doing. I’m afraid, Kris…Nobody will be able to understand.

…

Gibarian [of the girl]: Did you see her? Kris, understand that this is not madness. It has something to do with conscience.

…

Sartorius: You are lucky.
Kelvin: How so?
Sartorius: It’s meaningless, yet you’ve managed to establish emotional contact with them.

…

Kelvin [to Sartorius]: When you turn into an utter cripple with no arms or legs, call us. We’ll empty your chanber pot.

…

Hari [to Kelvin]: I have a feeling someone’s deceiving us.

…

Kelvin [reading from a book Snaut gives him]: “I know only one thing, senor. When I sleep, I know no fear, no hope, no trouble, no bliss. Blessings on him who invented sleep. The common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels sheperd and king, fool and wise man. There is only one bad thing about sound sleep. They say it closely resembles death.”

…

Snaut [after Satorius toasts him and science]: Science? Nonsense! In this situation mediocrity and genius are equally useless! I must tell you that we really have no desire to conquer any cosmos. We want to extend the Earth up to its borders. We don’t know what to do with other worlds. We don’t need other worlds. We need a mirror. We struggle to make contact, but we’ll never achieve it. We are in a ridiculous predicament of man pursuing a goal that he fears and that he really does not need. Man needs man!

…

Sartorius: All these heartbreaking lamentations are nothing but second-rate Dostoyevsky. Who are you to judge? I know why I’m here. I’m here to work. Man was created by Nature in order to explore it. As he approaches Truth he is fated to Knowledge. All the rest is bullshit.

…

Snaut: Doesn’t a man who’s ready to give up his life just to make cursed contact, in order to know more about it, the right to drink?

…

Kelvin: She drank liquid oxygen. She did it out of despair.
Snaut: It’ll get worse. The more she’s with you the more human she’ll become.

…

Snaut: What do you intend to do?
Kelvin: Wait until she returns. And then leave the station.
Snaut: Kris, she can only live here, on the station. You know that.
Kelvin: What can I do? I love her.
Snaut: Which one? Her, or the one in the rocket. She will appear again and she’ll keep appearing. Don’t turn a scientific problem into a common love story.

…

Kelvin [to Snaut]: Suffering makes life seem dismal and suspect. But I won’t accept that. Is that which is indispensible to life also harmful to it? Remember Tolstoy? His suffering over the impossibility of loving mankind as a whole?

…

Kelvin: Listen, Snaut. Why are we being tortured like this?
Snaut: In my opinion, we have lost out sense of the cosmic. The ancients understood it perfectly. They never would have asked why or what for. Remember the myth of Sisyphus.

…

Snaut: You like dire questions. Soon you’ll be asking me the meaning of life.
Kelvin: Wait. Don’t be ironic.
Snaut: It’s a banal question. When man is happy, the meaning of life and other eternal themes rarely interest him. These questions should be asked at the end of one’s life.
Kelvin: But we don’t know when our life will end, do we? That’s why we are in such a hurry.
Snaut: The happiest people are those who are not interested in these cursed questions.
Kelvin: To ask them is always the desire to know.[/b]

iambiguous · April 18, 2013, 10:43pm

A flat tire. At the wrong place or the wrong time. Or at the right place or the right time. Depending on whether the consequences either do or do not work in your favor.

The film takes place in an unnamed South American country—just after the fall of a brutal dictatorship. A military junta in other words. No doubt similar to the many regimes set up and/or sustained by the powers that be in Washington and on Wall Street.

Suppose you were the victum of such a regime. Suppose, in other words, you were detained and tortured by thugs put into place by the regime. And then repeatedly raped by a doctor employed to keep the prisoners alive. And then suppose, fortuitously, the doctor stumbled into your life years later. What would you do?

Here there’s justice when terrible acts are done to someone else and justice when they are done to you. The wrinkle however is that we don’t really know if what she thinks she knows is in fact true. At least until we do.

And then aside from “the government” there are all the different ways we torture each other day in and day out. Our own private hells.

One thing for sure, it wouldn’t have ended the way it did if it was me instead of her.

IMDb

[b]The original Broadway production of “Death and the Maiden” by Ariel Dorfman opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theater in New York on March 17, 1992 and ran for 159 performances. It was directed by Mike Nichols and starred Glenn Close, Gene Hackman and Richard Dreyfuss.

Sigourney Weaver stated in a later interview that Roman Polanski would sometimes randomly fire a gun in order to get the most genuine expressions of fear from the cast.[/b]

trailer: youtu.be/Cnnz214wwkI

DEATH AND THE MAIDEN [1994]
Directed by Roman Polanski

[b]Gerardo: What am I supposed to be lying about?
Paulina: You said yes to the president.
Gerardo: Okay, I’m sorry.
Paulina: God damn it! Don’t apologize. You think you can pay for anything with those fucking words. If you were really sorry you would have said no to this whitewash. You would have said, “No, Mr. President, I will not dignify this betrayal.”
Gerardo: It’s not a betrayal.
Paulina: Bullshit.
Gerardo: Once the truth starts to come out I can get the president to change the rules.
Paulina: But you still didn’t get him to change his mind. It is still only cases that ended in death.
Gerardo: You have to give me time.

…

Roberto: Even though we can’t put those bastards on trial because they gave themselves amnesty at least we can make their names public.
Gerardo: Well, one of the ground rules is the names aren’t going to be made public.

…

Gerardo [to Roberto]: You just taught me a valuable lesson. In a democracy, the midnight knock on the door can be friendly.

…

Roberto: It must be some kids out for a joyride.
Gerardo: No, this time I really do have something to apologize for. My wife took your car.

…

Gerardo [seeing Roberto trussed up in the chair]: What is this?
Paulina: It’s a miracle. He’s delivered himself. Like a fantastic surprise Christmas present, left at the door.

…

Gerardo: What the fuck is going on?
Paulina: It’s him.
Gerardo: Who?
Paulina: The doctor. The doctor who played “Death and the Maiden”.
Gerardo: But you were blindfolded.
Paulina: The voice.
Gerardo: His voice? That’s it?
Paulina: That’s it. That’s enough for me.

…

Gerardo: As long as you’re holding the gun, we have nothing to discuss.
Paulina: On the contrary, the minute I give up the gun all discussion will end.

…

Paulina: There’s nothing like cold water, doctor. It beats drinking your own piss.

…

Paulina [holding a gun to his throat]: You threatening?
Roberto: I’m not.
Paulina: Yes, you were. Let me make this clear. The time for people like you making threats is over. Out there maybe you bastards are still running things behind the scenes but in here…in here I’m in charge. Understand? Me!

…

Roberto: You didn’t do anything. You just stood there.
Paulina: Of course he just stood there. He’s the law.

…

Paulina: I know it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous because no revenge can ever satisfy me.

…

Gerardo: What if by some incredible miracle this is just some crazy coincidence? What if he’s innocent?
Paulina: If he’s innocent, then he’s really fucked.

…

Gerardo: If you don’t want to die you’ll confess. She promised if you confess and show remorse…she’ll let you go.
Roberto: My God. You’re no different from them…threatening to kill me if I don’t confess. And you’re supposed to be a democrat, a lawyer, a man who believes in justice.

…

Roberto: She’s mad, she needs therapy.
Gerardo: You are her therapy.

…

Gerardo: She wants the confession to be genuine.
Roberto: How can it be genuine. I am innocent.

…

Gerardo: You came back all beat up and crazy. You were half-dead…taken punishment a thousand times worse than anything I could have taken. And you did it to save my life. How do you think that makes me feel? I would have given them your name to save my skin. They would have broken me on the first day.

…

Roberto: You have my confession.
Gerardo: You told me you made it up.
Roberto: I…I made it up. Yes, but you have the tape. I’ll keep quiet.
Paulina: He can’t decide which lie to stick to.
Gerardo: Either you were in Barcelona in April of '77 or not.
Roberto: What can I say? If I’m guilty you’ll kill me. If I’m innocent you’ll kill me. If I’m innocent,
you’re screwed. If I’m guilty, you’ll kill me for revenge![/b]

iambiguous · April 19, 2013, 2:34am

He may or may have lost his young daughter in an abduction. But he does suffer from bouts of schizophrenia. Everything he says and does is suspect. And yet there are times when he can appear perfectly rational, lucid, calm.

Here’s a guy you would never want to have around children. But this one gets lucky. Besides, there are any number of children rasied by mothers and fathers who are not schizophrenic—but are far more damaging and dangerous than this guy.

Still, how long can her luck hold out? Will her mother come back before his disease?

The mother is strange. She has a back story but you’re not really sure if you believe it. She’s gone for a few hours and leaves her daughter with this virtual stranger. Then she’s gone longer still. But she’s lucky too.

From start to finish, it is bursting at the seams with suspenseful uncertainty.

And Damian Lewis’s remarkable performance makes this very, very believable.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keane_(film

trailer: youtu.be/uTCqP-lrTRI

KEANE [2004]
Written and directed by Lodge Kerrigan

[b]Kira: Are you going to be my mommy’s new boyfriend?
Keane: I don’t know, do you want me to be?

…

Kira: What is it?
Keane: It’s a note I got from your Mom. She can’t come back iuntil tomorrow.
Kira: Why?
Keane: She doesn’t say. She just says she needs more time.
Kira: Is she really coming back?
Keane: Of course she is.
Kira: How do you know?

…

Keane: What’s wrong?
Kira: I miss my Daddy. Why did he have to go?
Keane: I don’t know. Sometimes things just don’t work out. [/b]

He should know.

[b]Keane [to Lynn]: I’d like to see Kira before you leave.

…

Keane [rocking back and forth on the edge of the bed staring blankly ahead]: My name is William Keane. Keane. K-E-A-N-E. I was born February 6th 1970 at Yonkers General Hospital, Yonkers, New York. My father’s name is is Henry Keane. My mother was named Mary Conlan. She’s dead. I have one brother, Robert Keane. I was married to Annette Etkin in August 1996 and divorced 2 years later in August 1998. We had one child. A girl.
[he just continues rocking back and forth staring out into space]
Keane: I got to get out of here. There’s nothing good here.

…

Kira [outside her school]: William! What are you doing here?
Keane: I’m here to pick you up. We’re leaving. We’re going up to Albany. We’re leaving right now.
Kira: Where’s Mommy?

…

Kira [to Keane at the Port Authority]: Why are you crying? It’s okay, I love you.
Keane: I love you too, sweetheart.[/b]

iambiguous · April 19, 2013, 9:10pm

Atlantic City. But some years after Nucky Johnson [Thompson] and the boardwalk empire crooks [thugs] were gone. Though not the criminal element, of course. It mutates like everything else that’s looking to survive. But some are considerably more small-time than others. Eeking out a living from day to day as it were. But always looking for that big break.

For example, the folks here. The ones whose lives revolve around, “these things happen”. Just more often to them.

This is the place where everyone is looking to get rich quick. With an absolute minimum of physical labor. There must be a million cons. You’re either thinking one up or trying to spot it.

And there’s a theme in common with so many films like this: the one percenters. Those who play it outside the law, outside the “norms” of society. Sometimes glorified and sometimes not.

And when you bring someone into your life don’t forgot all the parts you know absolutely nothing about. Not that you can, of course.

That look on Lou’s face when he finally knows what’s up. Then the look on his face when he beats the odds.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_City_(1980_film

trailer: youtu.be/DsPiWrlaLAI

ATLANTIC CITY [1980]
Directed by Louis Malle

[b]Oyster bar girl: Who are they?
Sally: My husband and my sister.

…

Lou: That’s enough!
Grace: Nothing’s enough.

…

Dave: You owe me.
Sally: Get out!
Dave: Who got you out of fucking Saskatchewan? If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be home making jam, putting out for lumberjacks!

…

Sally [trying to distract a cad]: Can I lay a hard ten on a soft three?

…

Fred [to Dave]: This is a very tight town. I only do business with the people I do business with. If the people I do business with find out I’m doing business with the people I don’t do business with…

…

Fred [to Dave]: They’ll bust you in the lobby. You look like a training poster from the narc squad.

…

Lou: It’s all shit now. It’s a shame you never saw Atlantic City when it had floy floy. Remember the song, “Flatfoot Floogie with the Floy Floy”?
Dave: No.
Lou: Hep cat and zoot suit. That was the floogie part. But the floy floy. That was something special. Atlantic City had floy floy coming out of its ears in those days. Now it’s all so goddamn legal. Howard Johnson running a casino. Tutti-fruiti ice cream and craps don’t mix…Yeah, it used to be beautiful - what with the rackets, whoring, guns. Sometimes…sometimes things would happen and I had to kill a few people. I’d feel bad for a while, but I’d jump into the ocean, swim way out. Come back in feeling nice and clean, start all over again.[/b]

Flat Foot Floogie: youtu.be/lFVeJ4wHWdQ

[b]Lou: They used to call Atlantic City the lungs of Philadelphia.
Dave: If we stay here long enough, we could be the nose of Philadelphia.

…

Fred: Hey, Dave, got a feller here who wants to talk to you.

…

Sally [at restaurant]: I don’t want anything that swims.

…

Sally: Teach me stuff.
Lou: Like what?
Sally: What you know.
Lou: You want information or wisdom?
Sally: Both.

…

Lou: I’m her lover!
Grace [to Sally]: Oh ho ho. You wanna know his nickname in the old days? “Numb Nuts!” Men had names like “Legs” and “Bullets” and “Cookie”. His was “Numb Nuts”!

…

Shapiro: Your husband had a record.
Sally: I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in 8 months.
Shapiro: Yeah, I know that and I understand that, and this is very unfair, but he…
Sally: I don’t even know why he was here.
Shapiro: Look, I know that, and you know that, but they don’t know that.[/b]

And it’s not the mob this time.

[b]Lou: Don’t touch the suit.

…

Lou: A room. For me and my mother.

…

Chrissie: Oh, I never use seatbelts. I don’t believe in gravity.[/b]

More bizarre still: All those things she does believe.

iambiguous · April 20, 2013, 5:47pm

This isn’t Saudi Arabia but Brazil is still part of a world dominated by men who take their patriarchy seriously. Or just for granted. And just her luck to have three sons.

And guess what all the men here obsess over. But some women too. Only the rules are somewhat different. And not just the sex part.

And then all the shit the grandmother has to take. She may as well be the maid as far as “the boys” are concerned. When they’re not strealing from her.

And the psychology behind our reactions to the behaviors of others that we are either doing ourselves or are contemplating doing. Here in regards to men and women cheatng on each other. If I do it the reasons are good, if you do it the reasons are bad.

When push comes to shove life is all about options. But we all need to probe further into what ours are. That’s one way to expand them. The rest is all about what you can get away with.

This modern world. Same all over? And these are just drops in the bucket. Like your life or mine.

That look on her face…

IMDb

The film was shot entirely on location in São Paulo, Brazil, using a real apartment and a real beauty salon.

trailer: youtu.be/VGTxazIpYz0

ALICE’S HOUSE [A Casa de Alice] 2007
Written and directed by Chico Teixeira

iambiguous · April 20, 2013, 10:01pm

Clocker: Entry level crack dealers who sell drugs 24 hours a day.

Rosa Park…or crack cocaine? Which one seems more applicable to you? Is there one that ought to?

Once you try the dope you understand clearly why [for some folks] it can become a way of life. As opposed to, say, a recreation. Then you’ve got to come up with reasons why he or she might want to choose another way of life instead.

And so much of the violence here revolves not around the drug per se but around the fact there is so much money to be made selling it. Why? Because it is illegal and street hustlers pummel each other in order to be the only dudes around selling it. Besides, “they” are mostly killing each other.

At best, telling folks to “do the right thing” here is good for a laugh. But that is basically where Lee goes with it.

But some folks do go a lot deeper than others. But is it better for them or worse?

All of the detectives [save one] are from the cookie cutter: white, racist, creeps. Everything’s a fucking joke. Only the occasional cop gets to be black.

And here there is always a huge gap between those able to make the clocks and those “employed” just to tell time.

one take on it: abebeame.blogspot.com/2009/02/sp … ckers.html

trailer: youtu.be/2l04308lnfA

CLOCKERS [1995]
Directed by Spike Lee from the book by Richard Price

[b]Rodney: Strike, you really want to get off the benches? You deal with it. For me.

…

Detective: Another stain on the sidewalk, huh?

…

Errol [to Strike]: My old man was a preacher. And when I started messin’ with this shit, he said, “you gonna pay for that. You gonna pay for that shit, boy.” He was right. You can’t cheat this shit no…mo’.

…

Andre [to Strike]: Dont you want to go some place you’ve never been before? I mean, you love trains, but you’ve only ridden the subway.

…

Det. Jo-Jo: Strike, my man! This is a new day, Strike. Dinkins out, Rudy in. Law and order. Cut the budget. Party’s over. Crackdown on drugs, crime, niggers, spics, homeless, squeegeemen…

…

Rodney: Errol told me you talked to the homicide cop. How’d that go?
Strike: It was awright.
Rodney: ‘Awright’ or ‘all right’?
Strike: It was awright. All right?

…

Det. Klein: Here. Here’s my card.
Strike: I got two already!

…

Rodney [to Strike]: If God created anything better than crack cocaine he kept that shit for hisself.

…

Rodney [to Strike]: I mean, crack is like truth serum. It will truly expose who you are. I mean, if you happen to be a low-life rat bastard motherfucker, who would sell off his newborn for a suck off that glass dick, crack will bring it right on in the light. Now I don’t care if you are black, white, Chinese, rich, poor. You take that first hit, you on a mission. And that mission will never end. Even when the house, the money, the loved ones are gone and they send you to the joint, you’re still trying to cop. The only time the mission ends is when you six feet under.[/b]

In other words, it’s okay doing it to others but never, ever to yourself.

[b]Det. Klein [suspecting Victor took the fall for Strike]: You’re the fuckin’ king snake! You’re a low-down, cold-blooded evil junkyard nigger like I’ve never seen
Strike: Nigger? Nigger?!
Det. Klein: You’re not the mafia. You’re not even Rodney Little. You’re a skinny-ass snake motherfucker. You think you’re hot shit. You ain’t nothing but a cold fucking fart.
Strike [enraged]: You don’t know a motherfucking thing about me. You don’t know who I am. You ain’t nothing but a racist-ass, nigger-hating cop. You don’t know how it is for the brothers out here.

…

Strike [in Rodney’s car; Rodney gives him crap about abandoning his post to be questioned by Klein]: Aw, man. Fuck you, Rodney.
Rodney [pulls the car over to the shoulder]: Excuse me?
[punches Strike in the stomach]
Rodney: Who the fuck are you talking to like that? Are you out of your motherfucking mind?
[pulls Strike down on his lap]
Rodney: Huh? You think I’m one of these crew-niggas sitting on the project?
[punches him again]
Rodney: BENCH, motherfucker!
[grabs a gun from the backseat and sticks it in Strike’s mouth]
Rodney: Open yo mouth, nigga. Now you feel that? I’ll put this gun in yo bad-breaf-smellin’ mouth and I will pull the trigger. And I will splatter what little motherfuckin’ brains you got all over the Corinthian leather interior of my car! And this my wife’s brand new car, so you know I don’t give a fuck. You understand me? Do you understand me, bitch?
[Strike nods]
Rodney: And let me tell you something else…if I ever hear about you talking to that “homocide” one more time, that Rocco motherfucker - I mean, I don’t care if it’s the light of day - if I hear my name coming up in this at all and I heard it was from you, then I’m gonna kill you. I mean you are 187 on the strength, you understand me? Do you understand me?
Strike: Yeah.
Rodney: Word is bond.
[takes the gun out of his mouth and pushes him off]
Rodney: Now get yo motherfuckin’ ass out my car.

…

Rodney: Rocco Klein… Rocco Klein, you know, I’ve always wanted to ask you…you Italian? you a Jew? I mean, what are you? You can’t make up your mind?
Det. Klein: Me?
Rodney: Yeah, you.
Det. Klein: I’m from the lost black tribe of Israel, the Yos.

…

Andre [beating up Strike]: It’s motherfuckers like you that mugged Rosa Parks!
Strike: Who the fuck is Rosa Parks?
Andre: Who the fuck is Rosa Parks? Who’s Rosa Parks?!

…

Det. Klein [to Strike]: Rodney or Andre?

…

Det. Klein: If I ever see you again… I’ll book you on charges of criminal solicitation and conspiracy to commit murder. I’ll let Andre beat you down again, then pick up Rodney on the same charges and I’ll make sure you two share the same cell, the same fuckin’ bed. Do you understand me clearly?
Strike: Yeah, I understand you clearly.[/b]

iambiguous · April 21, 2013, 3:05am

No Jews here. But no Catholics either. So, I’d ask Mel this: Are those folks now burning in Hell? Or is that why this civilization [eventually] was destroyed? Was it punishment from God because none of them accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior?

What is the “lesson” Gibson wishes to impart in this film?

Here’s one Christian perspective: thinking-christian.blogspot.com/ … -2006.html

So, were some only more or less “noble savages” before the Europeans landed? Is the ending meant to convery that the European Christians were sent to “save their souls”? By, among other things, conquering them? enslaving them? decimating them?

Not that they weren’t already doing this to each other.

With religion, the sky’s the limit, right? And in that respect is this meant to convey what perhaps our own “end times” will be like? Or is Mel trying to suggest instead that anything that Christians do now in the name of God is better than this?

Travel well.

IMDb

[b]Many substantial speaking roles were filled by Mayan people who had never acted before. Sick Girl, who curses the hunting party as they and the captives pass right before entering the city, was played by a seven-year-old who lived in a dirt-floored hut in a village similar to Jaguar Paw’s.

The film is allegedly inspired by the text of the Popol Vuh, sometimes called the Mayan Bible, and Spanish missionary descriptions of the Maya.

According to director Mel Gibson and co-writer Farhad Safinia’s DVD commentary, the halting of the sacrifices at the onset of a solar eclipse is a carefully-timed ruse by the Mayan ruling class. As precocious astrologers, the Mayans used their knowledge of celestial phenomena to control the underclass.

The Jaguar’s attack is portrayed accurately. Other big cats asphyxiate their prey with a bite to the throat; Jaguars kill with a penetrating bite to the brain.

Waldo, from “Where’s Waldo?”, appears in a single frame at 01:31:34, lying on the pile of dead bodies.[/b]

Huh?! But here it is: youtu.be/jT3woa2INr8

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypto

Particularly of interest is the section dealing with controversies that surrounded the film. Including how the Mayans were depicted and the role of human sacrifice.

trailer: youtu.be/vu24Pl_Z1rs

Oddly enough it’s not the right Jaguar Paw. What the fuck is that about? But then, in part, the film is more like a situation comedy.

APOCALYPTO [2006]
Written in part and directed by Mel Gibson

[b]Title card: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” Will Durant

…

Jaguar Paw: The heart… for Smoke Frog.
Smoke Frog: Thank you.
Jaguar Paw: This liver for Curl Nose.
Curl Nose: Thank you.
Jaguar Paw: Cocoa Leaf… the ears.
Cocoa Leaf: Thank you.
Jaguar Paw: And for you Blunted… the balls.
Blunted: Not this again.[/b]

That’s nothing compared to what Flint Sky has in store for him. And Mrs. Blunted.

Flint Sky: Those people in the forest, what did you see on them?
Jaguar Paw: I do not understand.
Flint Sky: Fear. Deep rotting fear. They were infected by it. Did you see? Fear is a sickness. It will crawl into the soul of anyone who engages it. It has tainted your peace already. I did not raise you to see you live with fear. Strike it from your heart. Do not bring it into our village.

Soon, however, others will. All such advice is purely circumstantial.

[b]Old Story Teller: And a Man sat alone, drenched deep in sadness. And all the animals drew near to him and said, “We do not like to see you so sad. Ask us for whatever you wish and you shall have it.” The Man said, “I want to have good sight.” The vulture replied, “You shall have mine.” The Man said, “I want to be strong.” The jaguar said, “You shall be strong like me.” Then the Man said, “I long to know the secrets of the earth.” The serpent replied, “I will show them to you.” And so it went with all the animals. And when the Man had all the gifts that they could give, he left. Then the owl said to the other animals, “Now the Man knows much, he’ll be able to do many things. Suddenly I am afraid.” The deer said, “The Man has all that he needs. Now his sadness will stop.” But the owl replied, “No. I saw a hole in the Man, deep like a hunger he will never fill. It is what makes him sad and what makes him want. He will go on taking and taking, until one day the World will say, ‘I am no more and I have nothing left to give.’”

…

Middle Eye [to Jaguar Paw]: Almost.
[Middle Eye hits Jaguar Paw with a club]
Middle Eye: That is your name. “Almost.”

…

Zero Wolf [after a huge tree is cut down and almost falls on him and the slaving party]: Hey, I am walking here!

…

Mayan chieftain: The land thirsts. A great plague infects our crops. The scourge of sickness afflicts us at whim.[/b]

Off with their heads.

[b]Middle Eye [after a snake has bitten one of the warriors]: He’s fucked.

…

Seven: What are they?
Jaguar Paw: They bring men.
Seven: Should we go to them?
Jaguar Paw: We must go to the forest. To seek a new beginning.[/b]

Meanwhile he still has a spearhead buried in his chest. You can see it sticking out of him.

iambiguous · April 21, 2013, 8:43pm

The only reason the truth stands any chance at all of coming out is because [by sheer luck] Jacks happens to be in the right place at the right time. Which just begs the question: how much do folks get away because no one is in the right place at the right time? What percentage of other people’s behaviors are largely [or entirely] hidden from us?

And what percentage of that revolves around actual, well, conspiracies?

A chance occurence. But it sends the lives of folks here in unexpected new directions. And along the way they bump into new experiences and relationships that open up all sorts of new possibilites for understanding the world they live in. Or for ending up dead in it. And some just because they happen to look like someone else. That’s the part most of us don’t really think through. Philosophically, for example.

And that’s why we need to invent God. We need a point of view that allows for no one to ever get away with anything. Needless to say though none of this actually comes up in the, uh, movie.

One thing for certain: The truth can sometimes be made to disappear. Or a lie can be made to take its place.

IMDb

[b]The idea of a man discovering a crime by listening to a recording is a reinterpretation of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-Up, but using sound instead of photographs.

The accident at the start of the film alludes to the Kennedy incident at Chappaquiddick. The film also alludes to the Watergate scandal and the JFK assassination.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blow_Out

trailer: youtu.be/rDve1A5EAvk

BLOW OUT [1981]
Written and directed by Brian De Palma

iambiguous · April 22, 2013, 3:11am

Since I spent almost the entirety of my time in Vietnam at two MACVs [Lam Son and Song Be], I never actually thought of myself as belonging to a platoon. I was a 72B20 so I was part of the “communications team.”

As a consequence, I know very little about the experience of an infantry platoon. But Song Be was out in the middle of nowhere so the war was all around us. In fact, the entire compound we were stationed was virtually destroyed. We actually had to move into a recently completed ARVN compound.

Here: hartley.8thmob.org/SBAttack1.html

No way in hell though do I share this guys politics.

Bottom line: I was in the war…but nothing like these guys were. But we had our own renditions of the folks that followed Barnes and the folks that followed Elias: The RA juicers and the US heads. Actually, though, I was drafted but chose to become RA. But that’s another story.

Even Oliver Stone though has no political narrative to speak of here. Just vague conjecture about America kicking ass for too long…how it’s her turn now. Chris’s concluding rumination that, “looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. And the enemy was in us”, was [to me] psycho-babble bullshit. And it goes no where near the military industrial complex and the war economy.

IMDb trivia: imdb.com/title/tt0091763/tri … tt_trv_trv
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_(film

PLATOON [1986]
Written and directed by Oliver Stone

[b]Gardner [seeing body bags]: Oh, man. Is that what I think it is?
Sergeant: All right, you cheese-dicks, welcome to the Nam. Follow me!

…

Chris [narrating]: Somebody once wrote, “Hell is the impossibility of reason.” That’s what this place feels like. Hell.

…

Chris [in a letter to his Grandmother]: The hardest thing l ve ever done is go on point. Three times this week. I don’t know what l m doing. A gook could be three feet in front ofme and I wouldn’t know it. I’m so tired. We get up at am, hump all day, camp around four or five, dig a foxhole, eat, then put out an all-night ambush or a three-man listening post. It’s scary cos nobody tells me how to do anything, cos I’m new. Nobody cares about new guys. They don’t even wanna know your name. A new guy’s life isn’t worth as much cos he hasn’t put his time in yet. They say if you’re gonna get killed in the Nam, it’s better to get it in the first few weeks. The logic being you don’t suffer that much. If you’re lucky, you stay in the perimeter at night. Then you pull a three-hour guard shift. Maybe you sleep three, four hours a night…But you don’t really sleep. I don’t think I can keep this up for a year, Grandma. I think I’ve made a big mistake coming here.

…

Chris [narrating]: Well, here I am, anonymous, with guys nobody really cares about. Most come from the end of the line, small towns you never heard of. Pulaski, Tennessee. Brandon, Mississippi. Pork Bend, Utah. Wampum, Pennsylvania. Two years’ high school’s about it. If they’re lucky, a job waiting for them back in a factory. Most have got nothing. They’re poor. They’re the unwanted.

…

Barnes [to a dying Gardiner]: Shut up! Shut up and take the pain! Take the pain!

…

King: Thirty nine and a wake-up, a pause for the cause, and I’m a gone motherfucker! Back to the world!
Crawford: I hear you, man. Broke 100 the other day.
King: No shit.
Crawford: Ninety-two left to go. April 17, heroes, man. Home to California. I’ll be sitting outside, checking out the babes on the beach. The surfing’s gonna be good.
King: March, man, in Tennessee. Sniff the pines, sniff that cross-mounted pussy down by the river. Whoo, hot damn! Hey, Taylor, how long you got left? Three hundred and what?
Chris Taylor: Thirty-two. Three hundred and thirty-two days.
King: Xin loi, my boy!
Crawford: I can’t even remember when I was 332, man. You gotta, like, count backwards or something. You know, like, you got 40 days in. I mean, think positive, dude.

…

King: Hey, Taylor. How in the fuck you get here anyway? Why, you look educated.
Chris: I volunteered for it.
King: You did what?
Chris: I volunteered. I dropped out of college, and told them I wanted the infantry, combat, and Vietnam.
Crawford: You volunteered for this shit, man?
Chris: You believe that?
King: You’s a crazy fucker, giving up college.
Chris: It didn’t make much sense. I wasn’t learning anything. I figured why should just the poor kids go off to war and the rich kids always get away with it?
King: Oh, I see. What we got here is a crusader.
Crawford: Sounds like it.
King: Shit. You gotta be rich in the first place to think like that. Everybody know the poor are always being fucked over by the rich. Always have, always will.

…

Elias [to Chris after he takes his first hit]: First time?
Chris: Yeah.
Elias: Then the worm has definitely turned for you, man. Feel good?
Chris: Yeah, it feels good. I got no pain in my neck now.
Elias: Feeling good’s good enough.

…

Chris [narrating after the platoon finds Manny dead]: The village, which had stood for maybe 1,000 years, didn’t know we were coming that day. If they had, they would have run. Barnes was at the eye of our rage. And through him, our Captain Ahab. He would set things right again. That day, we loved him.

…

Bunny: Holy shit! Did you see that fucking head come apart, man?

…

Elias [to Barnes after Barnes has killed a woman and holds a gun to a little girl]: You ain’t a firing squad, you piece of shit!

…

Chris [seeing soldiers rape a girl]: Don’t do it! Don’t do it! You fuckers! What is this, huh?!
Bunny: What, you a homosexual, Taylor? She’s a fucking dink!
Chris: She’s a fucking human being, man!
Bunny: You’re a fucking cherry, Taylor!
Chris: Fucking animals! All of you, you’re fucking animals!
Bunny: You don’t belong in Nam, man! Ain’t your place at all!
Chris: You don’t fucking get it, do you, man? You just don’t fucking get it!

…

Rhah [to Chris]: You ain’t never been right about nothing! And dig this, you assholes, and dig it good… Barnes been shot seven times and he ain’t dead. Does that mean anything to you, huh? Barnes ain’t meant to die. The only thing that can kill Barnes is Barnes.

…

Barnes: Talking about killing? Y’all experts? Y’all know about killing? I’d like to hear about it, potheads.
[takes pipe and inhales drag]
Barnes: Why do you smoke this shit? So as to escape from reality? Me, I don’t need this shit. I am reality. There’s the way it ought to be. And there’s the way it is. Elias was full of shit. Elias was a crusader. Now, I got no fight with any man who does what he’s told, but when he don’t, the machine breaks down. And when the machine breaks down, we break down. And I ain’t gonna allow that in any of you. Not one.
[hands pipe back and spits]
Sgt. Barnes: Y’all love Elias. Oh, you wanna kick ass. Yeah. Well, here I am, all by my lonesome, and ain’t nobody gonna know. Six of you boys against me. Kill me. Huh. I shit on all of you.

…

King [watching the ambush party head off into the jungle]: I’m glad I ain’t going with them. Somewhere out there is the beast and he hungry tonight.

…

Chris: It’s the way the whole thing works. People like Elias get wasted. People like Barnes just go on making up the rules any way they want. So what do we do? Sit in the middle and suck on it. We just don’t add up to dry shit, King.
King: Whoever said we did, man? All you got to do is make it out of here, and it’s all gravy. Every day, the rest of your life, gravy.

…

Barnes: Martin, get your boots on. And the next time I catch you spraying skeeter repellent on your fucking feet, I’m gonna court-martial your nigger ass.
Junior: Well, then court-martial me, motherfucker! Bust my ass. Send me to fucking Long Binh! You do your fucking worst! You white folks have got your last klick out of Junior!
Barnes: O’Neill, get me that centipede.
O’Neill: Sergeant?
Barnes: Yeah, that long, hairy, red and black bastard I found in the ammo crate. I’m gonna put it in this boy’s crotch, see if he can walk.
O’Neill: I remember now.

…

Bunny: You know, Junior, some of the things we done, man, I don’t feel like we done something wrong. Sometimes, man, I get this bad feeling. I told the padre the truth, man. I like it here. You get to do what you want. Nobody fucks with you. The only worry you got is dying. If that happens, you won’t know about it anyway. So what the fuck, man?
Junior: Shit! I gotta be in this hole with you, man?!

…

Harris: Be advised. We’ve got zips in the wire down here.
Phantom Pilot: Roger your last, Bravo Six. Can’t run it any closer. We’re hot to trot and packing snake and nape, but we’re bingo on fuel.
Harris: For the record, it’s my call. Dump everything you’ve got left on my pos. I say again, expend all remaining in my perimeter. It’s a lovely fucking war. Bravo Six out.
Phantom Pilot: Roger your last, Bravo Six. We copy. It’s your call. Get them all in their holes down there. Hang tough, Bravo Six. We’re coming cocked for treetops.

…

Barnes [to Chris]: Get me a medic. Go on, boy!
[Taylor refuses to budge, and aims an AK-47 at Barnes]
Barnes: Do it.
[Taylor shoots Barnes three times, killing him][/b]

Man it always feels so fucking great watching that.

iambiguous · April 22, 2013, 10:46pm

It’s hard for me to imagine how one would choose of one’s own free will to link pain and humiliation with sexual pleasure. But then the very first scene with the mother informs us of how one’s “free will” can become entangled in a past burgeoning with experiences that you or I might know little or nothing about.

And then there is this: No one humiliates her more than Mom does. And if she can’t get someone to humiliate her she can always humiliate herself. Or she can humiliate them. Or maybe that is what she was after all along?

But that is just one factor in her life. We can never really know of all the others. Even if this were “based on a true story”. The ones for example that would account for the scene in the sex shop booth. Personally, I can think of few things more repulsive. But who is to account for all the different ways human sexuality can be embodied. Still, that?!

Or the scene at the drive-in movie. Clearly her sexual neurosis goes way beyond masochism.

Anyway, it then becomes a matter of the extent to which we are made aware of these existential roots. And, in becoming aware, the extent to which we can [if we wish] change them.

At wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Piano_Teacher_(film

trailer: youtu.be/mjROGqRTMzQ

[b]Note: some explicit dialogue[/b]

THE PIANO TEACHER [La Pianiste] 2001
Written and directed by Michael Haneke

The Mother: Good evening, child.
Erika [dreading what’s to come]: Evening, mama.
The Mother [sarcastically] Home already? I’m so happy.
Erika: I’m going to bed.
The Mother: Not so fast.
Erika: Please. Leave me be. I’m tired.
The Mother: I can quite believe it. Your last pupil left 3 hours ago. Might I know where you’ve been all this time?
Erika [trying to go to her room]: Please.
The Mother: No, you don’t. Not until you tell me.
Erika: I went for a walk. Do you mind? I spent 8 hours in my cage. I was tired and needed some air.
The Mother: For 3 hours?
Erika Kohut: Absolutely.

And then she is tearing at her mother’s hair. And then she’s collapsing in her arms apologizing.

Erika: Have you read Adorno on Schumann’s Fantasia in C Major
Walter: No.
Erika: He talks of his twilight. It’s not Schumann bereft of reason, but just before. A fraction before. He knows he’s losing his mind. It torments him but he clings on, one last time. It’s being aware of what it means to lose oneself before being completelyv abandoned.
Walter: You talk about things as if they were yours. It’s rare. And I think you know it.
Erika: Since my father died completely mad in Steinhof asylum, I can talk easily about the twilight of the mind, can’t I?

Another clue, perhaps.

[b]Erika: You will receive my instructions. By letter. Or face to face. Or maybe over the phone.
[she looks down at Walter’s penis]
Erika: Now you can put it away. Facing me.

…

Erika: Schubert’s dynamics range from scream to whisper not loud to soft. Anarchy hardly seems your forte. Why not stick to Clementi? Schubert was quite ugly. Did you know? With your looks, nothing can ever hurt you.
Walter: Why destroy what could bring us together?
Erika: Mannerism is no…
Walter [interrupting her]: Why can’t I look at you? Because if I do, I won’t resist the temptation to kiss you on the neck. May I kiss you on the neck?
[she walks away…but returns with her “letter of instructions”]

…

Walter [reading the letter aloud]: “On the contrary, if I beg, tighten my bonds, please. Adjust the belt by at least 2 or 3 holes. The tighter the better. Then, gag me with some stockings I will have ready. Stuff them in so hard that I’m incapable of making any sound. Next, take off the blindfold, please, and sit down on my face and punch me in the stomach to force me to thrust my tongue in your behind.” Is this supposed to be serious? You’re making fun of me, aren’t you? You want a slap?

…

Erika [kneeling before him]: If you want to hit me, hit me.
Walter [disgusted]: I don’t want to soil my hands. No one would touch your sort, even with gloves on. I swear I loved you. Now you repulse me. Fuck it.
[he walks out of the room]

…

Erika: Do you like me calling you darling?
Walter: It’s absolutely marvelous.
Erika: You must be patient. I’ll give you all the names, we’ll play all the games you want.
Walter: You know you really stink? Sorry, you stink so much, no one will ever come close to you. You’d be better leave town until you don’t stink so bad. Rinse your mouth more often, not just when my cock makes you puke.

…

Walter: Just then, I was under your window and I was jerking off. That’s what you want, huh? You want to…
[making obscene signs]
Walter: …is that it? You’re a witch, a pervert! You want to give everyone your illness, don’t you? Not me!
Erika: I did apologise.
Walter: Fuck your stupid apologies! [/b]

And the ending? It’s exactly what you expected and the last thing you saw coming.