philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

I’ve always believed it was very important to understand this: How the family we were born into – the family that [for most of us] will have such an enormous impact on our lives – is not one we chose to belong to at all. Yet it becomes hard wired into us in ways we will never fully understand. It will follow us to the grave. At best we can try to understand the things that we think and feel and do now in the context of what we were taught to think and feel and do back then. And to ask ourselves, “what is independent of all this?” What, in other words, is true no matter the families we were raised in?

Here though I can’t really relate to the protagonists at all. My own family interactions could hardly have been more distant. I lived largely in my own little world far, far removed from all the rest of them. Had my father not been an alcoholic [which was often the center of the universe for my mother] I would barely have interacted with them at all. But Astrid “lived in the shadows” of a mother who was all-pervasive and powerful in her life. And her mother had substance. There was simply no way to understand how she looked at the world [and her place in it] without grasping the nature of this relationship.

But then somehow it was important that her mother was “the most beautiful woman in the world”. And, being Michelle Pfeiffer, she probably was. But dangerous too. She is cruelly arrogant around folks who stoop to the quackery of things like God or astrology. The “cattle” she calls them. What others call “sheep”. And yet she can’t recognize how she is setting up her own narative in the same manner with respect to her daughter: Be yourself but only if you end up being just like I am.

Actually, though, it’s not nearly cynical enough for me. It’s just more love and human remains. With a tidy little bow tacked on for an ending.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Oleander_(film
trailer: youtu.be/qKXLTa4jKJo

WHITE OLEANDER [2002]
Directed by Peter Kosminsky

[b]Astrid [narrating]: Everybody asks why I started at the end and worked back to the beginning, the reason is simple, I couldn’t understand the beginning until I had reached the end. There were too many pieces of the puzzle missing, too much you would never tell.

…

Astrid [narrating]: But how do I show that nothing, not a taste, not a smell, not even the color of the sky, has ever been as clear and sharp as it was when I belonged to her. I don’t know how to express that being with someone so dangerous is the last time I felt safe…

…

Astrid [narrating]: He came into our lives without warning. She ignored him at first. He wasn’t her type. We laughed about him, his persistence. “Never let a man spend the night,” she said. “Never apologize, never explain”. She was breaking all her rules. And it would change everything.

…

Teacher: Is your mother coming tonight?
Astrid: No. She has other plans.
Teacher: More important than parents’ night?
Astrid: She’s an artist. She doesn’t care about things like parents’ night.

…

Carolee [to Astrid]: Don’t look at me like that. You’re no different than I am…you just don’t know it yet.

…

Ray: So you’re going to the Jesus show?
Astrid: Aren’t you coming?
Ray: To Bible study? No. In my opinion, if there’s a God, he sure as hell ain’t worth praying to.
Astrid: That sounds like something my mother would say.

…

Davey: Do you believe in God now?
Astrid: Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to believe in something.
Davey: It’s better to know things.
Astrid: Why? What does it get you? Does it tell you the difference between right or wrong?
…

Ingrid [in prison]: What’s that?
Astrid: Nothing. It’s just a cross.
Ingrid: I know it’s a cross. Why are you wearing it?
Astrid: It’s a present from Starr.
Ingrid: She force you to go to church?
Astrid: They’re really nice people. It’s called the Assembly of God. To join you have to accept Christ as your personal savior. And you’re baptized. They call it being washed in the blood of the Lamb. But really, it’s just water.
Ingrid: Have you accepted Christ as your personal savior?
Astrid: There’s nothing wrong with Christians.
Ingrid: Are you out of your mind? How did this happen? I raised you, not a pack of Bible-thumping trailer trash. I raised you to think for yourself.
Astrid: No you didn’t. You raised me to think like you. Maybe thinking for yourself isn’t so great. Reverend Daniels says it’s evil.
Ingrid: Evil? If thinking for yourself is evil, then every artist is evil. Is that what you believe, now that you’re washed in the blood of the Lamb? Man’s ability to reason is evil? Am I evil?
Astrid: No. No. But killing people who don’t want you is evil. We pray for your redemption.
Ingrid: Fuck my redemption. I don’t want it. I regret nothing. Look, it’s good that you’re trying to identify evil, Astrid. But evil is tricky. Just when you think you know what it is, it changes its form. Learning its nature takes a lifetime of study. I will not lose you. Not to them. Those people are the enemy, Astrid.

…

Starr: I’m going in there and cash her check.

…

Paul: How come you chopped off your hair?
Astrid: None of your business.
Paul: You’re still beautiful.
Astrid: Looks don’t interest me.
Paul: That’s easy for you to say, you’ve never been ugly.

…

Paul: I was born addicted to heroin.
Astrid: Really? And what was that like?
Paul: I don’t know - I was out of rehab by the time I was six months old.

…

Ingrid: Don’t attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you’re lonely. Loneliness is the human condition. No one is ever going to fill that space. The best you can do is know yourself… know what you want. And don’t let the cattle get in the way.
Astrid: You’re not talking about me. You’re talking about yourself. Sometimes I get the feeling you don’t even want me to be happy.
Ingrid: Why wouldn’t I want you to be happy?

…

Ingrid: So you spend most of your time with Claire?
Astrid: Yeah.
Ingrid: I’d like to meet her.
Astrid: Why?
Ingrid: Because you don’t want me to.

…

Claire [to Astrid]: Take my advice and stay away from broken people.

…

Astrid: Claire’s dead. She killed herself.
Ingrid: I’m sorry.
Astrid: No, you’re not. You poisoned her too, but with words.
Ingrid: I told her what she already knew.
Astrid: You were just jealous.
Ingrid: Of course I was jealous. I live in a cell with a woman who has a vocabulary of 25 words.

…

Astrid: I’m not coming back. I wanted to tell you that in person. I’m gonna leave you here, alone.
Ingrid: I know you think I’m cruel. I’m trying to protect you from those people.
Astrid: Those people are not the enemy, Mother. We are. You and me. They don’t hurt us. We hurt them.[/b]

Me, I’m split right down the middle. But then again, with respect to things like this, I always am.

[b]Rena: Workers of the world arise. You’ve got nothing to lose but your Visa card, happy meal, and Kotex with wings.

…

Ingrid: It was wonderful. You can’t imagine. To take a nap in the afternoon…to make love all day if I wanted and not have to think: What’s Astrid doing? Where’s Astrid? Mommy, Mommy…clinging to me like a spider. In the end, I just wanted to throw you against a wall.

…

Astrid: How long were you gone?
Ingrid: About a year, give or take a few months.
Astrid: My God.
Ingrid: You’re not asking the right question. Don’t ask me why I left. Ask me why I came back.
Astrid: You should have been sterilized.
Ingrid: I could have left you there, but I didn’t. Don’t you understand? For once, I did the right thing! When I came back, you knew me. You were sitting by the door, and you looked up, and you reached for me. It was as if you had been waiting for me all along.
Astrid: I was always waiting for you, mother. That’s the constant in my life. Waiting for you. Will you come back? Will you forget that you tied me in front of a store or left me on a bus?
Ingrid: Are you still waiting?
Astrid: No. I stopped when Claire showed me what it felt like to be loved. What did you think, that I would amuse you? That’s what babies are like, mother. What’d you think? We’d exchange thoughts on Joseph Brodsky?

…

Paul: What happened?
Astrid: She let me go.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Frida Kahlo. An artist and a revolutionary. Though not necessarily in that order. An incredible life with extraordinary ups and downs.

Talk about the personal and the political. And how volatile they can be in ripping the lives of folks apart and then in shredding them to pieces…it’s all is on display here from start to finish. Somehow you have got to establish where the lines will be drawn but no one has any illusions about what that means. And that is before you throw in their “artistic temperment”. It’s a turbulent combination of elements guarenteeing a constant stuggle to stay up on the tracks.

And then the accident. A series of events intertwining the laws of nature with the bad choices we [or others] make. In the end you find your life forever changed. If you are lucky you will have already lived most of yours. She was not. She had reprieves, sure, but eventually the body has the final word. She weas only 47 when she died.

And then there’s that surreal encounter between Nelson Rockefeller and Diego Rivera. What the fuck did Rockefeller expect? Diego was an avowed Communist! But did Diego really imagine that Rockefeller would accept a mural that prominently featured folks like Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Karl Marx!

“I hope the exit is joyful
And I hope never to return”
Frida Kahlo

IMDb

[b]Laura San Giacomo was originally set to play Frida Kahlo but was dropped when fans objected to a non-Mexican playing the role of Frida.

In the movie, when Frida Kahlo first meets Diego Rivera as a young girl, she is spying on him flirting with a nude model; Rivera tells the model that he could eat her wrapped in tortilla. This is actually a reference to Rivera’s real-life autobiography where he describes practicing cannibalism on female cadavers in 1904.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida
trailer: youtu.be/zudfarZ-ZNk

FRIDA [2002]
Directed by Julie Taymor

[b]Frida: Careful, guys. This corpse is still breathing. Try to get me there in one piece.

…

Lupe: Why is this whore still here?
Diego: Huh?
Lupe: Tell me. Tell me, mi amor. Are you planning to have her after lunch, or have you fucked her already?
Diego: Lupe, please don’t start.
Lupe: Y-You think I don’t know what’s going on. You must think I’m an idiot.
Diego: I can’t work like this.
Lupe: Yes, you can. Your food and your slut. That’s all you need to paint your pinche murals!
[she throws a basket of food at him]
Diego: Hey! Get out!
Lupe: And don’t come home! Don’t come home and give me one of your speeches about the artist and the people and your fucking revolution! You only care about yourself, you piece of shit!

…

Frida: What do you think matters most for a good marriage?
Guillermo [Papa]: A short memory.
Frida: Why did you get married?
Guillermo: I can’t remember.

…

Doctor: The spinal column was broken, as were the collarbone and two ribs. The pelvis is broken in three places. The metal rod entered the right side of the body and came out the vagina. The right leg has fractures, and the foot was crushed.
Sister: Will she ever walk again?
Doctor: Let’s make sure she lives first.

…

Diego: What if I told you that easel painting like yours is finished, that it’s headed for the trash like other elitist, bourgeois pastimes?
Frida: I’d say cut the propaganda.

…

Diego: This is very good work. You have real talent.
Frida: Oh, come on. I’m not looking for your compliments. I want a serious critique.
Diego: But I’m being sincere. These are very original paintings…none of the usual tricks.
Frida: But that’s…that’s not specific.
Diego: You have to trust a true compliment as much as a critique.
Frida: Yeah, well, some people have told me not to trust what you say. They say if a girl asks your opinion, and she’s not a complete fright, you’ll gush all over her. I need you to tell me one thing honestly… do you actually believe that I should continue to paint?
Diego: Yes. Yes.[/b]

In a nutshell:

[b]David: Mr. Trotsky…a man who plays the martyr when, in truth, he was rejected by his own country. Good riddance.
Diego: No. He had to run for his life. Stalin would have had him shot. That’s his version of socialism…kill anyone who disagrees with you.
David: Well, some people have to get shot in a revolution, you know.
Diego: Well, I prefer evolution then. Educate the poor. Mobilize the workers. Rise like a slow tide. But you…you’ll have your revolution and kill half the poor to save them.
David: Diego, this from a Communist who’s getting rich painting for the government and wealthy patrons?
Diego: I can’t help it if the rich have good taste.
David: The rich don’t have good taste. They pay someone to have good taste for them. And they don’t hire you because you are good. They hire you because you assuage their sense of guilt. They use you, Diego, and you are too vain to see it.

…

Frida: I love a man with melones that are bigger than mine.
Diego: And I love a woman with cojones.[/b]

Another nutshell:

[b]Diego: I think it’s quite possible that we were born for each other, so we should marry.
Frida: But you don’t believe in marriage.
Diego: Of course I do. I’ve had two wives already.
Frida: Exactly. You can’t be true to only one woman.
Diego: True, yes. Faithful… no. Unfortunately, I’m physiologically incapable of fidelity. Is fidelity that important to you?
Frida: Loyalty is important to me. Can you be loyal?
Diego: To you? Always.
Frida: Good. Because I love you, panzon. I accept.

…

Tina: I don’t believe in marriage.
[crowd laughs]
Tina: No, I really don’t. Let me be clear about that. I think at worst it’s a hostile political act, a way for small-minded men to keep women in the house and out of the way, wrapped up in the guise of tradition and conservative religious nonsense. At best, it’s a happy delusion - these two people who truly love each other and have no idea how truly miserable they’re about to make each other. But, but, when two people know that, and they decide with eyes wide open to face each other and get married anyway, then I don’t think it’s conservative or delusional. I think it’s radical and courageous and very romantic. To Diego and Frida.

…

Frida: Diego, son of a bitch! That model, huh?
Diego: Yes. It was just a fuck, that’s all. I’ve given more affection in a handshake.
Frida: Well, that makes me feel so much better.

…

Frida: I want to see my son! He came out in pieces!

…

Diego: You know, I don’t believe in God, but I still thank him every day that he kept you safe for me.
Frida: Hmm, really? I tell him he’s got a lot of explaining to do.

…

Diego: You’d seen my work. You knew my politics when you hired me. Yeah, I showed you the sketches. I discussed them with you and your father. What were you expecting from me? A line of dancing girls?
Rockefeller: No, but nor was I expecting a portrait of Lenin! Now, let’s be honest. In the sketches that you showed me originally, it was just some anonymous worker.
Diego: He transformed himself into Lenin of his own accord.
Rockefeller: No, you transformed him into Lenin because they took shots at us in the paper! Do you really think that my family is influenced by newspaper hacks? I would’ve defended you. I will defend you against any attack because the work is thrilling. As always. But a portrait of Vladimir Lenin will offend many people… in particular, my father. You see, you’re putting me in an impossible position. So I’m asking you to please change this one detail.
Diego: It’s against my principles.
Rockefeller: Yes, well, you’ve adjusted your principles to come to our parties and eat at our table, so I hope you will reconsider.

…

Rockefeller: Señor Rivera, I must ask you one last time to reconsider your position.
Diego: I will not compromise my vision.
Rockefeller: In that case, this is your fee, paid in full, as agreed, but your services are no longer required.
Diego: It’s my painting!
Rockefeller: On my wall.
Diego: It’s the people’s wall, you bastard!

…

Frida [to Diego]: My goddamn sister?! You’re an animal!!

…

Frida: There have been two big accidents in my life, Diego… the trolley and you. You are by far the worst.

…

Diego: I could not believe it! These people are idiots! They scream about Hitler’s aggression, a-a-and then sing Stalin’s praises. Aren’t they the same creature?
Trotsky: Yes, but not exactly. Of course they are both monsters, but Hitler at least is a madman with a vision.
Diego: Vision? He’s insane!
Trotsky: Of course he is insane, but he has the ability to mobilize the people’s minds, whereas Stalin, he’s… he is so dull. There is the brutality, but when you get right down to it, Stalin is nothing but a bureaucrat, and that is what is smothering our revolution. They are the same, but only in that the insanity of power has overruled them. And between them, they will consume the continent.

…

Trotsky: Frida…how were you hurt?
Frida: I couldn’t even tell you anymore. I’ve been cut into, rebroke, and reset so many times. I’m like a jigsaw puzzle. And all the operations have done more damage than the accident, for all I know. Everything hurts. But the leg…the leg is the worst.

…

Frida: At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.
Trotsky: That’s what I loved about your paintings…that they carry that message. You said that nobody would care about them, but I think you are wrong. Your paintings express what everyone feels…that they are alone in pain.

…

Frida: Leon… tell me about your children.
Trotsky: My children. We knew the girls had been murdered and one of the boys. We thought the other was still alive in the prison. But that letter came. He was executed, too. They are all gone. I have condemned my family…as I am condemned.
Frida: You mustn’t say that.
Trotsky: But it’s true. Stalin has more power than any tsar. I’m alone with few friends and no resources against the world’s biggest killing machine.

…

Diego [after learning Frida has been unfaithful to him with Trotsky]: You’ve broken my heart, Frida.
Frida: It hurts doesn’t it? But why? It was just a fuck, like a handshake.
Diego: No. I told you who I was when you married me.
Frida: Yes, you did, and I married you anyway. And, you promised to be loyal. You have been my comrade, my fellow artist…my best friend. But you’ve never been my husband.

…

Diego: I’m…I’m here to… ask you to marry me.
Frida: I don’t need rescuing, Diego.
Diego: I do.
Frida: I’ve lost the toes of one foot. My back is useless. I have an infection of the kidneys. I smoke. I drink. I curse. I can’t have children. I have no money, and a stack of hospital bills. Should I keep going?

…

Frida [to Diego]: I want you to burn this Judas of a body. I don’t want to be buried. I’ve spent enough time lying down. Burn it.

…

Frida [to Diego]: Give me back my fucking leg!

…

Diego [at an exhibition of her work in Mexico]: I want to speak about Frida not as her husband, but as an artist. I admire her. Her work is acid and tender…hard as steel…and fine as a butterfly’s wing. Loveable as a smile…cruel as…as the bitterness of life.[/b]

[iambiguous]

It seems obvious that we all come out of the womb programed by nature to embody the potential for being cruel with, to or around others. But the extent to which we come to embody it in our actual lives is also impacted by nurture. This is obvious as well. Yet in looking at particular acts of cruelty how do we unravel all the pieces in order to create a “whole” explanation?

[I still recall my ex-wife’s Uncle adopting the sweetest little boy you could ever imagine. His name was Billy. Yet the Uncle [and his biological sons] were about as far removed from “sweet” as one can get. Pure white trash as far as I was concerned. And then before my eyes over the years I watched Billy turn into one of them: No less cruel to others deemed “different”. Like father, like sons. Adopted or otherwise.]

Here we have the elders and the children in this small village. And here we also have an object lesson in how cruelty can wend its way through human history. And these children in particular would go on to become the generation that Hitler would use to promulgate his own rendition of it. That seems to be an important element in the story. Or at least the narrator thinks so.

This was a time historically [just before the First World War] when the old was giving way to the new. The “modern world” was almost upon them. But the stupidity of religion [out in the sticks] simply makes its adjustments. Same with the men in thrall to their peckers.

It’s a cruel world. And given what we are how could it be otherwise? But we can still choose [up to a point] how cruel or kind we will be. Or course others link this cruelty not to “human nature” but to the authoritarian menace of religion and to the intrinsic nature of the capitalist political economy: wsws.org/en/articles/2010/01/ribb-j06.html

IMDb

[b]After it lost the Best Foreign Film Oscar, a few articles were written exposing that the Academy voters for this category were not obligated to view all the films before voting.

The children in the film are the generation of Germans who became Nazis. Michael Haneke has stated that while that is intentional, the ideas in the film are meant to encompass more than what lead to the rise of Nazism.

Although the town itself is fictional, many of the incidents depicted in the film are drawn from real incidents in Germany and Austria during the 1920’s-1940’s.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Ribbon
trailer: youtu.be/5KJKvvvxY74

THE WHITE RIBBON [Das Weiße Band Eine Deutsche Kindergeschichte] 2009
Written and directed by Michael Haneke

[b]Narrator [the teacher in the village, now an old man]: I don’t know if the story that I want to tell you, reflects the truth in every detail. Much of it I only know by hearsay, and a lot of it remains obscure to me even today, and I must leave it in darkness. Many of these questions remain without answer. But I believe I must tell of the strange events that occurred in our village, because they may cast a new light on some of the goings-on in this country…

…

Pastor [to his eldest son and daughter]: I refuse to be touched by you. Your mother and I will sleep poorly because we know I have to hurt you tomorrow, and because it will be more painful to us than the strokes will be painful to you. Leave us alone and go to bed.

…

Pastor [to his eldest son and daughter]: When you were small, your mother once in a while would tie a ribbon in your hair or around your arm. Its white color was to remind you of innocence and purity. I thought that at your age you were well-mannered enough to get by without such reminders. I was wrong. Tomorrow, once you’ve been purified by your punishment, your mother will tie such a ribbon on you again, and you’ll wear it until your behavior shows us that we can trust you again.[/b]

Cruel to be kind.

[b]Martin: I gave God a chance to kill me. He didn’t do it, so he’s pleased with me.
Teacher: Why would God want you to die?

…

Rudolph [a young boy]: Do all people die?
Xenia: Yes.
Rudolph: All of them, really?
Xenia: Yes, everyone dies.
Rudolph: But not you, Xeni?
Xenia: Me too. Everyone.
Rudolph: But not Dad?
Xenia: Dad too.
Rudolph: Me too?
Xenia: You too. But not before a very very long time. All of us, only in a very long time.
Rudolph: And you can’t do anything against it? It has to happen?
Xenia: It has to happen. But not now, not for a very long time.
[long pause]
Rudolph: And Mom? She didn’t go on a trip? Is she dead too?
Xenia: Yes. She’s dead too. But that was a long time ago.[/b]

Next to God, what else is there?

[b]Baron [looking at cabbage patch scythed to bits]: Quite a job, isn’t it?!
Baroness [revolted]: This is disgusting!
The Steward: It used to be an old custom: “Now that the harvesting’s done, It’s time to pay us, every one, Any miser who leaves us in a rut, He shall have his cabbage cut.”

…

Narrator: They had found Sigi. He had been tied up in the old sawmill, upside down. His trousers had been pulled down and his buttocks were bleeding from cane strokes. He seemed to be in a state of shock, was unable to walk and had to be brought back to the manor on a makeshift stretcher, lying on his belly.

…

The Baron [to the assembled town]: We all know that the people responsible for the terrible injuries suffered by my son, and those suffered by the doctor are sitting here among us, in this room.

…

Narrator: The landowner’s speech frightened the people. Most knew about the incident at the Thanksgiving feast. But the majority didn’t know exactly what had happened, and in the end they didn’t care. The Baron was not really popular among the people, but he was respected as a powerful social figure, as well as the employer of nearly the whole village…His threat about loosing the peace of the community couldn’t mean anything good. At the same time the mysterious character of what were obviously criminal deeds fed the mistrust of the farmers, deeply rooted since time immemorial.

…

Midwife: You didn’t miss me.
Doctor: Come on. What are you saying?!
Midwife: Nothing. I said it because it’s the truth.
[pause]
Doctor: There’s nothing like a nice dose of self-hate.
Midwife: What?
Doctor: Nothing. Forget it.

…

Doctor [to the Midwife who is masterbating him]: Wouldn’t it be better if you stopped doing that? Why all the effort? Don’t look at me so dumbfounded. It’s not that you lack talent… It’s just that I can’t do it with you any more, that’s all. To tell you the truth: you disgust me.
Midwife (quietly): What did I do to you?
Doctor (irritated): My God, you haven’t done anything at all. You’re ugly, you’re messy, you’re flabby and you have bad breath. Isn’t that enough?..I just want it to stop, that’s all. I’ve been trying, but it’s just disgusting. I try to think of another woman when I’m making love to you, a woman who smells good, who is young, who is less flabby than you, but my imagination can’t handle it. In the end, it’s you again and then I just feel like throwing up and am embarrassed at myself. So what’s the point?!

…

Midwife: You can’t afford to get rid of me. Who would do the dirty work for you, who would help you with the children, and here in you practice? You’re not speaking seriously. You just want to see how far you can go, don’t you: will she still put up with it or can I drag her even lower through the mud? I’m tired too. I’ve got two retarded children: Hans and you. You’re the one that gives me most trouble.
Doctor: My God, why don’t you just die?

…

Narrator: The year was coming to an end with fine weather. The sun made the snowy landscape sparkle so brightly that it hurt the eyes. None of us suspected that it would be the last time a year moved on to the next in an era of peace, and that that same year a radical change would take place of which no one had the faintest inkling…

…

The Baroness: If I leave this place, it’s because I don’t want Sigi, and later the twins, to grow up in surroundings dominated by malice, envy, apathy and brutality. What happened with Sigi’s whistle was the last straw. I’m sick and tired of persecutions, threats and perverse acts of revenge.

…

The Baroness: What’s going on?
The Baron: They’ve just assassinated Archduke Ferinand in Sarajevo.

…

Narrator: The news spread around the village like wildfire. What would the consequences be? The first person who spoke the word “war”, was severely contradicted. But once it had been uttered, it remained stubornly at the center of all our thoughts.

…

Narrator: During the next few weeks, the village gossip-factory worked overtime. Some claimed, the doctor was Hansi’s father. He and the midwife had tried to abort the child so that the shame of their relationship wouldn’t be found out, and that’s how the child became disabled. Others even went as far as to claim that there was something fishy about the death of the doctor’s wife, and that they wouldn’t be surprised, if the two weren’t responsible for it. Whoever had lynched the boy obviously knew about the hidden crimes of his parents. Suddenly it seemed even possible that the doctor and the midwife, as potential murderers, were also the perpetrators of all the other crimes. It was suspected, that the doctor had wanted to spare his legitimate children and himself public disclosure of his guilt, and had therefore fled with them. Apparently he had taken the disabled boy with him out of guilt. Understandably enough, he had left behind his accomplice and the mother of the disgraced child. The fact that it was on a bicycle that she tried to catch up with the man who had happily escaped, was the cause of a great deal of laughter.

…

Narrator: Today, more than a quarter of a century later, toward the end of my life, and several years after the end of a second war that was to change this world in a more cruel and radical way than the first one, the one we faced at the time, I wonder if the events of those days and our silence about them, weren’t the germ of the tragedy toward which we were heading. Didn’t we all know secretly what had happened in our midst? Hadn’t we, in a way, made it possible by closing our eyes? Didn’t we keep our mouths shut because otherwise we would have had to wonder if the misdeeds of these children, of our children, weren’t actually the result of what we’d been teaching them?[/b]

[iambiguous]

How good is it? Well, it bombed at the box office. And then it went on to become a cult classic. Yeah, that good.

A savagely funny look at a world that should be looked at in a savagely funny way. Maybe even in a cruelly funny way. But how do parody something that is a parody in and of itself. It’s hard to top the real thing.

Of course these are just actors pretending to be office wokers. In fact, they have the sort of jobs that actual office workers would kill for. It’s awful. You find yourself in a situation where you pray to God that you don’t lose a job that you loathe. It’s all part and parcel of the American dream. Especially in this day and age.

Not only that but there’s all the bullshit you have to endure once you leave the office. Especially when you leave only to go to the workplace of others. Say, someone who works in a fast food restaurant. Someone who at a minimum is required to wear 15 pieces of flair.

There’s just no getting around all the crap out there. And that’s before we get to the crap that’s your own damn fault.

This works well as a fantasy. And as a farce. That is until Bill Wiltrak and his unions finally get their shit together.

IMDb

The iconic red stapler coveted by Milton was created for the film by the prop department. They needed a bright enough color to be seen on film and chose red. After the film was released, Swingline began to receive requests from customers for red staplers. Having stopped offering red a number of years before, they made the decision to start offering the color once more.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space
trailer: youtu.be/_IwzZYRejZQ

OFFICE SPACE [1999]
Written and directed by Mike Judge

[b]Samir: No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right. It’s not that hard: Na-ghee-na-na-jar. Nagheenanajar.
Michael: Yeah, well, at least your name isn’t Michael Bolton.
Samir: You know, there’s nothing wrong with that name.
Michael: There was nothing wrong with it…until I was about twelve years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.
Samir: Hmm…well, why don’t you just go by Mike instead of Michael?
Michael: No way! Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks!

…

Peter: What if we’re still doing this when we’re fifty?
Samir: It would be nice to have that kind of job security.

…

Peter [talking about the hypnotherapist he and Anne are about to see]: Hey, he did help Anne lose weight.
Samir: Peter, she’s anorexic!
Peter: Yeah, I know, the guy’s really good.

…

Tom [looking to be the next “pet rock” inventor]: I had an idea like that once. It was a “Jump to Conclusions” mat. You see, it would be this mat that you would put on the floor…and would have different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.
Michael [dumfounded]: That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life, Tom.

…

Michael: PC load letter! What the fuck does that mean?!

…

Milton: [talking on the phone to Peter]: And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…

…

Bob: Y’see, what we’re trying to do here, we’re just trying to get a feel for how people spend their day. So, if you would, would you just walk us through a typical day for you?
Peter: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late. I use the side door, that way Lumbergh can’t see me. Uh, and after that, I just sorta space out for about an hour. I just stare at my desk but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I’d probably, say, in a given week, I probably do about fifteen minutes of real, actual work.

…

[repeated line]
Milton: I could set fire to the building.

…

Peter: The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy. It’s just that I just don’t care. It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now, if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime. So where’s the motivation? And here’s another thing, Bob. I have eight different bosses right now! Eight bosses. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my real motivation - not to be hassled. That and the fear of losing my job, but y’know, Bob, it will only make someone work hard enough not to get fired.

…

Bill: Milt, we’re gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B. We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK?
Milton: Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler…

…

Peter: You’re gonna lay off Samir and Michael?
Bob: Oh yeah, we’re gonna bring in some entry-level graduates, farm some work out to Singapore, that’s the usual deal. Standard operating procedure.
Peter: Do they know this yet?
Bob: No. No, of course not. We find it’s always better to fire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there’s less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.

…

Michael: Samir and I are the best programmers they got at that place. You haven’t been showing up and you get to keep your job.
Peter: Actually, I’m being promoted.

…

Peter: It’s not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It’s about all of us. I don’t know what happened to me at that hypnotherapist and, I don’t know, maybe it was just shock and it’s wearing off now, but when I saw that fat man keel over and die - Michael, we don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.
Michael: I told those fudge-packers I liked Michael Bolton’s music.
Peter: Oh. That is not right, Michael.

…

Samir: Yes, Peter, I am tired of being pushed around, but I’m not going to do something illegal.
Peter: Illegal? Samir, this is America! Come on, sit down! This isn’t Riyadh. You know they’re not gonna saw your hands off here, alright? The worst they would ever do is they would put you for a couple of months into a white-collar, minimum-security resort! Shit, we should be so lucky! Do you know, they have conjugal visits there?
Samir: Really?
Peter: Yes.
Michael: Shit. I’m a free man and I haven’t had a conjugal visit in six months.
Samir: In… in these conjugal visits, you can have sex with women?
Peter: Yep, you sure can.
Samir: OK, I’ll do it.

…

Peter: Ok, you guys give me that disk and I’ll take it from there. Oh, but listen. Before we go any further, all right, we have to swear to God, Allah, that nobody knows about this, all right? No family members, no girlfriends, nobody!
Samir: Of course.
Michael: Agreed.
Lawrence [through the wall of the apartment next door]: Don’t worry man! I won’t tell anybody about this either!
Michael: Who the fuck is that?!
Peter: Uh, don’t worry about him. He’s cool.

…

Peter [explaining the plan]: Alright so when the sub routine compounds the interest is uses all these extra decimal places that just get rounded off. So we simplified the whole thing, we rounded them all down, drop the remainder into an account we opened.
Joanna [confused]: So you’re stealing?
Peter: Ah no, you don’t understand. It’s very complicated. It’s uh it’s aggregate, so I’m talking about fractions of a penny here. And over time they add up to a lot.
Joanna: Oh okay. So you’re gonna be making a lot of money, right?
Peter: Yeah.
Joanna: Right. It’s not yours?
Peter: Well it becomes ours.
Joanna: How is that not stealing?
Peter: I don’t think I’m explaining this very well.
Joanna: Okay.
Peter: Um… the 7-11. You take a penny from the tray, right?
Joanna: From the cripple children?
Peter: No that’s the jar. I’m talking about the tray. You know the pennies that are for everybody?
Joanna: Oh for everybody. Okay.
Peter: Well those are whole pennies, right? I’m just talking about fractions of a penny here. But we do it from a much bigger tray and we do it a couple a million times.

…

Peter: You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear.
Joanna: What?!

…

Peter: You know, corporate accounting is sure as hell gonna notice $305,326.13, Michael!

…

Milton: Okay, but that’s the last straw.

…

Peter: What am I going to do with 40 subscriptions to Vibe?

…

Michael: If we’re caught while laundering money, we’re not going to go to white-collar-resort-prison. No, no, no. We’re gonna go to a federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Although they are presumed to be on the wrong side of history, thousands upon thousands of folks were actually opposed to the disintegration of the USSR and the states in its orbit. Instead, for lots of complex personal reasons they embraced the ideology of socialism and were distraught when the capitalists descended…ripping their narrative to shreds. And then many more came to grasp through first hand experience the enormous gap that can exist between the promise that was “freedom and democracy” and the reality of a political economy that simply uses people [and then uses them up] in order that a small percentage of the population are able to exploit the overwhelming majority who now found themselves living from paycheck to paycheck—if they could find employment at all. One kind of corruption was merely replaced by another. And a grand historical narrative [in theory anyway] is replaced by lifestyles revolving around wealth and consumption.

In other words, only in the minds of the objectivists and the libertarians…the idealists…is capitalism all it’s stacked up to be. For the rest, the only thing that’s stacked is the deck itself.

Only that’s not really what this movie is about at all.

Here we have a woman who has told her children that her husband had abandoned the family and the nation. In order to “recover” she throws herself all the more into embracing the fatherland [and socialism]. But then she has a heart attack and falls into a coma. When she finally comes to the GDR is no more. What to do? Well, with her health at stake, it’s simple: create the illusion that all is as it was before. How hard can that be?

Only problem is, it was all predicated largely on a lie. A heartbreaking lie. A terrible truth though about the world we live in. About the choices we are forced to make in order to accomodate ourselves to a world ever in strife.

IMDb

The story is loosely based on the last two years of V.I. Lenin’s life, living in a controlled environment similar to what is portrayed in the film. With the justification that over-excitement might cause Lenin health problems, Joseph Stalin had printed for him one-copy edition newspapers, censored of all news about the political struggles of the time.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Bye,_Lenin!
trailer: youtu.be/iJb4efZcFUM

Good Bye Lenin! [2003]
Written in part and directed by Wolfgang Becker

Alexander [voiceover]: While Sigmund Jahn was intrepidly representing our country in space, my father was getting his brains fucked out by his new “enemy of the state” girlfriend. He never came back. My mother was so depressed she stopped talking. She just didn’t speak. Not to us. Not to anyone.

Or so he was told.

[b]Alexander [voiceover]: She slept while Ariane quit studying economic theory…and gained her first practical experience with monetary circulation.
Ariane: “Enjoy your meal and thanks for choosing Burger King.”
Alexander [voiceover]: Mother slept through the triumph of capitalism…

…

Dr. Wagner: You must protect her from any kind of excitement. And I do mean any kind, Mr. Kerner.
Alexander: Any kind of excitement.
Dr. Wagner: It would be life-threatening.
Alexander: And this here?
[he shows the doctor a newspaper reading “Good Luck, Germany. Yes to Reunification”]
Alexander: Wouldn’t you call this exciting?[/b]

See where this is going?

[b]Alexander [to Ariane]: What are you going to tell her, that you quit college to sell burgers?

…

Mom: Comrade Ganske watches West German TV?

…

Mom [watching through the window as workers unfurl a huge “DRINK COCA COLA” banner on the building acroos the street]: Alex, what is that?![/b]

That’s when she learns that Coca Cola was actually invented in the GDR.

[b]Alexander [voiceover]: Life in our little country kept getting faster. We were all like tiny atoms in a huge particle accelerator. But sheltered from the fast pace of the new time was an oasis of calm.

…

Alexander [voiceover]: Somehow my scheme had taken on a life of its own. The GDR I created for her increasingly became the one I might have wished for.

…

Mother: Now you can take someone in.
Alexander: Take whom in?
Mother: A refugee from the West.

…

Alexander: There he was, my childhood idol, like a ghost from my past: Sigmund Jähn. Not signing autographs, not telling kids about the secrets of the universe, the freedom of weightlessness, and the infinite reaches of space. He was driving a tiny, smelly Lada taxi.
Sigmund Jähn: Where to?
Alexander: Wannsee
Sigmund Jähn: I know what you think. Everyone does. But I’m not him.

…

[b]Robert [his father]: Sorry, do we know each other?
Alexander: Yes we know each other.
Robert: I can’t quite place you, help me out?
Alexander’s stepsister: His name is Alexander.
Robert [stunned knowing now it’s his son]: Alex…

…

Sigmund Jähn [in a fictional address as the new head-of-state of the GDR]: Dear citizens of the German Democratic Republic… If you’ve lived to see the wonder of watching our blue planet from the depths of the cosmos, you see things differently. Up there, in the depths of space, the people’s lives seem small and insignificant. Our German Democratic Republic seems tiny. You ask yourself what humanity has accomplished. Which objectives did we set, which objectives did we realize? Today is our country’s anniversary. It’s a very little country, seen from the cosmos. But still thousands of people came to us last year. People who we looked to as enemies and who want to live with us today. We know our country is not perfect. But what we believe in, inspired a lot of people in the whole world. Maybe we have drifted off course from time to time. But we collected ourselves. Socialism doesn’t mean walling yourself in. Socialism means reaching out to others, and living with others. Not just to dream about a better world, but to make a better world. I have therefore decided to open the GDR borders.

…

Alexander [voiceover]: My mother outlived the GDR by three days. I believe it was a good thing she never learned the truth. She died happy. She wanted us to scatter her ashes to the winds. That’s prohibited in Germany, both East and West. But we didn’t care. She’s up there somewhere now. Maybe looking down at us. Maybe she sees us as tiny specks on the Earth’s surface, just like Sigmund Jähn did back then. The country my mother left behind was a country she believed in; a country we kept alive till her last breath; a country that never existed in that form; a country that, in my memory, I will always associate with my mother.[/b]

[iambiguous]

What counted back then was less what was true and more what was believed to be true. In other words, pretty much the way things still are today. At least regarding these things: the role of government, the anchor of ethnicity, the viscissitudes of wealth and power, the options afforded a particular gender or a particular race, the reach of religion, the scale of corruption.

Of course we are a lot more civilized about these things now.

What is always intriguing in conflicts like this is the tug of war between the True Believers and the opportunists. Especially regarding those who claim to be of the first but are really of the latter. It’s always easier for them to switch sides if necessary. They simply announce to the world that they have changed their minds.

Bill and the Priest. Men harboring the same principles but differrent faiths according to Bill. It’s all just bullshit to me. My people vs. your people. Native Americans [the white ones] vs. everybody else. It’s all crap. Summed up this way by Bill: “I don’t see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for a nickel what a nigger does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for.”

Not only are they there to be exploited economically but you can stir up the pot and have them all going after each other as the cause for the misery they endure. Sooner or later all the religious strife, nativist sentiments and tribal [gang] warfare comes down to that.

God is everywhere here. But make no mistake about it: it’s Old Testament right down to the bone.

This by no means reflected all of New York. The Five Points was smack dab in the middle of the working class. There were other “sections” of the city that were nothing like this at all. But then came the draft riots: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_draft_riots

IMDb

[b]When the film was first conceived in 1978, Martin Scorsese originally planned to cast Dan Aykroyd as Amsterdam Vallon and John Belushi as Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting. The project fell apart after Belushi died.

Most of the gangs mentioned by name were real 19th century New York gangs. Bill “The Butcher” Cutting is based largely on real-life New York gang leader Bill Poole, who also was known as “The Butcher” and had much the same prestige as Daniel Day-Lewis’ character.

The draft riots depicted in the film are largely accurate, but the real-life Bill “The Butcher” Poole (the basis for Daniel Day-Lewis’ character) was killed several years before the riots took place.

To make sure his facts were accurate, Martin Scorsese contacted Tyler Anbinder, a professor of history at George Washington University and author of the book “Five Points”.

Martin Scorsese hired “The Magician”, an Italian man famous for a 30-year career as a pickpocket, to teach Cameron Diaz about the art of picking pockets.

Bill the Butcher has a scene with every main and supporting character in the film, a symbol of his vast influence in the Five Points.

Daniel Day-Lewis became so uncomfortable with the greasy hairstyle he wore as Bill the Butcher, that immediately after filming completed, he shaved his head.

Bill’s last words, “I die a true American”, were the last words of his true-life counterpart, Bill Poole.[/b]

FAQs at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0217505/faq … _sm#.2.1.8
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_of_New_York
trailer: youtu.be/zkK6HTEzvSs

GANGS OF NEW YORK [2002]
Directed by Martin Scorsese

[b]Priest Vallon: Well, well, Monk! Are you with us or not?
Monk: For the last time Vallon, only if the money is right.
Priest Vallon: I’ll give you 10 per notch.
Monk: 10?
Priest Vallon: You have my word.
Monk: 10 per notch.
Priest Vallon: Per new notch.
Monk: Then I’m your man.

…

Bill: Is this it priest, the Pope’s new army, a few crusty bitches and a hand full of rag tags?
Priest Vallon: Now, now, Bill, you swore this was a battle between warriors, not a bunch of miss nancies, so warriors is what I brought.
[various Irish Gangs proceed to appear]

…

Priest Vallon: Let it be known, that the hand that tries to strike us from this land shall be swiflty cut down!
Bill: Then may the Christian Lord, guide my hand, against your Roman popery!
Priest Vallon: Prepare to receive the true Lord!

…

Amsterdam [voiceover]: In the second year of the great civil war when the Irish brigades marched through the streets New York was a city full of tribes. War chiefs. Rich and poor. It wasn’t a city really. It was more a furnace. Where a city someday might be forged.

…

Amsterdam [voiceover]: When the Irish came, the city was in a fever. Since the time of the great famine they’d come streaming off the boats. And they got a right warm welcome.
Native: “Go back to Ireland, you dumb Micks!”

…

Bill [to Boss Tweed]: Don’t mind him. He used to be an Irishman.

…

Tweed: Street construction, repairs and sweeping. Business and saloon licences…Streetcars, ferries, rubbish disposal. There’s a tower of money to be made in this city, Bill. With your help, the people must be made to understand that all these things are best kept, in what I like to call the Tammany family. That is why I am talking about an alliance between our organisations.
Bill: You’re talking about muscle work.
Tweed: That too. Muscle to match our spirit.
Bill: You own the crushers, get them to do it.
Tweed: The police? Oh, no! Jezus,no! The appearance of the law must be upheld. Especially while it’s been broken.

…

Amsterdam [voiceover]: When you kill a king, you don’t stab him in the dark. You kill him where the entire court can watch him die.

…

Bill [to Amsterdam]: On the seventh day the Lord rested, but before that he did, he squatted over the side of England and what came out of him…was Ireland. No offense son.

…

Amsterdam [voiceover]: Everywhere you went, people talked about the daft. Now, you could buy your way out for 300 dollars. But who had 300 dollars? For us it might just as well have been 3 million.

…

Amsterdam [voiceover]:For every lay we had a different name. An Angler put a hook on the end of a stick to drop behind store windows and doors. An Autumn diver picked your pocket in church. A Badger, gets a fellow in bed with a girl and robs his pockets when they’re on the go. Jenny was a Bludger a girl pickpocket. And a Turtle dove. A Turtle dove goes uptown dressed like a housemaid. Picks out a fine house and goes right through the back door. Robs you blind. It takes a lot of sand to be a Turtle dove.

…

Tweed: Bill, I can’t get a days work done for all the good citizens coming in here to harass me about crime in the Points. Some even go so far as to accuse Tammany of connivance in this so-called rampant criminality. What am I to do? I can’t have this. Something has to be done.
Bill: What do you have in mind?
Tweed: I don’t know. I think maybe we should hang someone.
Bill: Who?
Tweed: No one important, necessarily. Average men will do. Back alley amusers with no affiliations.
Bill: How many?
Tweed: Three or four.
Bill: Which?
Tweed: Four.

…

[as a man – one of the four – is about to be hung]
Bill: That’s a fine locket. I’ll give you a dollar for it.
Man: It was me mother’s…
Bill: Dollar and a half?
Man: Done.

…

Bill: Didn’t anyone pay off the god damn police?
Tweed: Yes, the municipal police but this is the metropolitan police.

…

Tweed: That’s the building of our country right there, Mr. Cutting. Americans aborning.
Bill: I don’t see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for a nickel what a nigger does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for. What have they done? Name one thing they’ve contributed.
Tweed: Votes.
Bill: Votes, you say? They vote how the archbishop tells them, and who tells the archbishop? Their king in the pointy hat what sits on his throne in Rome.

…

Tweed: Bill, deliver these good and fervant folk to the polls. And there will be a handsome price for each vote that goes Tammany’s way.
Bill: Miy father gave his life making this country what it is. Murdered by the British, with all of his men, July 25, 1814. You think I’m going to help you, befoul his legacy? By giving this country to them who’s had no hand in fighting for it. Why? Because they come off the boat crawling with lice and begging you for soup?
Tweed: You’re a great one for the fighting Bill, I know but you can’t fight forever.
Bill: I can go down doing it .

…

Army Recruiter [swearing in Irish immigrants as citizens at the harbor]: That document makes you a citizen, and this one makes you a private in the Union army. Now get out there and serve your country.

…

Bill: Rythms of the dark continent, thrown into the kettle with an Irish shindig. Stir it around a few times. Poured out as a fine American mess. A jig, doing a jig!

…

Bill: How old are you, Amsterdam?
Amsterdam: I’m not sure, sir. I never did quite figure it.
Bill: I’m forty-seven. Forty-seven years old. You know how I stayed alive this long? All these years? Fear. The spectacle of fearsome acts. Somebody steals from me, I cut off his hands. He offends me, I cut out his tongue. He rises against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike, raise it high up so all on the streets can see. That’s what preserves the order of things. Fear.

…

Monk [to Amsterdam]: My father was killed in battle, too. In Ireland, in the streets, fighting those who would take as their privilege what could only be got and held by the decimation of a race. That war is a thousand years old and more. We never expected it to follow us here. It didn’t. It was waiting for us when we landed. Your father tried to carve out a corner of this land for his tribe. That was him, that was his dead rabbits. I often wondered… if he had lived a bit longer, would he have wanted a bit more?

…

Bill [to Happy Jack]: Here’s the thing. I don’t give a tuppenny fuck about your moral conundrum, you meat-headed shit-sack. That’s more or less the thing. And I want you to go out there… You, nobody else. None of your little minions. I want you to go out there. And I want you to punish the person who’s responsible for murdering this poor little rabbit. Is that understood?

…

Amsterdam [voiceover]: The earth turns, but we don’t feel it move. And one night you look up. One spark and the whole sky is on fire.

…

Tweed: I’m offering my boy, to form an alliance with you against Bill Cutting and his slate of Native candidates. I’ll negotiate a handsome fee, for every Irish vote you send Tammany’s way, in the coming elections. I need a new friend in the Five Points, son. I’d like that friend to be you.
Amsterdam: Now just a moment, Mr. Tweed. Suppose we do get you those votes. Would you back an Irish candidate of my chosing…
Tweed: I don’t think so.
Amsterdam: What if we get you all the Irish votes?
Tweed: Mr. Vallon, that will only happen in the reign of Queen Dick!
Amsterdam: Beg your pardon?
Tweed: That means it will never happen. Now I might be persuaded to back an Irish candidate for, let’s say, alderman.
Jenny: Alderman? We’ve already got an Irish alderman.
Tweed: So we have, that’s why…
Amsterdam: What’s bigger than an alderman? Sheriff! Sheriff! Alright, Mr Tweed, you back an Irishman for sheriff of the city and county of New York and we’ll get him elected.
Tweed: I love the Irish, son but higher than alderman you shall never climb.

…

Killoran: Monk’s already won by three thousand more votes than there are voters.
Tweed: Only three? Make it twenty, thirty. We don’t need a victory. We need a Roman triumph.
Killoran: But we don’t have any more ballots.
Tweed: Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don’t make the results, the counters make the results. The counters. Keep counting.

…

Bill [after murdering Monk]: That, my friends, is the minority vote.

…

[the draft riot is spreading]
Tweed: It may be worse yet, sir. I saw them. I don’t know what to think…
Mr. Schermerhorn: What is it you are so fond of saying, Mr. Tweed? Mr. Greely, you won’t like this…but what is it?
Tweed: I don’t remember.
Mr. Schermerhorn: You said, “You can always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half.”

…

Greeley: I’ve heard of the poor are going from door to door in the Five Points, asking those supporters for further riots to place a candle in the window. Irish, Poles, Germans…all of them
Mr. Schermerhorn: Ah, Mr. Greeley, the city is not mad…I prophesise a very dark night.

…

Tweed: Tomorrow morning get our people down to the docks. I want every man and woman coming off the boats given hot soup and bread. We’re burying a lot of votes here tonight.

…

Amsterdam [voiceover]: In the end, they put candles on the bodies so’s their friends, if they had any, could know them in the dark. The city did this free of charge. Shang, Jimmy Spoils, Hell-cat, McGloin, and more. Friend or foe, didn’t make no difference now. It was four days and nights before the worst of the mob was finally put down. We never knew how many New Yorkers died that week before the city was finally delivered. My father told me we was all born of blood and tribulation, and so then too was our great city. But for those of us what lived and died in them furious days, it was like everything we knew was mightily swept away. And no matter what they did to build this city up again…for the rest of time…it would be like no one ever knew we was even here.[/b]

[iambiguous]

The gang is all here. Only 17 years earlier. I suppose I should have deconstructed them in the proper order but that’s not where they ended up on the shelf.

Not that this means much to the barbarians. They will always be around. As will those who make such distinctions: The intellectuals. Here the names of philosophers pop up from time to time. So it’s good to know the new generation [back then and each that follows] is willing to keep the flame burning. Up on the screen in other words and not just inside the Hallowed Halls.

The sort of film where nothing much happens at all. Instead, folks inclined to pursuits of the mind mostly jostle back and forth…ruminating on the meaning of it all. Not perhaps as rigorously as a philosopher might but still largely “up there”. And when it does come down here it is usually in reference to fucking. And here, apparently, boys will be boys…and girls will be boys too. And the men are always the butt of the womens jokes and the women of the mens.

Towards the end of it all you begin to grasp more clearly why the empires are in decline.

And cynical? Oh yeah. Until, say, you start pissing blood.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Declin … can_Empire
trailer: youtu.be/a7R4YFi_qhA

THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE [Le Déclin de L’Empire Américain] 1986
Written and directed by Denys Arcand

[b]Remy [the one who died in The Barbarian Invasions]: Three things are important in history. First off, numbers. Secondly, numbers. And thirdly, numbers. This means, for example, that the blacks in South Africa are bound to win some day while North American blacks will probably never make it. History is not a moral science. Legality, compassion, justice…such notions are foreign to history.

…

Diane: You’re chairman of the history department and you’ve just published Changing Concepts of Happiness. Can you tell us about it.
Dominique: It’s my premise that the concept of personal happiness permeates the literature of a nation or a civilization as its influence wanes.
Diane: What do you mean by personal happiness?
Dominique: The expectation of receiving instant gratification in daily life…and that this gratification constitutes the normative parameter of eistence.
Diane: Can you give us a concrete example?
Dominique: Take marriage for instance. In stable societies, marriage is a mode of economic exchange or a unit of production.
Diane: Meaning?
Dominique: The success of a marriage doesn’t depend on the personal happiness of the two individuals. The issue never even comes up. A developing society places greater importance on the collective good, or future happiness than on personal satisfaction. In Rome, for example, the idea of conjugal love first prevails in the third century, under Diocletian – as the empire is collapsing. And in Europe, Rousseau’s idea of happiness ushered in the French Revolution. So I pose the question: Is the frantic drive for personal happiness we see in society today linked to the decline of the American Empire?[/b]

Whether this is true or not may well pale next to the fact that things like this can be thought of in ways very few of us ever pursue. Is it all just intellectual hogwash or is there really something to it?

[b]Pierre [to Remy]: Love – the kind that makes your heart race, makes you send flowers – lasts two years at best. Then the compromises begin.

…

Pierre [to Remy and Claude]: I divorced for purely physical reasons. I was scared to death of the phone. When you have affairs the poor things are bound to fall in love. It was awful knowing that one day one of them would ring me at home. Every time the phone rang my heart skipped a beat.

…

Claude: The only time I feel alive is when I’m cruising. It’s incredible. I become crazed…electrified. It’s dangerous. A friend was stabbed in the shower. But I can’t help it. Some nights I just have to fuck someone…anyone. Like an alley cat on the prowl. The urge is overwhelming.

…

Remy: I once stopped off at a brothel on the way to my mistress. Try explaining that to a woman.

…

Pierre: Wittgenstein wrote that our only certainty is the ability to act with the body. If I’m in love I get hard. If I don’t get hard, I’m not in love. Otherwise you are deceiving yourself. Like a woman who says she still loves you when she is dry as sandpaper. And you remember how she’d be dripping if you so much as kissed her on the neck.

…

Pierre: Think about it, back then marriages lasted on average 15 years.
Louise: You should write a paper on that.
Pierre: 17,000 scholarly arlicles are published each day.
Mario: I’ve had enough of this.
Diane: We’re still eating.
Mario: This is a drag.
Diane: We’re talking.
Louise: Intellectuals love to talk.
Mario: All you do is talk. All afternoon the men went on about sex. I expected an orgy. Instead, the big thrill is a fish pie.
Louise: So what are you trying to say?
Mario: When I’m horny, I fuck.[/b]

So, is this one the barbarian? Meanwhile, back to the intellectuals…

[b]Dominique: Marx was your average middle-class German who fucked the maid behind his wife’s back. His theories are rooted in his sense of guilt. Same with Freud. A latent homosexual unable to lay his wife after the age 40 hot and bothered over his female paients. His quarrels with Jung were really about women…about sex.

…

Pierre [voiceover]: That’s when it happened. I fell head over heels in love. Ejaculating while discussing the millenium with a history student…it was intellectually and physically overwhelming.[/b]

A shade of Woody Allen’s, “the whores of Mensa”.

Dominique [on tape]: Signs of the empire’s decline are everywhere. Society despises its own institutions, the birth rate keeps dropping, men refuse to serve in the army, the national debt is out of control, the work week is getting shorter, the buraucracies are rampant, the elites are in decay. With the decline of the Marxist-Leninist dream no model exists which we can say, “this is how we want to live.” In our personal lives – unless one is mystic or a saint – there are no models to live by. Our very existence is being eroded.

Hell, no one ever gets it all right.

[b]Louise [reacting to the tape]: Well, I don’t agree. I’m sure there are experts who can prove just the opposite—that we are living in an age of incredible rebirth, that science has never progressed so fast, that life has never been better. It’s impossible to really understand the age you live in. All you can do is try to be happy. That’s what people have always wanted. The rest invent theories to justify their misery.

…

Claude [teaching his class]: There are painters of the night like Rembrandt or Georges De La Tour, but there are few who paint the dawn. Dawn is the hour of death, the hour of sea-grey light. There is Gericault…and above all Caravaggio.[/b]

[iambiguous]

I listened to a lot of this music. Here in Baltimore. It was played on WCVT out of Towson State University. Or WJHU out of Johns Hopkins. Way back then. Student run stations. And no where else.

But: as with all the music I listen to I have never really been all that interested in putting it into a “context”—a historical or political or economic or social or “philosophical” context. And I couldn’t care less about music [any music] from the perspective of a musician. How well is it written? How competent are the folks playing the instruments? Is it really “good” music?

Fuck that. But that’s me. My concern is only in how it makes me feel. Or [sometimes] a visceral reaction to it “aesthetically”. Whatever that means. Or the intuitive manner in which the lyrics seem to be well written or clever or informed.

American hardcore was a new wave of punk rock…but with a more overt political frame of mind. Usually left of center. At least the bands I listened to. Unlike, say, the Sex Pistols [and their ilk] which seemed more intent on projecting a nihilistic “fuck it all” frame of mind.

On the other hand, the music came out at you so fast and so loud – so driven – you could barely understand the “message” anyway. You just felt pissed off at so many aspects of the world around you and this music fit into all that like it was shoving a hot poker up the world’s ass. It was “full of hatred for mainstream normalacy”.

But while politically oriented it was a million miles away from grappling with the nature of political economy. You felt fantastic flipping the bird at “the establishment” but you really didn’t have a fucking a clue about what that actually consisted of…not in terms of how the world works. You knew what you were pissed off at but what exactly would you put in its place? But that part could always wait:

Keith Morris [of the Cirlce Jerks]: “I hate my boss, I hate the people that I work with, I hate my parents, I hate all these authoritative figures, I hate politicians, I hate people in government, I hate the police. You know, everybody’s kind of pointing the finger at me. Everybody’s poking at me. And now I have a chance to be with a bunch of my own type of people and I have a chance to go off. And that’s basically what it was: BOOM!”

Then what? Kids revolting. In 1984 Reagan is reelected. It all begins to crumble.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Hardcore_(film
trailer: youtu.be/SVR2wW4_jsc

AMERICAN HARDCORE [2006]
Directed by Paul Rachman

Vic Bondi: [from articles of faith]: In the early 80s, there was this this of reestablishing the order. You know, the Ronald-Reagan-White-Man order. You had that wimp Jimmy Carter talking about peace and human rights and all this other shit. And you had, you know, the feminists and the negroes and the…They’re all getting uppity on us, right? And so the whole country goes into this really puerile 50s fantasy where they’re dressing in these cardigan sweaters and…and we were just like, “Fuck you. Fuck you. Not us.” You know, “You can take this and shove it up your ass.”

[iambiguous]

Of course most folks watched this only because there was so much at stake legally. For all of us. They fast-forwarded the nudity and the sex stuff. Or simply turned away from the screen.

Larry Flynt versus the people. Fortunately for him there are lots of different kinds of people out there. Which means lots of different opinions about pornography. And he was lucky enough to be around just as more and more folks were willing not only to tolerate it but to pay lots of money to, uh, use it.

Men, for example.

Sex. How are we to come down on this one? We shouldn’t have the government poking around in the affairs of consenting adults. What about our civil liberties? But what adults consent to do sexually can raise all sorts of thorny questions regarding gender and orientation and exploitation. Or even how much of it is really consensual at all.

Oh, and what about the children?!

Community standards versus the Bill of Rights. Somewhere between the two lies the answer. Meaning of course there is no answer at all. Just a whole bunch of conflicting and contradictory opinions about what the answer should be. And you know where I come down here.

And then the surreal encounter between Flynt and Ruth Carter. Between Flynt and the Lord. Did that really happen?! And the part where Flynt channels R.P. McMurphy. True?

Flynt is one of those characters you truly disdain. For some things. But for other things you thank your lucky stars that he is around [and rich enough, infamous enough] to expose and then to mock some of the same folks you wish that you could too.

IMDb

[b]Larry Flynt and his brother Jimmy Flynt are played by real-life brothers Woody Harrelson and Brett Harrelson.

The insurance fees for Courtney Love were so high, the studio would not pay them. Woody Harrelson, the producers (Oliver Stone and Michael Hausman), the director (Milos Forman) and Love paid the fees out-of-pocket.

The closing argument by Edward Norton was taken verbatim from Alan L. Isaacman’s actual closing arguments. Isaacman revealed this in a documentary of the film.

One scene involves Hustler’s offer of a $1 million reward for bringing JFK’s killers to justice. The father of actors Woody Harrelson and Brett Harrelson has long been suspected by conspiracy theorists of involvement in the assassination.[/b]

Huh?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People_vs._Larry_Flynt
trailer youtu.be/FbvZtbeC0EM

[b]Note: Some Explicit Language[/b]

THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT [1996]
Directed by Milos Forman

[b]Young Jimmy: Why’d you hit him?
Young Larry: He was drinkin’ my profits.
Young Jimmy: Can’t be so ornery. People think you’re crazy.
Young Larry: I’m just tryin’ to make an honest buck.

…

Flynt: : Who is that?
Jimmy: That’s the new girl. She got the moves, don’t she?
Flynt: She ain’t bad. She ain’t legal either.
Jimmy: Yes, she is. I saw her I. D.
Flynt: Look, you stupid briar-hopper, my dog could get an I. D. … from my goat.

…

Althea: That’s the problem with you men. Your batteries run out. We women, our batteries never run out. We could go on and on.
Flynt: Well, then go fuck a woman.
Althea: “Go fuck a woman.” I do fuck women.
Flynt: Excuse me?
Althea: You are not the only person in this club to have had every woman in this club.

…

Flynt: Who is Playboy magazine for, anyway? I mean, it’s like if you don’t make $20,000 plus a year you don’t jerk off. Seven million people buying it, and nobody’s reading it. Gentlemen, Playboy is mocking you.

…

Flynt: Oh, my God. First pussy.

…

Althea: Take off your pants.
Flynt: What?
Althea: Take off your pants.
Flynt: Why?
Althea: Because I’ve never fucked a millionaire before.

…

Mom: Larry, who are all these people?
Flynt: These are my friends, Ma. Lots of money, lots of friends.

…

Flynt: Who are you?
Alan: Alan Isaacman. I’m your lawyer. Your bail is all taken care of…but we oughta talk about the case.
Flynt: Wait. Who hired you?
Alan: Your wife.
Flynt: My wife?
Alan: Yeah.
Flynt: Are you doin’ her?

…

Alan: Larry, this is a bullshit charge…but we have to take this seriously because you could conceivably be looking at 7 to 25 years.
Flynt: Twenty-five years? All I’m guilty of is bad taste.

…

Simon Leis: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Before we begin, I must apologize for the unpleasantness of this task. What you are about to see is going to take your breath away. Hustler magazine depicts men and women posed together in a lewd and shameful manner. Hustler magazine depicts women and women posed in a lewd and shameful manner. Hustler magazine depicts Santa Claus posed in a lewd and shameful manner.

…

Simon Leis: Mr. Flynt, can you please turn to page 77? Can you describe to the jury what is on that page, please sir?
Flynt: It’s a picture of Santa Claus.
Simon Leis: What is Santa Claus doing?
Flynt: He’s talking to Mrs. Claus, and holding in his hand what appears to be a large, erect penis.
Simon Leis: And could you read the caption underneath that cartoon, please?
Flynt: “This is what I’ve got to ho-ho-ho about.”

…

Jury foreperson: We, the jury… find the defendant, Larry Claxton Flynt guilty as charged on all counts.
Judge [who is played by Larry Flynt]: Do you have anything to say before I sentence you?
Flynt: Your Honor…you’ve not made one intelligent decision during the course of this trial and I don’t expect one now. Knock yourself out.

…

Flynt: Now, I have a message for all you good, moral, Christian people who are complaining that breasts and vaginas are obscene. Don’t complain to me. Complain to the manufacturer.[/b]

God, in other words.

Flynt: You know, politicians and demagogues like to say that sexually explicit material corrupts the youth of our country. And yet they lie, cheat and start unholy wars.
[he points to marching soldiers on a jumbo screen]
Flynt: Look at them. They call themselves men. They’re sheep in a herd. I think the real obscenity comes from raising our youth to believe that sex is bad and ugly and dirty and yet it is heroic to go spill guts and blood in the most ghastly manner in the name of humanity. With all the taboos attached to sex it’s no wonder we have the problems we have…that we’re angry and violent and genocidal. But ask yourself the question…What is more obscene, sex or war?

Of course sexism [turning a woman into a piece of meat…an object existing solely for sexual gratification] doesn’t enter into it.

[b]Reporter: Many people support Hustler magazine, but none are willing to support you. How do you feel about that?
Flynt: Why do I have to go to jail to protect your freedom?

…

Althea: I had an epiphany once, Larry. When my daddy shot my entire family in the head, and I was the only one to identify the bodies, and I was sent to an orphanage full of good Christian nuns who shoved my face into their pussies with their crucifixes for eight goddamn years!

…

Alan: Listen, I’m sitting here with the eminently reasonable District Attorney of the state of Georgia. He’s very impressed by your conversion, he wants to cut us a plea bargain.
Flynt: A plea bargain? Because I’ve found God?
Alan: Larry, listen to me for a second: Don’t argue with me on this, ok. Just say yes because I’ve pulled a lot of strings to make this happen.
Flynt: Is he sitting there with you?
Alan: Yes, he is.
Flynt: Would you do me a favor? Just tell that miserable old gray-haired bastard to go fuck himself, we’re going to trial.
Alan: Ok, right.
Flynt: Oh, and praise the lord.

…

Prosecutor: Mr. Flynt, how can you, as a good Christian defend this filth?
Flynt: I don’t have to. It may be wrong, in some people’s opinion to portray women the way I have…but it’s not illegal. It may not be smart to have too much to drink, but it’s not illegal. Abortion may be morally repugnant…but right now it’s not illegal. If we want to change the laws, that’s another discussion…but our right to decide for ourselves cannot be restricted. George Orwell said that if liberty means anything it means the right to tell people what they don’t wanna hear.

…

Flynt [in the hospital after being shot and paralyzed]: I feel like I’m in hell.
Ruth Carter: No, you’re not in hell. You belong to God.
Flynt: I wish he’d killed me. I do. I can’t ever walk again. I can’t make love to my wife. I can’t have a child with her.
Ruth Carter: But don’t give in to the bitterness. You’ll be so much stronger if you keep your faith. God will see you through this.
Flynt: Ruth…there is no God.

…

Flynt: I turned the whole world into a tabloid!

…

Court Clerk: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Flynt: No.
Judge Mantke: No?
Flynt: Your honor, I’m an atheist. I can’t very well, uh, swear to a God I don’t believe exists.
Judge Mantke: Mr. Flynt, you are a handful.
Flynt: I know, your honor.

…

Judge Mantke: Is that an American flag you have on there, sir?
Flynt: I have fashioned this American flag into a diaper…because if you’re gonna treat me like a baby, I’m gonna act like one.
Judge Mantke: Larry Flynt, I’m ordering you arrested for desecration of the American flag. Marshal, take him into custody.

…

Alan: If you get on that plane, I quit.
Flynt: Alan, don’t be so melodramatic. You don’t wanna quit me. I’m your dream client. I’m the most fun, I’m rich and I’m always in trouble.

…

Flynt [wearing a t-shirt that says FUCK THIS COURT]: I do apologize, Your Honor. I want to 'fess up and reveal my source.
Judge Mantke: Tell me…who was the source of this videotape?
Flynt: The samurai.
Judge Mantke: Excuse me?
Flynt: The samurai gave me the tape.
Judge Mantke: Who is this man, and where is he?
Flynt: Unfortunately, he had a critical groin injury…on the way to give me the tape…and he’s undergoing acupuncture treatment in Beijing, China.
Judge Mantke: Mr. Flynt, this court fears that you are seriously mentally ill.

…

Judge Mantke [after Flynt screams “fuck you!” and throws an orange at him]: Larry Flynt, you are hereby sentenced to 15 months in a Federal psychiatric prison.

…

Secretary [over the intercom at LFP Publications]: Code pink! Code pink! Code pink!

…

Falwell: What?
Grutman: Yeah, Jerry, he’s suing you.
Falwell: He’s suing me? For heaven’s sakes, on what grounds?
Grutman: Well, you xeroxed his ad, and you sent it out in a million fundraiser letters.
Falwell: Yeah, so?
Grutman: But you didn’t get his permission. And that’s copyright infringement.
Falwell: The depth of his depravity sickens me.

…

Lawyer: Would you state your full name for the record, Mr. Flynt?
Flynt: Yes, sir. Christopher Columbus Cornwallis…I.P.Q., Harvey H. and Pagey Pugh.
Lawyer: That’s very interesting…but are you also known as Larry Flynt?
Flynt: A.K.A. Jesus H. Flynt, Esq.
Lawyer: Are you the publisher and editor-in-chief…of Hustler magazine?
Flynt: I am the publisher of the most tasteless, sleaziest, most disgusting, greatest porn magazine on the face of the earth.
Lawyer: Thank you. I have in my hand Exhibit “B”… a typewritten script of the Campari ad. When you approved this ad did you have any specific knowledge that the Rev. Falwell had ever engaged in sexual intercourse with his mother?
Flynt: No. But I have a photograph of Falwell having fellatio with a sheep.
Alan: Your Honor, my client is in a heavily medicated, mentally agitated state. We will stipulate that no such document exists.
Flynt: I have it…and Mr. Fartwell is a liar, a glutton and a “sheep-o-phile.”

…

Alan: Larry, thousands of people every year petition the Supreme Court, OK? Thousands.
Flynt: Yeah, and our case is as good as any.
Alan: Our case is better than most, you’re missing my point, and that is they will never pick you. Because you’re a nightmare. They’re afraid if they let you in there, you’re gonna wear a diaper, or throw oranges at the justices, and they should be, Larry, because in all the times you’ve gone to the court asking for help, you’ve never once demonstrated any respect for its institutions and procedures.

…

Flynt [outside the Supreme Court]: If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, it will protect all of you.[/b]

[iambiguous]

There are two kinds of men. Those who rely on luck and those who rely on scripts.

The man without no name. Or without one name. Or without two names. Instead, the man with three names. The one he does not not have here? Blondie. Blondie, really. But it’s better than than Angel Eyes, I suppose.

And I suppose there are distinctions that can be made between good and bad and ugly here. But that never made a whole lot of sense to me. There’s all this money out there and these three guys are after it. And it’s one of those ends [the part about money] that seems to justify almost any means. You are good if you get there first and walk away with it [more or less] in one piece. And bad and ugly if you don’t.

And for lots and lots and lots of folks still today that’s still the way it is. Oh, and never trust anyone.

And then there’s the back drop: the Civil War. Or, as Blondie points out: “I’ve never seen so many men wasted so badly.” Talk about lives being expendable.

This is the one where Clint Eastwood almost died. The one where Eli Wallach almost died. Twice. The one where Wallach also took a swig of acid and was poisoned. Incredibly, Eli Wallach is still around. He’s closing in on 100 years.

IMDb

[b]The skeleton found by Tuco inside the wrong coffin at Sad Hill cemetery, was a real human skeleton. A deceased Spanish actress wrote in her will she wanted to act even after her death.

In the gun store, everything Eli Wallach does with the guns is completely unscripted. Eli knew little about the guns, so he was instructed to do whatever he wanted.

In the scene where the bridge is blown up, and Tuco and Blondie are hunkered down behind sandbags waiting for the explosion, Clint Eastwood’s career came within 2 feet of ending prematurely. A fist-sized piece of rock shrapnel from the explosion slams into the sandbag right next to Eastwood’s head (watch it in slow motion to see the rock flying in).

According to Eli Wallach, when it came time to blow up the bridge, Sergio Leone asked the Spanish army captain in charge to trigger the fuse, as a sign of gratitude for the army’s collaboration. They agreed to blow up the bridge when Leone gave the signal “Vai!” (Go!) over the walkie-talkie. Unfortunately, another crew member spoke on the same channel, saying the words “vai, vai!”, meaning “it’s OK, proceed” to a second crew member. The captain heard this signal, thought it was for him and blew the bridge; unfortunately, no cameras were running at the time. Leone was so upset that he fired the crewman, who promptly fled from the set in his car. The captain was so sorry for what happened that he proposed to Leone that the army would rebuild the bridge to blow it up again, with one condition: that the fired crewman be re-hired. Leone agreed, the crewman was forgiven, the bridge was rebuilt and the scene was successfully shot.

The price of gold in 1862 was US$20.672 an ounce. As of 5 March 2010 it is US$1134.45 an ounce. So the $200,000 Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie are after would be worth $10,975,715.94 on 5 March 2010.

The three man gunfight scene is called either a “Mexican standoff” or a truel (game theory). There are several mathematical papers covering the many complex outcomes of a truel. Other movies that use a truel are Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good,_ … d_the_Ugly
trailer: youtu.be/9etarIaqF1Y

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY [1966]
Directed by Sergio Leone

[b]Tuco: Who the hell is that? One bastard goes in, another comes out!

…

Judge [reading out the charges against Tuco]: …the condemned is found guilty of the crimes of murder, armed robbery of citizens, state banks, and post offices…the theft of sacred objects, arson in a state prison…perjury, bigamy, deserting his wife and children…inciting prostitution, kidnapping, extortion…receiving stolen goods, selling stolen goods…passing counterfeit money, and contrary to the laws of this state the condemned is guilty of using marked cards and…[/b]

…and on and on an on. Only now the bounty on is head has risen from 2,000 to 3,000 dollars.

[b]Tuco: There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those with a rope around their neck and those who the cutting. Listen, the neck at the end of the rope is mine! I run the risks. So, the next time, I want more than half!
Blondie: You may run the risks, my friend, but I do the cutting. If we cut down my percentage it might interfere with my aim.

…

Tuco [in the cave where his friends Pedro, Chico and Ramon are hiding] If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?

…

Tuco [to Blondie]: You never had a rope around your neck. Well, I’m going to tell you something. When that rope starts to pull tight, you can feel the Devil bite your ass.

…

Blondie: Your spurs…

…

Tuco: There are two kinds of spurs, my friend. Those that come in by the door…and those that come in by the window.

…

Tuco [to Blondie]: Now, make sure the rope is tight. It’s got to hold the weight of a pig.

…

Blondie: Sorry, Shorty.

…

Tuco [to Pablo]: You think you’re better than I am. Where we came from, if one did not want to die of poverty…one became a priest or a bandit! You chose your way, I chose mine. Mine was harder.

…

Tuco: Wake up, you! The troops are coming!
Blondie: Blue or gray?[/b]

Gray. Then blue.

[b]Angel Eyes: Why are you going under the name Bill Carson now?
Tuco: One name is as good as another. Not wise to use your own name. Like you! I’ll bet they don’t call you Angel Eyes! Sergeant Angel Eyes!

…

Angel Eyes: Would you talk?
Blondie: No, probably not.
Angel Eyes: That’s what I thought. Not that you are any tougher than Tuco…but you’re smart enough to know that talking won’t save you.

…

One Armed Man: I’ve been looking for you for 8 months. Whenever I should have had a gun in my right hand, I thought of you. Now I find you in exactly the position that suits me. I had lots of time to learn to shoot with my left.
[Tuco kills him with the gun he has hidden in the foam]
Tuco: When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.

…

Blondie [counting Angel Eyes’ men]: One, two, three, four, five, and six. Six, the perfect number.
Angel Eyes: I thought three was the perfect number.
Blondie: I’ve got six more bullets in my gun.

…

Tuco [trying to read a note]: "See you soon, id…id…id… "
Blondie [taking the note]: “Idiots”. It’s for you.

…

Union Captain: The Rebs have decided that bridge is the key to this whole area. Stupid, useless bridge! Flyspeck on Headquarters’ maps. Headquarters has declared we must take that ridiculous flyspeck. Even if all of us are killed. Otherwise the key’ll get rusty and just be a spot on the wall.

…

Angel Eyes: Two can dig a lot quicker than one.

…

Blondie [to Tuco]: You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Incendies. Scorched. Destroyed by fire.

Some will take their mother’s dying wish more seriously than others. But not many such wishes will disclose a reality quite as startling as this one. What do we really know about the people who brought us into the world? Beyond what we are told, in other words. Especially folks with parents born and raised in the Middle East.

The first time you see Nawal – the look on her face – you just know she has a past savagely awash in turmoil. You wonder: What could bring about such an expression? You’re hooked. And then you’re numb.

And that is because you soon learn this turmoil is in turn brutally awash in the sheer stupidity of ethnic and religious dogma. With, for example, bringing “dishonor to the family”. We bear witness to some of the most idiotic and infantile of all the many blind prejudices. It gets people killed. And all in the name of “saving face”. Or God. It’s all so incredibly mindless. Just not to the ones with the guns.

Then this: How would you react if you found out you were the son and the daughter of a woman who had been repeatedly raped and tortured as a political prisoner. And that your father was the man who raped and tortured her? And that your father was also your brother—your mother’s first son. Think that through. Then remind yourselves just how ambiguous things like “moral responsibility” can become “out in the world”.

And then we discover the reason for that ravaged look on Nawal’s face.

There’s one coincidence too many here perhaps but the horror of war [in the Middle East especially] is all embedded in it.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendies
trailer: youtu.be/0nycksytL1A

INCENDIES [2010]
Directed by Denis Villeneuve

[b]Jean [reading from the last will and testament of Nawal Marwan]: “Burial. Notary Jean Lebel will bury me without a coffin, naked and without prayers. My face turned towards the ground, my back against the world…Tombstone and Epitaph. No headstone is to be placed on my grave and my name engraved nowhere. No epitaph is deserved for those who do not keep their promises.”

Then:

“Jean, notary Lebel will hand you an envelope. This envelope is for your father. Find him and hand him the envelope. Simon, the notary wilh hand you an envelope. This envelope is for your brother. Find him and hand it to him. When these envelopes have been handed to their addressees, a letter will be given to you. When the silence is broken, and the promise kept a stone may be placed on my grave and my name engraved on the stone.”

…

Niv: Mathematics as you have known so far have aimed to achieve a precise and definitive response to precise and definitive problems. Now, you are about to enter into entirely different adventure. The subject will be intractable problems that will always lead to other problems just as intractable. People around you will repeatedly insist that what you are doing is hopeless. You’ll have no argument to defend yourself, because they will be of an overwelming complexity. Welcome to pure mathematics, the land of solitude and loneliness.[/b]

Jeanne is his assistant. She will find there are other things this is applicable to.

[b]Niv: What does your intuition tell you? Your intuition is always right. That’s why you got potential to becoming a real mathematician. But over there, you’ll need help. Do you have any family there? Contacts? You’ve come to learn that a) your father is alive; and b) you have another brother…You need to know. Otherwise, your mind will never be at peace.

…

Grandma: You have humilliated us! You have sullied the name of our family! Why God have you plunged us in the dark? My God, what have you done? Why did you do that? What will I do with you? You want me to kill you?
Nawal: I’m pregnant, grandma.

…

Grandma: I’ll help after the birth. I want you to go away.You’ll go to live with your uncle Charbel in town. There, you’ll go to school.To learn to read, to learn to think. To escape this misery.

…

Rafqa: And Le Journal?
Father: Don’t be afraid. Le Journal can survive without us for a while.
Rafqa: But ideas only survive if someone is there to defend them!
Father: Exactly, Rafqa. Exactly.

…

Samia: If you’re Nawal Marwan daughter, you’re not welcome here. Go home.
Translator: She is looking for her father…
Samia: …but she doesn’t know who is her mother.

…

Nawal [voiceover]: I arrived at the end of the massacre in the Deressa refugee camp. Everything was burning. I looked for my son amid the pools of blood.

…

Soldier: You claim to be against our enemy. That does not make you our friend. Why would Chamseddine trust you?
Nawal: My son’s father was a refugee from Deressa. My son has been swallowed by the war. I have nothing to lose. My hatred is great toward the Nationalists.
Soldier: This is not what you wrote in Charbel’s Journal.
Nawal: My uncle Charbel thought to encourage peace with words and books. I believed that. Life has taught me something else.
Soldier: What are you going to do now?
Nawal: Teach the enemy what life has taught me.

…

Jeanne: I am looking for someone who knew her. Someone who could tell me about her. This is my mother.
Janitor: This is the woman who sings. Number 72. It was she who murdered the militia leader of the christian right. They made her pay dearly. Very, very dearly. Fifteen years. They used to call her “the woman who sings” because she sang all the time.

…

Janitor: They did everything to make her break. In the end, she was still standing, She looked …She never broke. And then they sent Abu Tarek.
Jeanne: Who’s that?
Janitor: Abu Tarek…You know, sometimes it’s better not to know everything.
Jeanne: Sir, I live with it anyway. Continue.
Janitor: Abu Tarek…Abu Tarek was a investigation specialist. He specialized in torture. He raped her repeatedly to break her before being released. To stop her from singing. Eventually she became pregnant. It was like that. I’ll never forget it. Number 72 pregnant by Abu Tarek.

…

Abu Tarek [to Nawal after torturing and raping her]: Now sing.

…

Abu Tarek [reading a letter from “the woman who sings”]: “My hand is shaking while I am writing this. I recognized you. But you didn’t. It’s a wonderful miracle. I’m your number 72. This letter will be delivered by our children. You will not recognize them because they are beautiful, but they know who you are. Through them, I want to tell you you’re still alive. But soon, you’ll be quiet. I know. Because silence is all to the truth. Signed: The whore 72.”

…

Nihad Harmanni [reading a letter from his mother]: “I speak to my son. I am not speaking to the torturer. Whatever happens, I will always love you. That’s the promise I made you at birth, my son. Whatever happens, I will always love you.I’ve searched my whole life. I found you. You, you could not recognize me.You have your tattoo on the right heel. I’ve seen it. I recognized you. And I found you beautiful. I’ll remember you with all the sweetness of the world, my love. Console yourself because nothing is more beautiful than being together. You were born of love. Your brother and your sister were also born of love. Nothing is more beautiful than to be together.Your mother, Nawal Marwan. Prisoner number 72.”[/b]

What can it even mean though to believe this?!!

Jeanne and Simon [reading from their mother’s letter]: “Where did your story begin? When you were born? Then she starts in horror. At the birth of your father? Then she begins a great love story.”

Their brother’s father was shot dead in front of their mother – to preserve the family’s “honor”.

[iambiguous]

Years ago I had a relationship with a woman afflicted with agoraphobia. I mean home bound. Now I tetter myself…going right up to the edge from time to time. It’s one of the strangest things to have someone explain to you…or to have to explain to someone yourself.

Let’s face it, the human mind can have a mind all its own. Or seem to. At best you might find yourself haggling and negociating with it to get things done.

Of course back then we didn’t have a serial killer after us.

Serial killer? Talk about haggling and negociating with an alien mind. And the one crucial advantage most serial killers have [at least here in America] is this: it’s the criminal justice system that is after them.

What makes these guys [or some of them] scary is how fucking normal they can be or seem. To look at them and to interact with them they could be your next door neighbor [your friend] for years. How the hell do you protect yourself from them other than in isolating yourself from the world. Which ironically is what in fact does motivate some agoraphobics.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_(film
trailer: youtu.be/lsmXhM4yfU0

COPYCAT [1995]
Directed by Jon Amiel

[b]Helen [giving a lecture]: Nine out of ten serial killers are white males, aged 20 to 35. Albert DeSalvo, Bianchi and Buono, Berkowitz, Dahmer, Bundy—they were quiet, unassuming, even nice. They had jobs. They made decent neighbors. Their victums trusted them.

…

Helen [giving a lecture]: The FBI estimates there are up to 35 serial killers cruising for their next victums even as I speak.

…

Helen [to MJ and Reuben]: You can spare me the bullshit. You don’t admire me or even like me. None of you people do. But the beautiful part is I don’t give a fuck. That’s the upside of having a nervous breakdown.

…

MJ [to Reuben]: Quinn said she was a crackpot. He forgot to mention pill-popping, juice-head, hyperventilating, agoraphobic asshole.

…

Helen: It’s the Boston Strangler. He’s immitating Albert DeSalvo’s crime scene right down to the kinky details.
Reuben: Why De Salvo? Why not somebody in the news recently? Gacy or Raimirez?
Helen: I don’t know. These guys are like viruses. There’s always some new mutation.

…

Helen [to MJ]: You think he’s changed his routine? That doesn’t happen. These men are robotic. The murder’s like a ritual. The method is part of the pleasure.

…

Helen [to MJ]: Shit. He’s switched. From De Salvo to Bianchi and Buono. The Hillside Strangler.

…

MJ: Now he’s doing Son of Sam. Then Dahmer, then Bundy.

…

MJ [after Helen has a drink]: Does that help any?
Helen: You don’t feel fear, do you? One of those people who thinks everything happens for a reason? And we’re all “God’s chillun”?

…

Helen [reading from the serial killer’s note]: “First you make a stone of your heart.” That’s the first step: dissassociation. He’s saying he’s suffered. Now it’s our turn. What made a stone of his heart? Usually it’s rejection or humiliation by a parent. Gacy’s father beat him for fun. Kemper’s mother locked him in a dark cellar when he reached puberty.

…

Helen: This guy is copycatting. He wants what those killers got. Fame, the power to terrify us. To take whoever, whatever he wants without having to say “please”.

…

Helen: He really wants us to think what he’s doing is art.

…

MJ: He’s sending you letters like he is daring us to nail him.
Helen: If he wants to be famous, he has to be caught.

…

Daryll [to Helen]: Send me some of your squirrel covers.

…

Helen: Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.

…

Peter [to Helen]: Now, I’m not going to lie to you. This is going to hurt.

…

Peter: Did you know, Helen, that more books have been written about Jack the Ripper than Abraham Lincoln? It’s a sick world, isn’t it?

…

Peter [after Helen mocks him…then spits in his face]: OK, I see Helen. Nice try. You wanna know a little secret? Huh? I’m on to your trick. I won’t kill you fast no matter how much you’re gonna want me to.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Cancer? Oh shit! But then: Ha ha ha.

So you know he is going to “beat it” in the end. Besides, it is “loosely based” on the guy who wrote the screenplay. He had cancer. He “beat it”.

Now that’s entertainment.

The good news for Adam is this: He’s in a shitty dead-end relationship with a woman who won’t fellate him and now his “condition” requires him to meet all sorts of new and interesting people. So, if there is a 50% chance of him surviving, it increases the odds of him finding someone who will fellate him. And, well, love him too.

In the interim though there’s making it through the medical industrial complex…and all the concerned family and friends who make him wish he were dead.

But there’s no way a movie about cancer can be all laughs. So this one interjects just enough realism to make you want the guy to beat it. You care about him, in other words. At least I did. Hey, this is Brendan from Brick.

And when you care about someone and you think he is about to die [and you don’t believe in God] the words can easily get all jumbled up. Or they certainly did the times I was in the middle of this particular calamity. What can you say when nothing you can say will change anything? Then you are either able to make the leap or you aren’t. And the countdowns never stop until you’re next. I’m sick. You’re not. You’re sick. I’m not. And each fucking gap is different.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50/50_(2011_film
trailer: youtu.be/jeh5YXotTTM

50/50 [2011]
Directed by Jonathan Levine

[b]Kyle [to Adam]: You smell like you fucked the cast of The View.

…

Dr Ross [speaking into tape machine]: Patient has been complaining of excessive urination, back pain, and night sweats. Blood tests and urine analysis are normal. MRI indicates a massive intraduaral extradural malignant schwannoma neurofibrosarcomas extending into psoas muscle with nerve root compression syndrome and bone erosion.
Adam [confused]: So sorry, I just don’t know what that…
Dr Ross: It’s a malignant tumor.
Adam: A tumor?
Dr. Ross: Yes.
Adam: Me?
Dr. Ross: Yes.
Adam: That doesn’t make any sense though. I mean… I don’t smoke, I don’t drink… I recycle…

…

Kyle: 50/50? Dude, if you were a casino game, you’d have the best odds.

…

Kyle [to Mom]: Have you ever seen Terms of Endearment?

…

Mom: I’m gonna make you a cup of tea. I heard on the Today Show it reduces your chance of getting cancer by 15%.
Adam: Mom, I already have cancer.

…

Adam [to Dr. McKay]: Aren’t you supposed to be wearing an earth-tone sweater and be like 65 or something?

…

Adam: 24? What, are you like Doogie Howser or something?
Katherine: Who?
Adam: Doogie Howser…teenage doctor?
Katherine: Does he work here?

…

Alan [cancer patient in waiting room]: You listen to me. You know this cancer is bullshit. First your hair falls out. Then your balls are gonna shrink. And then to make matters worse, your dick becomes a constant source of disappointment.
Adam: You know, I was kind of scared about this whole cancer thing. But now I’ve met you guys and, boy, do I feel better.

…

Mitch: Tough break. The more syllables, the worse it is.

…

Adam: You should go.
Rachel [kissing him]: I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you.
Adam: No, seriously… you need to get the fuck off my porch.

…

Adam: Where’s Mitch?
Alan: He died last night.

…

Adam [to Katherine]: See, but…that’s bullshit. That’s what everyone has been telling me since the beginning. “Oh, you’re gonna be okay,” and “Oh, everything’s fine,” and like, it’s not… It makes it worse… that no one will just come out and say it. Like, “hey man, you’re gonna die.”

…

Katharine: This job is so hard. If I fuck up I can ruin someone’s whole life.
Adam: Well then I guess we’re both beginners. [/b]

[CecilMartin]

@iambiguous

To be smashed or not to be smashed? For some that is the only question. It just comes down to whether or not it’s deemed a viable option in their lives at any particular time. Do they have to work? Do they have kids? Is their health robust? Do they give a shit only about themselves? Can they afford to be that way? Do they have access to other options?

Like, say, getting stoned.

As regarding most things though, the moral lesson revolves around the extent to which you either do or do not identify with the drunk on the screen.

Kate’s dilemma is clear. She drinks in part because it helps her to deal with the shit we all have to endure in the course of living our lives. But when she tries to stop drinking the problems come back magnified all the more. And then when she finally does succeed her marriage falls apart. And that makes her want to start…drinking. And when she’s honest with her boss about being an alcoholic she is promptly fired. And that makes her want to start…drinking.

Then there’s the part about getting sober. The part that always seems to involve some sort of “group”. And a group always means people. And when we interact with people it can precipitate the sort of stress and anxiety that led us to drink in the first place.

Then there’s the part about Kate vomiting in the classroom. A student asks if she is pregnant. The bulb lights up and she thinks better this as an explanation than the truth: that she is hung over from a night of heavy drinking. Soon, however, everyone in the school is reacting to her as though she really was pregnant! The comic [and not so comic] consequences of that are up for grabs.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smashed_(film
trailer: youtu.be/KeKLxspQWl8

SMASHED [2012]
Written in part and directed by James Ponsoldt

[b]Kate: I gotta go to work, and you snoozed on my alarm again. I’m gonna be late.
Charlie [looking down at the wet bed sheets]: Yeah, well, you peed on me, so I guess we’re even.

…

Kate: Why is the coffee so much better when you make it?
Charlie: Because I make it with love…and it with bacon.

…

Student: Mrs Hannah, are you pregnant?

…

Kate: Is that pot?
Millie: Of course not, do I look like a hippie? It’s crack.

…

Kate: Listen, I don’t think I can do this anymore. I think I need to slow down. And I might need help.
Charlie: I’ll help you.
Kate: Yeah.

…

Dave: I just want to be honest. I think you’re beautiful. And smart and sexy and cool. And I know it’s wrong, but in meetings, I just stare at your lips and your legs. And I can’t stop thinking about fucking your moist pussy.
Kate [startled]: What?! What? What?
Dave: I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.
Kate: I don’t know why you said that either. Oh, my God…I mean, who says that? “Fuck your moist pussy”?! I’m gonna go inside with my husband. Thanks for your creepy version of honesty. Wow.

…

Kate: I stopped drinking for me. And I’m going to 12-step meetings.
Rochelle [her mother]: Oh, God, Assholes Anonymous. Kate’s father went to those meetings a few years after we got married. Dried up, left us. You can see how well that worked out for me. I raised her myself in this palace while he was off in Florida, with his shiny new wife and kids, the son of a bitch.
[she turns to Charlie]
Rochelle: Be careful. They can change, you know.

…

Kate [to her class]: I’m not going to have a baby. Okay, look. Look, I was pregnant, and then it turned turned out it just…it just wasn’t my time, I suppose, and…
Student: Mrs. Hannah, did you kill the baby?
Kate: What?! No, no. No, of course not.
Student: My mom said if you kill a baby, you go to hell. And you can’t even go to church and ask God for forgiveness.
Student #2: Mrs. Hannah, are you going to Hell?

…

Charlie [watching her text Jenny]: I like knowing that every little fuck-up I make is going to be a topic of conversation with a woman that I don’t even know.

…

Charlie: You know what?
Kate: What?
Charlie: I fucking hate AA! It’s just…it’s just turned you into a bitch. A brainwashed bitch.

…

Kate [to AA group]: You know, one of the things I’ve heard is that your best day of drinking is worse than your worst day sober. Yeah, but it’s not true. It’s not true. I mean, I had…I had some amazing times drinking and laughing and just feeling like the most adorable, charming girl in the world. When I first tried getting sober, I fugured that as long as I didn’t drink, everything else in the world would just sort of magically work itself out. But it didn’t. My marriage fell apart. I lost my job. And that shit happened while I was sober. You know, I didn’t sign up for that…And another shitty slogan I’ve heard is, uh, when you’re sober for a bit and you drink again, the disease waits for you and picks up where you left off. Well, that one was pretty damn true. My life is a lot different than it was a year ago. I live alone. I’m bored a lot more. I have a job that pays a lot less. But I’m so grateful…I’m so thankful for this boring new life of mine.[/b]

And there it is: the trade off. Is it worth it? Is there a way to know for sure? Come on, only each individual can decide that.

Such a wonderful thread…There is lots of information about films and I am fortunate to find it

[iambiguous]

Epilepsy and God. But necessarily in that order. And people with the best of intentions making the life of someone they truly love a living hell.

What do you say to them that might get through? I sometimes imagine myself in these situations. Given how I understand myself – “I” out in the world – is this something that might help or hinder them? The epilepsy is beyond my control. But the part about God isn’t. But: Is it better instead to root such afflictions in an essentially absurd and meaningless world?

As with Father Ralph de Bricassart and Meggie, Mom loves her daughter…but she loves God more. Or, perhaps, in this case, fears God more…or more than she can ever love a mere mortal.

And then there is also the question of her mental health. The voices and the hallucinations. And the part that God might play here [through the church] in making it worse.

You wonder: Was there ever the possibility of a happy ending here?

Years ago I used to get these terrible attacks of vertigo. Out of the blue [and virtually without warning] the whole world would spin violently about me. Impossible to describe. I never knew when or where they would happen. So I know something of the world she lived in. Fortunately, they stopped as myteriously as they began. But you are never entirely convinced they’re gone forever. On the other hand, I am reasonably sure it wasn’t the Devil.

IMDb

Based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student, who died of starvation after an exorcism in Miltenberg, Germany (1976).

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_(2006_film
faqs IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0454931/faq … q_2#.2.1.2
trailer: youtu.be/uPhen80uVVI

REQUIEM [2006]
Directed by Hans-Christian Schmid

[b]Michaela: I haven’t had anything in 6 months.
Marianne [mother reacting to the news that Michaela has been accepted into the university]: What did the doctor say?
Karl [father]: Marianne, that’s enough.
Marianne: What did he say?
Michaela: He said it can happen again any time.

…

Teacher [to Michaela]: Do you believe in the role model function of pedagogy?
Michaela: I don’t know.
Teacher: What do you believe in?
Michaela: In God.
[the class laughs]
Teacher: And you all find that amusing? Well, what do you believe in?
[nothing from the students.]
Teacher: You see? And that is exactly the problem.

…

Hanna [to Michaela]: Where were you? You were there until the 11th grade, then you disappeared.

…

Michaela [to Hanna]: Know how many doctors I’ve had? And in the end they have no idea. Diagnosis by exclusion. They try something to see if it works. Then you get new pills. Always new ones. Then new side effects and pills against them too.

…

Father Borchert: Some use God as a kind of insurance company for bad times. The harvest should be good and business booming.
Michaela: Yes, that’s how people are.
Father Borchert: I wonder whether God’s existence is proven by a good harvest? Or by someone being sick? There’s a difference between suffering, spiritual need and superstition.

…

Michaela: Let me go! Christ, help me! I’m not allowed to pray anymore!

…

Michaela: Maybe God has abandoned me. He doesn’t give a shit.
Father Borchert: He died for us on the cross. No one is excluded from His sacrifice. Not you, either. But we live in times where evil is very strong…always trying to get the upper hand.
Michaela: So why me? Why with me? I go to university. I try to do right. And God sends me demons.
Father Borchert: Because you are special. Your sensitivity to this godless work is strong.

…

Michaela: Prayer doesn’t help. The demons come when I want to pray. Why won’t God let me be happy? Am I being punished?
Father Borchert: God doesn’t punish. He tests those He loves the most.

She’s not buying it. It must be the Devil himself that is inside her. Let’s do an exorcism. In time though, even Michaela figures that’s what it probably is: the Devil. Get him the hell out.

[b]Michaela [to Stephan]: I can’t touch the cross anymore, see?

…

Hanna: It’s all about your madness here. How much longer will you go on?
Michaela: Until they’re driven out.
Hanna: Stop it! “They” will never be driven out because there’s nothing there, only youself. It’s only you. If’s it’s you they’re driving out where will it end?
Michaela: There 's a reason for it all. I’m suffering for the greater good, for a higher purpose. Like St. Catharine, you know?
Hanna: What kind of reason is that? Michaela, listen to yourself, that’s not you!
Michaela: You can’t choose what God has in store for you. I must follow my path.

…

Title card: Following a series of several dozen exorcisms Michaels Klinger dies of exhaustion in her parents’ house.[/b]

[iambiguous]

One can imagine a world where “the terrorist threat” was actually a very real one. In other words, a world where hundreds of fanatics like this were actually out there blowing themselves [and everyone around them] to bits. Day in and day out a new incident.

Try to wrap your head around it. Not planes flying into buildings but individual men and women – in city after city after city after city – picking a very public target and detonating bombs there. From then on would anyone dare to attend concerts or sporting events or crowd around at busy intersections? No one could ever really feel safe. In terms of the economy alone, it would have an enormous impact.

But it doesn’t happen. Or it has not yet. Weeks, months, even years can go by without a front page headline. Instead, it is more likely to be some local “nut” with a zillion guns acting out whatever it is that drives him to “crack”.

So, for me, this film is effective only by way of allowing us to speculate on how things could be if the “terrorists” ever did manage to embody an actual effective movement. Either here [in America] or elsewhere.

Here the target is Times Square. The terrorist is a cypher. We learn very little regarding why she chose to do this. She is apparently a True Believer. But that’s all it really takes. There is virtually no dialogue at all. As for those who send her on her way, one is oriental, one is black, two are white. The significance of that? You got me. Maybe to deflect away from the idea they must be Islamic terrorists.

Still, as with most of them [out in the real world], it does not exactly go according to plan. If there is one thing these guys almost always share in common it’s their ineptitude. I guess we can thank God for that.

There is one particularly surreal scene where she needs quarters to make a phone call. Why? Because the bomb wouldn’t detonate. People give her their quarters [glad to help her out] and she thanks them. But these same folks might have been standing beside her at the intersection if the bomb had detonated as planned. Blown to bits. Complete strangers. She just rationalizes it.

review at NYT: movies.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/movies/09day.html
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_Night_Day_Night
trailer: youtu.be/_9W4G-v6Fxs

DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT [2006]
Written and directed by Julia Loktev

[b]She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
Commander: Again.
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
Commander: Again:
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
Commander: One more time.
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.

…

She: I’m sorry, I want to do everything right, but why would I do it if no one is around?
[they confer but no one answers her]
She: I want pizza.

…

She [whispering aloud to herself]: How can I know my motives are pure? You’ll see through me. What if you see things I don’t see? Has to be for you, not for them. Not for him. They’ll think it’s for him. But you’ll see. You’ll know. Don’t think I’m doing it for the wrong reason. I don’t think I am, but what can I know? How can I be sure? You’ll see right through me. You’ll see right through me.

…

Commander [pricks her finger with a pin]: Did that hurt?
She: No.
Commander: No, it didn’t. That’s all you’re gonna feel. It’s like a bug bite. A mosquito bite. [/b]

All what’s like? This: detonating a bomb and blowing yourself to bits.

[b]Bombmaker: The bomb in the backpack weighs about 30 pounds. But most of the weight is in the nails.

…

The flirt [after she throws the backpack to the ground trying to detonate the explosives]: Man, that thing is heavy. Whatcha you got in it.
She: A bomb.

…

She [whispering aloud to herself]: Why don’t you want me?
[long pause]
She: Please give me a sign.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Never leave the great big highway just because you’re bored.

This is a horror film to be sure. Well, sort of. But the really good ones always seem to know how to make you laugh. You bust a gut but it doesn’t detract in the slightest from the terrible things that happen. It’s just that the folks it’s all happening to have a great sense of humor. Some right down to the bitter end. Not that you are ever meant to take any of it seriously.

And not just regarding the horrors being afflicted on them by “them”. Much more ghastly is the horror they inflict on each other.

People actually argue over what this film is really all about. What is it trying to tell us about life…about relationships…about family…about death and dying.

Nothing more than can be said is my own best guess. And that can be practically anything at all. Unless it was all just a dream. But then how do you explain Frank’s note.

This is no Baghead, true, but it will do until the next one comes along.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_End_(2003_film
trailer: youtu.be/WOKRauvfkUU

DEAD END [2003]
Written and directed by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, Fabrice Canepa

[b]Laura: Was there no dial tone?
Frank: No, Laura. I just forgot the number to 9-1-1!

…

Brad: How does your baby breathe under all those blankets?
Lady in white: She’s dead.

…

Richard: What’s he doing?
Laura: He’s trying to get Brad’s phone.
Richard: With a stick?

…

Laura [who forgot to pack the 'local map"]: Next time I’ll just bring a globe in case you decide to drive to mothers by way of the North Pole.

…

Richard: I know you both think I’m retarded and all but I have a theory and I want you to hear me out. Brad is dead. His body is mutilated and god knows how it got that way. We’re the only people out here and all the clocks stopped at 7:30. This reeks of alien activity!

…

Frank: Talk about a Merry fucking Christmas.

…

Laura: Anything else?
Frank: Yeah. You’re goddamn brother is a freak too. He jerks off to gun magazines!

…

Richard: Pregnant. Oh boy. I hope it’s a boy. “What’s up little critter, I’m you’re Uncle DICK!”

…

Frank: Thank god for the gun freak!

…

Frank: Let’s put your brother in the car.

…

Laura: I wonder if we should we save some pie for Michael?

…

Frank: Holy shit! The bitch shot me in the leg!

…

Frank: They teach you what to do in this kind of a situation?
Marion: Not to panic.

…

Frank: Let’s put your mother in the car.

…

Frank: Why us, huh? Why? What did we ever do to you? All we wanted was a nice Christmas…is that too much to ask…a nice Christmas?!

…

Lady in white [to Marion]: He’s not here for you.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Charles Bukowski: the bruiser, the barfly, the lush, the lecher. The libertine The wild man. But then [sometimes] he seemed compelled to point this out. Or to remind you that this is what you wish you could be yourself but didn’t have the balls to be. Like Jimi Hendrix: Go ahead on Mr. Businessman, you can’t dress like me. Only the businessman couldn’t care less to.

It was as if instead of just being who he was he became this character people expected him to be. Always self-conscious of morphing into a caricature of himself…the man that everyone had grown to be accustomed to. On the other hand, that’s basically what he accused Rourke of doing!

But then what do I really know about it?! I read his books and I liked the way he put things. Not everything of course but who the hell writes that. I saw parts of myself in him: the pessimist, the cynic, the nihilist, the ironist, the madman, the outsider. The man who could be outraged at the barbaric plasticity of American culture. But that can never be more than me projecting myself into the man I thought he was. Shit, he might be none of those things at all to you. Or even to him for that matter. He also had a great sense of humor. A savage wit you might call it.

Oh, and he was a really good poet. Whatever that really means. And he absolutely loathed Mickey Mouse: “this three fingered son-of-a-bitch that doesn’t have a fucking soul!”. The McDisney world we lived in. He hated the “average man or woman”. But it’s not like he didn’t understand how that was built into the homogenized world we live in. youtu.be/uztD_GRestQ

Of course there are women [and his friend Sean Penn] who accused him of being a misogynist. And Bukowski’s only rebuttal seemed to be that he treats men even worse.

One thing comes through crystal clear after watching this: the man paid his dues. It wasn’t like he stumbled onto success as a writer from the very start. He endured some grueling years to say the least. Sort of like Harvey Pekar. But, like Pekar, he was one of those folks who got to experience what it’s like to live before and after fame.

And he sure looked the part!

“As
the
spirit
wanes
the
form
appears”

Works that way for philosophy too. Come on, you know who you are.

Bukowski at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski
trailer: youtu.be/94y4lApb-Fo

BUKOWSKI: BORN INTO THIS [2003]
Directed by John Dullaghan

[iambiguous]

You’re parents were wealthy and you were all recognized as children to be geniuses. And [it goes without saying] you were all rather…eccentric.

And when eccentric familes crumble you can be certain the part about them getting back together again [after 22 years of “betrayal, failure and disaster”] will be filled with all manner of strange occurrences. Of course some people can afford to be stranger than others.

Well, I happen to like strange people. Or, rather, I do if they pose no actual threat to me. So, sure, I’m on board. I only wish my own family had been eccentric enough to tempt me to go back.

And the old codger is just a con man! He’s playing them just as he has always done. But it doesn’t take long to spot the trajectory here. The scam becomes the real thing. Me, I don’t buy into for a second. But I forgive them because they are so far off the beaten path. Well, as families go.

Anyway, this is one of those films where, in some respects, the characters are way over the top. It’s really hard to take them [or the narrative] all that seriously. But there is enough realism stuffed into it that it doesn’t come off as just a farce.

The ending? Gag me with a spoon.

IMDb

[b]The original hawk used to play Mordecai was kidnapped during shooting and held for ransom - production could not wait for him to be returned which is the reason that the bird that appears later in the movie has “more white feathers” - it’s a different bird.

Gene Hackman mentioned in interviews that he was somewhat hesitant to accept the part, as he felt that he himself had been insensitive to his own family at different points in his life. He asked them if they would find him playing this character uncomfortable for their own sake. They all agreed he should accept the part.[/b]

wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_Tenenbaums
trailer: youtu.be/HaMfV72q40U

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS [2001]
Written in part and directed by Wes Anderson

[b]Young Chas [asking dad about Margot’s first play]: Well, what’d you think, Dad?
Royal: Didn’t seem believable to me.
Royal: Eli, why are you wearing pajamas? Do you live here?
Young Richie: He has permission to sleep over.
Young Chas: Well, did you at least think the characters were well developed?
Royal: What characters? This is a bunch of little kids dressed up in animal costumes.
Young Margot [stiffly]: Good night, everyone.
Royal: Well, sweetie, don’t be mad at me. That’s just one man’s opinion.
[Margot gets up and gathers her presents. Ethel glares at Royal]
Narrator: He had not been invited to any of their parties since. In fact, virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums had been erased by nearly two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster.

…

Richie: Read it back to me so far, Pietro.
Cote d’Ivoire Radio Operator: “Dear Eli, I’m in the middle of the ocean. I haven’t left my room in four days. I’ve never been more lonely in my life, and I think I’m in love with Margot.”
Richie: New paragraph.

…

Raleigh [into tape recorder, softly]: Dudley suffers from a rare disorder combining symptoms of amnesia, dyslexia, and color-blindness, with a highly acute sense of hearing.
Dudley [from adjoining room]: I’m not color blind, am I?
Raleigh: I’m afraid you are.

…

Chas [moving back home with his mother]: It’s not safe over there. The apartment. I have to get some new sprinklers and a backup security system installed.
Ethel: But there are no sprinklers here, either.
Chas: Well, we might have to do something about that, too.

…

Ethel: Raleigh says you’ve been spending 6 hours a day locked in here, watching television and soaking in the tub.
Margot [lying in the bath]: I doubt that.
Ethel: Well, I don’t think that’s very healthy, do you? Nor do I think it’s very intelligent to keep an electrical gadget on the edge of the bathtub.
Margot: I tie it to the radiator.

…

Uzi: Who’s your father?
Chas: His name is Royal Tenenbaum.
Ari: You told us he was already dead.
Chas: Yeah, well, now he’s really dying.

…

Richie: You know, Rachael’s buried out there, too.
Royal: Who?
Chas: My wife.
Royal: Oh, that’s right, isn’t it? Well, we’ll have to swing by her grave, too.

…

Royal [to Chas]: Oh, that’s right. We’ve got another body buried here, haven’t we?

…

Jim [game announcer]: That’s 72 unforced errors for Richie Tenenbaum. He’s playing the worst tennis of his life. What’s he feeling right now, Tex Hayward?
Tex: I don’t know, Jim. There’s obviously something wrong with him. He’s taken off his shoes and one of his socks and…actually, I think he’s crying.

…

Ari: Were you in prison?
Royal: Kinda. Minimum security. I got jacked by the IRS. Shall we split?
Ari: Yes, sir.
Royal: No, call me Mr. Tennenbaum.
Ari: OK.
Royal: Oh, I’m kidding. Call me Pappy.

…

Royal: Pagoda, call Dr. McClure.

…

Royal: Chas has those boys cooped up like a pair of jackrabbits, Ethel.
Ethel: He has his reasons.
Royal: Oh, I know that, but you can’t raise boys to be scared of life. You gotta brew some recklessness into them.
Ethel: I think that’s terrible advice.
Royal: No, you don’t.

…

Henry: Is that a Tic-Tac?

…

Henry [with the family all gathered around]: I know what stomach cancer looks like. I’ve seen it. And you don’t eat three cheeseburgers a day with French fries if you got it. The pain is excruciating.
Royal: How would you know?
Henry: My wife had it. Not only is there no Dr. McClure at Colby General there is no Colby General. It closed in 1974.

…

Royal [after being exposed]: Look, I know I’m going to be the bad guy on this one, but I just want to say the last six days have been the best six days of probably my whole life.
Narrator: Immediately after making this statement, Royal realized that it was true.

…

Raleigh [after reading a private investigator’s research on Margot’s background, which reveals she’s been a smoker since she was 12, she married a man in Jamaica at 19, has had numerous affairs and one-night stands with men and women, including Eli Cash]: She smokes?

…

Margot: Dudley, where is he?
Dudley: Who?

…

Chas: Why did you try to kill yourself?
Ethel: Don’t press him right now.
Richie: I wrote a suicide note.
Chas: You did?
Richie: Yeah. Right after I regained consciousness.
Chas: Can we read it?
Richie: No.
Chas: Can you paraphrase it for us?
Richie: I don’t think so.
Chas: Is it dark?
Richie: Of course it’s dark, it’s a suicide note.

…

Raleigh: You’ve made a cuckold of me.
Margot: I know.
Raleigh: Many times over.
Margot: I’m sorry.
Raleigh: And you nearly killed your poor brother.
Ethel: What’s he talking about?
Margot: It doesn’t matter.
Raleigh: She’s balling Eli Cash.

…

Royal: You’re in love with Margot?
Richie: Yeah.
Royal: Well, since when?
Richie: Since always.
Royal: Does she know?
Richie: Uh-huh.
Royal: Well, what does she feel about that?
Richie: I think she feels confused.
Royal: Well, I can understand that, it’s probably illegal!
Richie: I don’t think so, we’re not related by blood.
Royal: That’s true. It’s still frowned upon. But then, what isn’t these days, right?

…

Eli: I wish you’d’ve done this for me when I was a kid.
Richie: But you didn’t have a drug problem then.
Eli: Yeah, but it still would’ve meant a lot to me.

…

Royal: I’ve always been considered an asshole for about as long as I can remember. That’s just my style. But I’d really feel blue if I didn’t think you were going to forgive me.
Henry: I don’t think you’re an asshole, Royal. I just think you’re kind of a son of a bitch.
Royal: Well, I really appreciate that.

…

[the family is gathered at the cemetery for Royal’s burial]
Narrator: Among the few possessions he left to his heirs was a set of Encyclopedia Britannica in storage at the Lindbergh Palace Hotel under the names Ari and Uzi Tenenbaum. No-one spoke at the funeral, and Father Petersen’s leg had not yet mended, but it was agreed among them that Royal would have found the event to be most satisfactory.
[Chas, now wearing a black Adidas tracksuit, nods to his sons]
Ari: Fire!
[Ari and Uzi, also in black Adidas tracksuits, fire their air rifles into the air]
Ari: Fire!

…

Royal’s headstone:
ROYAL O’REILLY TENNENBAUM
1932 - 2001
DIED TRAGICALLY RESCUING HIS
FAMILY FROM THE WRECKAGE OF A
DESTROYED SINKING BATTLESHIP[/b]

[iambiguous]

It’s a bleak life. And it is about to get bleaker still. People pay him to communicate with the dead. He acts as a middleman between sweatshop owners and illegals who sell their knockoff junk. He’s about to become involved in an operation that involves human trafficking. He’s got two kids to raise alone and can barely keep the bills in line.

Then he finds out he has advanced prostate cancer and has only weeks to live.

This a world of immigrants – from China, from Senegal – interacting in a local economy that barely allows them to survive from day to day. A world where others are always making their lives miserable. And then [in order to make a living] they find themselves having to make the lives of others miserable too. Or they just take out their miseries on each other. Meanwhile to the rest of the population they are either invisible or a menace to be driven out. And all they really are are men and women struggling to survive, to raise their families, to have a better life. Everyone is trapped in “the system”. The “way things are”. Why? Because that is in the best interest of those own and operate it. But then from time to time you see them interacting in ways they wish it could always be. But there is ever some new calamity on the horizon and it never is.

And then they bring all the crap they have to endure “earning a living” home with them. There they take it out on their families. And then the families take it out on each other. Around and around in the same vicious circle. Though for some more than others.

Up to a point, we all live in a variation of that world. But we all don’t live in a struggling working class community in Barcelona. The part that Woody Allen somehow missed in Vicky, Christina. Ironically, Javier Bardem also starred in that.

There are people who will not like this movie simply because it tells them unpleasant things about the world we live in…things they would just as soon not be made aware of. This film got only a 64% fresh rating at RT. One critic laments that “Inarritu is stuck in a grim rut.” Hmm. Maybe it’s time for him to give us a musical comedy. On the other hand, it’s not like for every film like this one, there aren’t dozens more stuck in the McHollywood la la land rut.

IMDb

Javier Bardem’s part in this film is the first time that a performance entirely in the Spanish Language has been nominated for an Academy Award Best Actor Oscar.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biutiful
trailer: youtu.be/m_OrqZQV8p8

BIUTIFUL [2010]
Written in part and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

[b]Marambra [to Uxbal]: At least I laugh…if I’m happy because I’m happy, if I’m depressed because I’m depressed. I love you. I love you I said.
Uxbal: Yeah. Me too.

…

Ana: Dad! How do you spell “beautiful”?
Uxbal: Like that, like it sounds.

…

Uxbal: I’m not ready to leave. I’m afraid to leave the children on their own. I can’t.
Bea: You think you take care of the children? Don’t be naive, Uxbal. The universe takes care of them.
Uxbal: Yes, but the universe doesn’t pay the rent.

…

Uxbal: Why is this happening to me? Is it a punishment?
Bea: You can give up, let yourself go… or grit your teeth and hang on like stupid people do.

…

Uxbal: If you want to wear them out sewing shit 16 hours a day, exploiting them like…
Boss: Exploiting them?
Uxbal: Exploiting them, yes.
Boss: Do you know how much they earned in China? Fifty fucking cents a day. There are millions of Chinese who’d be willing to suck my dick every morning to be here.
Uxbal: In case you don’t remember, I was the one who negociated the pay for each worker. And by the conditions downstairs it’s clear they are not getting a fucking dime.[/b]

Out of his own pocket though he pays for heaters to keep them warmer at night. But the heaters are defective. They emit carbon monoxide. It kills them all.

[b]Marambra [weeping]: If I close my eyes then the thoughts start. They make me scared. I called you. I called you many times. I can’t give the children what they need. I’m so sorry I was cruel to Mateo. I’m doing what I can to survive. I really want to be faithful to you, but I also like to have some fun… like a whore.
Uxbal: Don’t say that, Marambra. Forgive me. I’ve never known what I should give you; I still don’t know. Something… I’ve never known. But we have hurt each other so much.

…

Tito: It’s dangerous to trust a man who is hungry. And even more if his children are hungry.

…

Uxbal [to Ana about his father]: When he was 20, he fled Spain to avoid the death penalty but died two weeks later in Mexico, of pneumonia.
Ana: Did you love him very much?
Uxbal: I don’t know. I never knew him.

…

Uxbal: Look in my eyes. Look at my face. Remember me, please. Don’t forget me, Ana. Don’t forget me, my love, please.[/b]

Javier Bardem should have won the academy award for this scene alone.