philosophy in film

iambiguous · October 25, 2013, 10:10pm

A kid. But not really a kid at all. Let’s just say that, with respect to some things, he’s…precocious. He thinks thoughts that wouldn’t occur to other kids his age in a million years. He’s an outlier, an outsider. Well, kind of. But he knows how to blend in if it might get him what he wants. The girl, for one thing.

In other words, he is trying to find himself in a world that can be really, really dull and really, really predictable. Think of them as groping to get beyond the mentality of American Youth. Only in Wales. Not that they always succeed, of course. Sometimes you can hardly tell them apart. They are, after all, not exactly revolutionaries. But [naturally] he does read Nietzsche. And Shakespeare and Salinger.

Sadly, these kids don’t exactly have many role models worth emulating. So, if there are going to be ones for the next generation it had better be them. On the other hand, maybe he’s just better off chucking them all and finding his own way through the bullshit. It seems that, when push comes to shove, she’s still one of them. But then so is he.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_(2010_film
trailer: youtu.be/yUT4GtS9_ns

SUBMARINE [2010]
Written and directed by Richard Ayoade

[b]Oliver [voiceover]: Most people think of themselves as individuals, that there’s no-one on the planet like them. This thought motivates them to get out of bed, eat food, and walk around like nothing’s wrong.

…

Oliver [voiceover]: I find that the only way to get through life, is to picture myself in an entirely disconnected reality. I often imagine how people would react to my death. Mr Dunthorne’s quavering voice as he makes the announcement. The shocked faces of my classmates. A playground bedecked with flowers. The empty stillness of a school corridor. Local news analysis. Tear-streaked tributes. The steady stoicism of my parents. Candlelit vigils.[/b]

And in the background reactions and images more reflective of Princess Di’s demise.

[b]Oliver [voiceover]: Sometimes I wish there was a film crew following my every move. I imagine the camera craning up as I walk away. But, unless things improve, the biopic of my life will only have the budget for a zoom out.

…

Oliver [voiceover]: My mother is worried I have mental problems. I found a book about teenage paranoid delusions during a routine search of my parents’ bedroom. After that, I start slipping choice phrases into our conversation. “My body has been replaced by a shell.”, “My organs are made of stone”, “I’ve been dead now for years.”
Mother: Right.

…

Jill: So. How are things with Jordana?
Oliver: Fine.
Jill: You ever going to let us meet her?
Oliver: I don’t think so. Maybe if you get a terminal illness.

…

Oliver [voiceover]: Jordana and I enjoyed an atavistic, glorious fortnight of lovemakin’; humiliatin’ teachers and bullying the weak. I have already turned these moments into the Super-8 footage of memory.

…

Oliver [to Jordana]: Well, you know, I thought it would be nice to get some mutual interests…now that we’ve had sex…other than spitting and setting things on fire.

…

Oliver: Mum?
Mom: Yes?
Oliver: Who would you save first in a fire, given the hypothetical situation that Dad and I were equally hard to save?
Mom: I’d go for you but I’d feel bad for your father.

…

Oliver [voiceover]: My mum is the exact type of person who is susceptible to this mystic bullshit. I can picture her telling Jackie at work how it’s a bit over the top but there’s something in it. If my dad radiated a colour, it’d be ochre or eggshell. He knows the number for the pothole helpline by heart…

…

Oliver: Dad, who would you save first in a house fire, given the hypothetical situation that both Mum and I were equally difficult to save?
Dad: I’d save your mother first, so we had a better chance of working together to save you.

…

Oliver [voiceover]: I have no idea what I’m hoping to achieve by breaking into Graham’s house. I just want to give him the idea that I’m deranged and therefore capable of anything. This will probably involve me urinating or something.

…

Oliver [to Jordana]: My mum gave a handjob to a mystic.

…

Oliver [voiceover]: Jodana’s new boyfriend has an incredibly long neck. Just thinking about giraffes makes me angry.[/b]

iambiguous · October 28, 2013, 3:17am

What can I [or anyone else for that matter] say: a very strange and beautiful film.

A man packs his 2 children into a VW Beetle and drives them out into the Australian outback—for a picnic. There he takes shots at them with a revolver, sets the car on fire and puts a bullet in his head. He’s dead. And so out in the middle of nowhere the two kids are on their own. Until they meet an aborigine—a boy on a walkabout.

That’s the whole thing. Only you can’t take your eyes off the screen from start to finish. Or, rather, I couldn’t.

There are folks able to fend for themselves…to survive…“off the land”. And there are those who are not. Most of us cannot. But most of us will never have to.

And then out of the blue these scientists and their weather balloons.

And the eliptical relationship between the the white world and the world of the aboriginals. Why did the black boy die? Did he kill himself? Is it related to the dance? My best guess: it revolves around the girl. The dance was a courting ritual. But she did not accept him. In fact, she seemed to view him more as one might a servant.

Or maybe not. It’s just purely conjecture.

Make sure you watch this film all the way to the end: clas.ufl.edu/users/burt/intr … y/end.html

Look for Walter Reilly.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkabout_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Fdqwbs8uKwQ

IMDb

[b]Jenny Agutter was embarrassed when doing the scene of her swimming naked in the lake, so as many as possible of the crew were sent away. When shooting was done they returned, stripped naked, and went for a swim.

First cinema film of David Gulpilil.[/b]

WALKABOUT [1971]
Directed by Nicolas Roeg

[b]Woman on radio: The Ortolan is the name given to a European singing bird. It is extremely rare. When fattened for eating, they are left in dark cardboard boxes, and packets of grain are pressed to a hole in the box, through which a light is shone. The bird picks at the grain in the hope of penetrating through to the light, which he mistakes for the sun. This goes on for several weeks. When it has eaten itself so full that it cannot stand or see, it is drowned in cognac. Gourmets regard it as an exceptional delicacy. You will find vinegar is an acceptable substitute for cognac.

…

Woman on radio: Apart from the scientific explanation, the expectation that the world…that is, that human society will someday come to an end leads me to believe that man is more than the complement of root and matter. It is he who imparts dignity to the planet in which he lives, although not receiving importance from it. The idea that man has passed through years of trials, in order that there might be, at last, a perpetual succession of comfortable shopkeepers…
Boy: I was listening.
Girl: We mustn’t waste the batteries.

…

Girl [to aboriginal boy]: Water. Drink. We want water to drink. You must understand! Anyone can understand that. We want to drink. I can’t make it any simpler. Water. To drink. The water hole has dried up. Where do they keep the water?

…

Man on radio [while Aborgine boy kills and eats a kangaroo he hunted]: The one set of values for “X”… is 4-3 (X-4 ) equal to X-2 (4 -X). Write 24, 48. Seven fours aew 28. Eight fours are 32.
Boy [to the black boy]: I can multiply 84 by 84. I did it yesterday.
Man on radio: Divide 3,894 by 12 minus a third. If your answer is a decimal, what is…

…

Man on radio [against the vastness of the outback]: Nothing can ever be created or destroyed…Every man and every woman is a star…What do we know?..By the telescope, a faint…

…

Girl: I don’t know why you’re telling him all this. He can’t understand. He doesn’t know what a ladder is. I expect we’re the first white people he’s ever seen.

…

Man on the radio: There’s predestination and free will required. We know now that that that is, is.

…

Boy: Why won’t he speak? What’s he dancing for?
Girl: I don’t know.
Boy: Perhaps he’s pleased.
Girl: Why?
Boy: Because we got here at last.

…

Girl: I want to start early in the morning.
Boy: I think he wants to stay here.
Girl: Why should he?
Boy: It’s nice. I think that he wants to stay here for a while. There’s lots of ferns growing out there.
Girl: Anyway, I’ve already decided something. We’re going on our own tomorrow.
White boy: Why?
Girl: That’s best.
Boy: No!
Girl: Suppose he wanted to do something, or something happened? Suppose he tried to…

…

Narrator:

Into my heart, an air that kills from yon far country blows.
What are those blue remembered hills? What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went… and cannot come again.[/b]

iambiguous · October 28, 2013, 5:41pm

Ushpizin is the Aramaic word for guests. Which then begs the question: What is required of a host when he has guests in his home? Well, believe it or not, there is not just one set of customs applicable in all cultures around the globe. Incredible as it may seem, different cultures have different obligations. And it will no doubt always be that way until philosophy and/or science is able to determine the only truly objective course of action.

Or until one or another God is able [existentially] to lay claim to the whole truth.

Seriously, isn’t this all rather absurd? Here the culture is Orthodox Jew. Within the community they are taught from birth that when they have a guest in the home certain behaviors are required of them. Where does this come from? From tradition and/or from some rendition of the Scripture. Same with all the hundreds and hundreds of conflicting cultural/religious narratives out there. Yet people fall for these fabricated rituals because it allows them to believe that what they do is necessary. Why? Well, maybe in order to get into Heaven.

In this place – eventually – everything either is or is not His will. Maybe. But in the interim you better come up with the shekels.

In this regard though Moshe and his wife need a miracle. They can’t even afford a succah. So both pray fervantly to God for one. For the miracle. And they get it. But wait until you see how that comes about!

And when the ushpizins turn out to be assholes? Of course: It’s a blessing in disguise. Somehow this is all unfolding to make us realize what it truly means to be “of the faith”. What I see though is just how far some folks will go in order to be thought of as of the faith. The more shit the guests shovel on them the closer they feel to God.

I’m sorry but however sincerely these folks hold their beliefs, the beliefs themselves seem interchangable with all other such superstitious nonsense. Or so it appears to me.

The rest is scripting.

All the skeptics can do here is to recognize this and allow themselves to be transported into this really strange and alien world—to watch how a particular community goes about rationalizing a particular set of behaviors. And then to ponder in what ways this overlaps [or is at odds with] their own community.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushpizin
trailer: youtu.be/I98QNhD8TQo

USHPIZIN [2004]
Directed by Giddi Dar

iambiguous · October 28, 2013, 10:31pm

George is a bully. Even worse, a really, really obnoxious one. So Rocky decides to get even. He and Sam concoct a prank to humiliate him. Only the folks they invite along include Marty. And Marty [in his own way] is as obnoxious as George is. And, as it turns out, a bit more dangerous.

Then as is often the case these things don’t exactly go according to plan. Think Deliverance with kids.

Here’s the thing about being a bully: It’s not exactly an inherited trait. Instead, it tends to become a personality trait over the years. Usually because the bullies themselves have others bullying them. So if there is any hope of ending it all you need to be able to put this explanation out there and hope that the bully is able to grasp the bigger picture.

Unfortunately, the bigger picture also includes a culture steeped in a mentality whereby the strong stomp on the weak over and again. Why? Well, for one thing, in order that the fittest survive. Some in fact take pride in it. Being the master and not the slave. But mostly its about needing a scapegoat.

These things always seem to get so goddamn complicated. And this is America.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Creek
trailer: youtu.be/fZAKFfgOhyA

MEAN CREEK [2004]
Written and directed by Jacob Aaron Estes

[b]Millie [to Sam]: If you could snap your fingers right now and he would drop dead in his tracks, would you do it?

…

Sam: You know, if we hurt him, we’d be just as bad as him.
Rocky: So we need to hurt him without really hurting him.
Sam: I mean, if you could think of something like that, then…

…

Bumper sticker on the back of Marty’s Mom’s car: MY CHILD KICKED THE CRAP OUT OF YOUR HONOR STUDENT!

…

Millie: Sam, what’s going on here with George?
Sam: Oh, it’s nothing bad. It’s just a joke.
Millie: What kind of joke?
Sam: Well, we are planning on stripping him, throwing him in the river, and then we are gonna make him run home naked. We have a plan and it involves a dare.
Millie: A dare?
Sam: Yeah. See, the only reason I didn’t tell you before…
Millie: Who said I wanted to be a part of this?
Sam: What about this?
[Sam snaps his fingers]
Millie: What’s that?
Sam: “If you could snap your fingers right now, and he would drop dead in his tracks, would you do it?”
Millie: It’s totally mean, Sam.
Sam: He’s mean.
Millie: He’s a stupid fat kid. He’s got problems, but he’s obviously… Promise me you won’t do anything to him.
Sam: It’s not just me.
Millie: Promise me or I go back to the car.
Sam: All right, I promise. I’ll tell Rocky.

…

George: Clyde. Pussy number one. Sam. Pussy number two. Millie. Pussy number three.
Millie: Go ahead, Clyde. Start the game.

…

George [after Marty tells him why he is really there]: You’re a fucking lying son of a bitch, Sam! All right? And I hope you fucking go to hell!
Millie: Don’t make things worse, George.
George: Shut the fuck up, Millie. You fucking stupid JAP cunt!
Clyde: Sit down, George. You’re out of control.
George [shouting]: Shut the fuck up, Clyde! You faggot! Fucking skinny butt-munching faggot. I hate you! You know that? I really do! Because all you do is fucking prance around school, talking about your fucking faggoty fairy fathers! I’ll tell you what! I don’t wanna hear about your fucking fathers and how they’re assholes work, all right? It makes me sick, all right, and I fucking hope they fucking die of fucking fag disease! Yeah!
[he pauses, then looks at Marty]
George: And speaking of dead…fathers…I just remembered why bonehead white-trash fucking donkey-dick Marty got so fucking freaked when I started talking about his “daddy”. His neanderthal, drunk father put a gun in his mouth and splattered his brains all over the wall. You know, I almost forgot my mom told me that. She said, “His daddy splattered his brains all over the wall.” I thought it was sad at first. But now? I like it. HIS DADDY SPLATTERED HIS BRAINS ALL OVER THE WALL! HIS DADDY SPLATTERED HIS BRAINS ALL OVER THE WALL!
[everyone is trying to shut him up]
George: HIS DADDY SPLATTERED HIS BRAINS ALL OVER THE WALL! HIS DADDY SPLATTERED HIS BRAINS ALL OVER THE WALL!

…

Millie: Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! We can never be forgiven for what we did.
Sam: You didn’t do anything.
Millie: I don’t wanna be here…I don’t wanna be here…

…

Rocky: You have to trust me on this one, Sam. I’m your big brother.
Sam: But I don’t trust you.

…

Marty: What do you think?
Rocky: I don’t know what to think.
Marty: Well, if you don’t know what to think, then you probably shouldn’t be making decisions.

…

Detective: When your brother pushed George into the river, would you say he was in control, or out of control?
Sam [to the camera after the detective leaves the room]: I’ve never seen him more out of control in my life.

…

George [on his videotape “documentary”]: My name is George…and this…is the inside of my mind.
[sighs]
George: The inside of my mind has a zillion things…
[sighs]
George: The inside of my mind has a zillion things about it but…people that don’t see inside of my mind don’t know there are a zillion things and…Y’know, since no one sees inside my mind, no one really knows. But… one day people will know. One day people will know 'cause that’s my master plan. To film it all. To document every aspect of the life that is me. And put it in a time capsule in my backyard and so that one day some alien or some highly evolved species will find it and…understand.[/b]

iambiguous · October 29, 2013, 8:34pm

Yes, the language spoken here is English. But I challange you to watch it without subtitles. Fortunately, I watch so many foreign films that subtitles are par for the course. In fact, it has reached the point where I watch all films with the subtitles on. It just feels strange not to.

Subtitles definately needed here though because the characters are deeply enscounced in a working class community outside of Glasgow. Scots English can be…tricky.

Liam is a Ned. But he is trying hard not to be. His aim is to relocate his about to be released from prison Mum. Start a new life on the straight and narrow. Of course that is easier said than done in the world he comes from. He and his mate Pinball are always out on the streets hustling one thing or another to make ends meet. And it’s not like his family [aside from his sister] is bursting at the seams with good role models. But however much we might come to like them [Liam especially] we mustn’t forget that they spend the better part of their days making life miserable for others. And only some of them actually deserve it.

It’s all about options. What you want you have to be able to pay for. And if you want it bad enough and the options afforded along the straight and narrow won’t get it for you you either don’t get it or you fall back on the gear. But that means dealing with the big fish who run the pond. And that has consequences. Dire consequences.

He’s with the big boys now.

IMDb

[b]The film sparked a censorship debate in the UK regarding the amount of bad language used. Under current British Board of Film Classification rules, multiple uses of the word “fuck” usually only warrant a 15-certificate, but even a single aggressive use of the word “cunt” tends to lead to an 18-certificate, as was the case with Sweet Sixteen. It was argued, however, that this would prevent the people who could most closely identify with the characters in the film from going to see it, and that such language was much more commonly used, and therefore less offensive, in the north of the UK, where the film was set. The London based censors, however, stuck to their guns, although the local authority who cover the area where the film was shot, Inverclyde, utilized their cinema licensing powers to overrule this, and awarded the film a 15-certificate for screenings in their area.

The word “fuck” and its variations are used 313 times.

The film was shot in sequence.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Sixteen_(2002_film
trailer: youtu.be/-rsDPu9wgjs

SWEET SIXTEEN [2002]
Directed by Ken Loach

[b]Chantelle [to Liam]: Remember when you ran out and fought three big boys? They all thought you were brave. I didn’t. I was screaming through the window. I heard your arm snap. When they let you go, you still laughed in their face. You didn’t fight them because you were brave. You fought them because you just didn’t care what happened to you. That’s what broke my heart. Just another kicking for you. How can you really care about us if you don’t care for yourself? What am I supposed to tell the wean in the morning? You tripped? Some junkies stole your fags and nearly killed you? All wee Calum’s got in the whole world is me and you. Nobody else. What happened to us isn’t going to happen to him. Never. Over my dead body, and I swear it.

…

Liam: Why are you doing this?
Jack: You work for me, I take care of you. As easy as that. You can have these as soon as you take care of that wee prick Pinball.
Liam: He didn’t know what he was doing. He’s had a hard time. His dad was a junkie. I’m all he’s got. I’ll sort it out, I swear. He’ll apologise to you and I’ll pay you back.
Jack: Hey, if you can’t deal with this, you get out now.
Liam: He’s like a brother to me.
Jack: Listen, an opportunity like this for someone like you only comes once.

…

Pinball: What’s this?
Liam: Put it down.
Pinball: A blade. What are you going to do with that?
Liam: Put it down.
Pinball: So you were here to do me in? Here - take it. Are you fucking man or mouse? Fucking take it! I’ll help you. Ready? The caravan. That’s right. Fucking Pinball burnt it. It wasn’t Stan, it was me.
Liam: Why…?
Pinball: Don’t fucking move. I knocked a motor, can of petrol. Boom! Up she went. Fucking shame, so it was. You fucking hurt me. I’d have done anything for you. Fucking anything. But you fucked me about. You don’t believe me? Fucking get back! You want the chance now? Fucking do it. Fucking bastard. I’ll fucking do it, then, eh? 'Cause you fucking put me through pain.
[Pinball slices his face with the knife]
Pinball: You came to do me in…you came to do me in.

…

Liam: Is Mum up yet?
Chantelle: What’s wrong with you? She’s gone.
Liam: A wee walk will do her good. I think she had one too many last night.
Chantelle: No, Liam. She’s gone. Gone where she normally goes. The same “usual” as always. Liam, let her go. She’ll drive you mad. Let her go, for Christ’s sake! Liam, listen. It’s not that she doesn’t care, she can’t care! She’s a fucking crazy lost wee soul and she’s gonna ruin you too!

…

Chantelle [on phone]: It’s Chantelle. Are you OK? Where are you?
Liam: I don’t know.
Chantelle: Is it true? Everybody’s looking for you. The police have been round. Oh, Liam. What a waste. What a waste. It’s your birthday, you’re 16. Did you know that? What are we gonna do? Eh?
Liam: Chantelle, my batteries are running down.
Chantelle: I love you, Liam.[/b]

iambiguous · October 30, 2013, 2:29am

Going postal with a twist: someone beats you to it. At least that’s one version of it.

And then out of the blue you become a hero. What are the odds? In fact what are the odds of all this unfolding inside your head?

Given the nature of our political economy—in which crippling alienation is built right into tasks rationalized down to the most menial components on one or another assembly line…in which those at the bottom barely scrap by from paycheck to paycheck…in which most are clearly expendable when the time comes—it’s not all that surprising that some go berzerk. On the contrary, it has always amazed me why it doesn’t happen more often. But the American ruling class [with its own rendition of state capitalism] has always been particularly effective in subjugating the “workforce”.

Bob’s work is particularly mindnumbing. Wait’ll you see it. Ask yourself how you’d feel after a day of doing it. Let alone weeks, months and years.

Obviously, life does not unfold this way very often. In fact it doesn’t even unfold that way here. But just knowing that it can [that it might] is enough to give you pause. You never really know what’s around the next corner. And it is always intriguing how reality itself can be one thing and how people view it as another thing entirely. And yet it is what people think it is that counts.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Was_a_Quiet_Man
trailer: youtu.be/TK4XWGYe_nw

HE WAS A QUIET MAN [2007]
Written and directed by Frank A. Cappello

[b]Bob [voiceover]: It was easier in the past. A man knew what it was to be a man. He stood up to things that were wrong. He was expected to do so. The way we lived trained then you to put yourself through the inevitable confrontations. Ones that could lead to dimemberment or even death. Then something happened. We passed laws of decency. Lawyers became our shepherds. What was once a fairly easy thing to understand became muddled in bureaucracy…what we call “civilization”. A man could no longer stand up to the wrongs around him. He had to go through courts and lawyers and miles of red tape. Woman demanded equality and she got it. Not by getting everthing a man had but by men being castrated before the world. They don’t care what you say. It’s not progress…it’s a delusion. It’s a disease until someone understands what’s at stake. Someone who can stand up like a real man and take action against injustice and unfairness in this world…today. Right now. Before lunch.

…

Bob [voiceover]: It’s all a matter of timing. My time will come.

…

Note taped to Bob’s refrigerator: YOU MAY ASK WHY I DID WHAT I DID…BUT WHAT CHOICE DID YOU GIVE ME?

…

Bob: I’m not half as lame as you are.
Ralf: Oh yeah? Then you tell me what you’d call a man who’s stupid enough to piss off a maniac with a fucking loaded gun?
Bob: I’d call him a maniac with his own fucking loaded gun.

…

Goldie [the fish he converses with]: Welcome to our world, Bob.

…

Shelby: As Vice-President of Creative Thinking you can think of this as your first assignment.
Bob: You’re going to pay me to think?
Shelby: It’s a crazy world.

…

Bob [to Janice]: I don’t get out much. Sizzlers is all I lnow.

…

Bob: I…am not…a spoon.

…

Bob [aloud to himself]: The bitch lied!

…

Bob [voiceover]: You may ask why I did what I did. But what choice did you give me? How else could I get your attention? All I wanted to do is exist in your world. If only one person would take time to actually see me. Help me find a way out.

…

Bob [voiceover]: There comes a time when the diseased and the weak must be sacrificed to save the herd.[/b]

iambiguous · October 31, 2013, 10:03pm

From the director of Cold Fish and Noriko’s Dinner Table above, many consider this to be his best film. Certainly one of his longest. At 4 hours in length some might avoid it for this reason alone. Well, it’s their loss. I only wish the original 6 hour take was available.

Who could resist this:

Three emotionally abused people from the fringes of society get locked in a convoluted love triangle. Yu, a Catholic boy searching for true love ends up taking erotic photographs of women in public until he discovers Yoko, whom he sees as his Virgin Mary. Yoko, an antifamily, misandristic girl finds that her foster mother will be marrying Yu’s father. Koike, an “original sinner”, coordinates a plan to convert Yu’s family to her cult. Under her careful direction, their lives come crashing together in one fateful street fight. IMDb

The title card says it is based on a true account. Uh, maybe. I wasn’t there though to confirm it.

It’s one of those films that are [at times] so over the top you can find yourself wondering: should I be laughing now or not? In other words, it makes points about the world we live in that are anything but funny—but it does so in a way that seems, well, preposterous. What should we take seriously? God and pornography. Religion and perversion. They seem to be rather inseparable here.

Why Catholicism? You got me. They reflect less than 1% of Japan’s population. But this is also about religious cults. And they exist practically everywhere. The “message” here seems to revolve around that famous passage in 1 Corinthians: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” And: “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Religious cults in Japan: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_new_religions

But I suspect you would have to have a familiarity with religion in the Japanese culture to even come close to getting a fuller “meaning” of it all. Here’s one interpretation:
mubi.com/notebook/posts/upskirts … e-exposure

It is so wonderfully surreal however you’ll soon give in to the sheer fucking spectacle of it.

Oh, yeah: If you have a fetish for panties you’ll think you died and went to Heaven.

IMDb

The film gained a considerable amount of notoriety in film festivals around the world for its four-hour duration and themes including love, family, lust, religion and the art of upskirt photography. The first version was originally six hours long, but was trimmed at the request of the producers.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Exposure
trailer: youtu.be/5Fxa5NuVrqU

LOVE EXPOSURE [Ai No Mukidashi] 2008
Written and directed by Shion Sono

Yu [voiceover]: When I was little I always watched my mother pray. I remember her beautiful face. I remember the beautiful statue of Maria. Everything was Holy.

His mother dies while he is grade school. Prompting his father [of course] to become a priest. A Roman Catholic priest in Japan.

[b]Yu [voiceover]: My father, the priest. He became known for being gentle and caring. We were happy then. We had a peaceful life. Until she came along…

…

Yu [voiceover]: Soon however our life with her began to fall apart…[/b]

By this time you become aware yet again of just how convoluted a religious conviction can become when it becomes entangled in the flesh. The parts below the belt in other words.

[b]Yu [voiceover]: I became very alert. I always looked for sins I might have committed unknowingly. Though unfortunately I was really just an ordinary high school kid. To put it simply: I wanted to die.

…

Father: You lied today. I can tell. Were you lying?
Yu: I’m sorry.
Yu [voiceover]: Soon I realized I had to start committing sins for him. From now on I would do my best to sin! From then on I’d be busy committing sins for my father. Sins and even bigger sins! I made up my mind in class. I was ready to sin.[/b]

Needless to say, it didn’t work.

[b]Yu: Today is the day! We pick photo of the week!

…

Senpai: Did you confess to your father?
Yu: Yes. He beat me up and called me a pervert.
Senpai: No wonder you look happy.

…

Yu: Listen! All perverts are created equal!

…

Koike [voiceover]: First, I traded in on bogus releigious artifacts. I’m also the leader of a bougus charity group. And I’m a cocaine dealer. I traffic cocaine through embassies. All the money goes to the Zero Church.[/b]

Then we see her, uh, backstory. Right up to the part where she cuts off her father’s erect penis with a pair of scissors. Now she’s a big shot in the Zero Church. Zero? That’s where we’re all headed: back to zero. But that pales next to Yoko’s backstory. And, except for Kurt Cobain and Jesus Christ, she hates men. You won’t wonder why.

[b]Yu: The wind blew her skirt up. My first hard-on!

…

Yoko: Kaori, do you masturbate?
Kaori [shocked]: No! I’m a Christian!
Yoko: Christians don’t masterbate?
Kaori: No…I don’t think so.

…

Yoko: Is it a sin to be a lesbian?
Kaori: Oh, yeah. An unredeemable sin. Why do you ask? Dykes are perverts watch out for them.
Yoko [secretly pleased]: Perverts?

…

Yoko [talking to Yu but thinking it is Miss Scorion]: He’s a pervert!
Yu: A pervert? Yoko, remember? Perverts have reasons for being what they are. We’d be called lesbians and that is pretty perverse. That pervert of yours probably has good reasons for being like that.

…

Koike [aloud to herself]: Watch out Yu and Yoko, I’m coming for you…

…

Senpai and Yu [reading aloud the way in which the Zero Church cult brainwashes their subjects]: “To brainwash them they go through steps. After the Bible study sessions, the victims go to a camp. The vicims are confined until indoctrination is completed. It might take weeks until the process is completed. Until they become one of them…”

…

Yoko [to Yu]: For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know as also I was fully known. But now remains faith, hope and love. These three. But the greatest of these is love! You don’t even know these words. That sex-maniac priest of a father taught you nothing about the Bible! You know nothing about God!

…

Yu: Zero is not God’s church. It’s just a sham!
Yoko: What about you?
Yu: I’m a pervert but not a phony! I am a pervert with dignity. If you want something holy, choose a diety. Buddha, Mohammed or Jesus Christ. But not the Zero Church! Zero is nowhere near Jesus, Buddha nor Mohammed! Zero is just lies![/b]

So, what do you think?

Zero Church priest [to the congregation]: You’re all in a state similar to cave dwellers. Plato wrote the cave allegory. The cave dwellers don’t see the light of the fire. They merely see the shadows on the wall. That’s the state you are in now. You might have thought that being uninhibited was freedom. You’re wrong…

iambiguous · November 1, 2013, 8:28pm

Rushmore. It’s a prep school – or whatever the hell they call it…a conveyor belt? – for the children of America’s ruling class. So we know more or less what to expect: some smart-ass iconoclast [barely getting by] is there to set their whole goddamn world spinning completely out of orbit. Well, that’s not really what we get here with Max. On the contrary, all he wants to do is spend the rest of his life there. Maybe die right on the campus.

In other words, he is not exactly out to change the world. More like someone who seems content to be poking holes in the facade. Oh well. He’s still an interesting character. And that means other interesting characters will tend to gravitate toward him. Or he to them. He’s like Cool Hand Luke by way of Ferris Bueller. Or, on more somber days, the other way around.

Alas though we live in a world where even “interesting characters” can [or more likely will] find themselves at odds. These become the epic battle royales. But then that’s half the fun of watching them reconcile.

And what a joyous ending. Almost as though the whole thing was scripted!

IMDb

[b]When Bill Murray first read the script, he thought it was so fantastic that he said he wanted to do it so badly he would do it for free.

During the casting process, the film makers went to different New England private schools, mostly in Massachusetts, looking for a student to play Max Fisher.

In the geometry class Max dreams about during the school chapel/assembly, he solves a problem on the board - this problem is to derive the area of an ellipse by integrating its equation. Not a high school problem, but definitely not the hardest geometry problem in the world.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushmore_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Wr3-3KHBkc0

RUSHMORE [1998]
Written in part and directed by Wes Anderson

[b]Student: If, and only if, both sides of the numerator is divisible by the inverse of he square root of the two unassigned variable.
Professor: Good. Except when the value of the “X” coordinate is equal to or less than the value of one. Yes Isaac?
Isaac: What about that problem?
Professor: Oh, that? Don’t worry about that.
Isaac: Wait. Why?
Professor: I just put that up as a joke. That’s probably the hardest geometry equation in the world.
Isaac: Well, how much extra credit is it worth?
Professor: Well, considering I’ve never seen anyone get it right, including my mentor Dr. Leaky at MIT, I guess if anyone here can solve that problem, I’d see to it that none of you ever have to open another math book again for the rest of your lives.

…

Herman: I paid for the whole damn auditorium. The least these little pricks can do is hear me out.

…

Herman [of Max]: Sharp little guy.
Dr. Guggenheim: He’s one of the worst students we’ve got.

…

Herman: What’s the secret, Max?
Max: “The secret”?
Herman: Yeah. Well, you seem to have it pretty much figured out.
Max: The secret. I don’t know. Uh… I think you just gotta find something you love to do, and then do it for the rest of your life. For me, it’s going to Rushmore.

…

Max [to Rosemary after finding out she went to Harvard]: The top schools where I want to apply are Oxford and the Sorbonne. My safety is Harvard.

…

Herman [watching his sons wrestle]: Never in my wildest imagination did I ever dream I would have sons like these.

…

Max: So you were in Vietnam?
Herman: Yeah.
Max: Were you in the shit?
Herman: Yeah, I was in the shit.

…

Max: The truth is, neither one of us has the slightest idea where this relationship is going. We can’t predict the future.
Rosemary: We don’t have a relationship.
Max: But we’re friends.
Rosemary: Yes, and that’s all we’re going to be.
Max: That’s all I meant by “relationship.” You want me to grab a dictionary?

…

Max: I like your nurse’s uniform, guy.
Dr. Flynn: These are O.R. scrubs.
Max: O, R they?

…

Max: What do you call getting a handjob from Mrs. Calloway in the back of her Jaguar?
Magnus: A fucking lie.
Max: You think I got kicked out because of just the aquarium? Nah, it was the handjob. And you know what else? It was worth it.

…

Herman: Dirk?
Dirk: I know about you and the teacher.
Herman: Does Max know?
Dirk: No, and I don’t want him to know, ever. I just want it to stop right now. You’re a married man, Blume, and you’re supposed to be his friend.
Herman: Look, Dirk, I am his friend.
Dirk [spits on Herman’s car]: Oh, yeah. And with friends like you, who needs friends?

…

Dirk [in a letter to Max]: “Dear Max, I am sorry to say that I have secretly found out that Mr. Blume is having an affair with Miss Cross. My first suspicions came when I saw them Frenching in front of our house. And then I knew for sure when they went skinny dipping in Mr. Blume’s swimming pool, giving each other handjobs while you were taking a nap on the front porch.”

…

Max [to Herman]: I saved Latin. What did you ever do?!

…

Hotel desk clerk: And how long will you be staying with us, Mr. Blume?
Herman: Indefinitely. I’m being sued for divorce.
Hotel desk clerk: Very good, sir.

…

Dirk: Did you say my mom gave you a hand job?
Max: Who told you that goddamn lie? Never mind. I know who said it. I think I’m gonna stick a knife in his heart, then I’m gonna send him back to Ireland in a body bag.
Dirk: He’s from Scotland.
Max: Well, tell that stupid Mick he just made my list of things to do today. I’m gonna pop a cap in his ass.

…

Rosemary: What do you think is going to happen between us? Do you think we’re going to have sex?
Max: That’s a kinda cheap way to put it.
Rosemary: Not if you’ve ever fucked before, it isn’t.
Max: Oh, my God.
Rosemary: How would you describe it to your friends? Would you say that you’d fingered me? Or maybe I could give you a hand job. Would that put an end to all of this?

…

Max: War does funny things to men.

…

Rosemary: Is this fake blood?
Max: Yes, it is.
Rosemary: You know, you and Herman deserve each other. You’re both little children. Let me show you the door.
Max: I’ll just go back out the window.

…

Max: How much are you worth, by the way?
Herman: I don’t know.
Max: Over ten million?
Herman: Yeah, I guess so.
Max: Good, good.
Herman: Why?
Max: Cause we’re gonna need all of it.

…

Max [introducing his play “Heaven and Hell”]: I don’t usually do this, but this play means a lot to me, and I wanted to make a dedication. So, I’ll just say that this play is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Eloise Fischer, and to Edward Appleby, a friend of a friend. Also, you’ll find a pair of safety glasses and some earplugs under your seats. Please feel free to use them.

…

Dr. Flynn: I understand you’re a neurosurgeon.
Bert: No, I’m a barber, but a lot of people make that mistake.[/b]

iambiguous · November 2, 2013, 7:04pm

Well, on a scale from 1 through 10, I probably wouldn’t give this one a 9. But how many films that tackle the question, “how does it all add up?” are ever really going to get close to that anyway? Aside from pointing out the obsious: that “I” is [sooner or later, one way or another] left dangling by a thread.

I play me in many different ways. Or maybe I am the creation of someone who has me playing I in much the same way that someone else created him to play I playing me. How is it all intertwined exactly into what I construe to be reality?

A sci-fi fantasy in part but what the hell: anything that gets folks to actually wondering about who they think they are and why they do not think they are someone else will always be something I endorse. My own “anchor” is dasein. And here the reality of acting is brought into play. Or the reality of playing video games. Or the “reality” of reality television. Behaviors that can involve imagining yourself as someone else. Or actually playing someone else. Behaviors that are more readily shaped and molded by the thinking of others. And yet for some folks preferrable to who they really “are”. And then there are the theoretical conjectures regarding identity in parallel universes. Or the person you think you are on dope.

Or maybe it’s all just an allegory about God. That’s where every world is the best of all possible worlds because it is the only possible world. Good and bad come into play in the next one.

M1: I can understand why you’re confused.
G1: No, no…I’m a lot confused.
So, a lot of different interpretations can be made here. Like this one:
voices.yahoo.com/an-analysis-fil … tml?cat=38

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nines
trailer: youtu.be/HS7AGOAyMUI

THE NINES [2007]
Written and directed by John August

[b]G: Hey, do you sell crack?
[drug dealer looks confused]
G: No, it’s cool. I only play a cop on TV.

…

G [to woman crossing the street]: Hey is this crack?
[the woman looks at him bemused]
G: Do you know how to do it?

…

M [to G]: I’m a fan of yours, you know. Your number one fan. But if you fuck this up, I’ll smash your ankles with a sledgehammer!

…

M: I’ll be coming by twice a day to check up on you. I should be the only person coming by. No pals, no buddies, no heroin dealers.
G: I don’t do heroin.
M: Yeah, crack is classy. Hmmm. But I’m not buying you porn. There’s pay-per-view or cable.
G [sarcastically]: Great, because I really wasn’t concerned about my career, family, or future. I just wanted to jerk off.

…

S: When I was a little girl, our house caught on fire.
G: Oh shit.
S: I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face as he gathered me up in his arms and raced through the burning building and out onto the pavement. I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames. And when it was over, I said to myself “is that all there is to a fire?”. And then I met the most wonderful boy in the world. We would take long walks by the river. We spent hours gazing into each other’s eyes. We were so very much in love. And then one day, he went away. And I thought I’d die, but I didn’t. And when I didn’t, I said to myself “is that all there is to love?”…I know what you’re thinking. If that’s the way she feels about it, why not just end it all? Oh no, I’m in no hurry for that final disappointment. I know as sure as I’m here talking to you that when the final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath I’ll be saying to myself, "is that all there is, is that all there is…if that’s all there is then let’s keep dancing, let’s break out the booze and have a ball. If that’s all there is.

…

Voice on Baby Monitor: The cat says “Meow!” The pig says “Oink!” The cow says “Moo!” The cow says “Moo!” The cow says “Moo!” The dog says “Nine… nine… nine… nine… nine…”

…

S: One a scale of one to ten, you belong with the nines. We both know you won’t settle for less.

…

G: Nines. They only show up when you are looking for them. Looking for them changes everything.

…

G: This is all a dream?
M: No.
G: I’m in a coma?
M: No.
G: I’m dead? This is hell or purgatorium or something?
M: Okay, purgatorium is where Romans vomited, but no, this is as real as anything can be.
G: What does that mean?
M: Everything is what it is. You’re just not who you think you are.

…

Agitated Man: It’s not real.
Moderator: What does that mean?
Agitated Man: The show’s not real! Why can’t you just see that? Jesus! What are you fucking blind? You think you’re above this, don’t you? You are trapped here with the rest of them brother! Get out! Get out! Oblivio essevet![/b]

Oblivion approaches.

[b]S2: Roger has this advice - he says forget about the people who score you in the twos and threes, because they’re never going to like your show. Instead, look for the nines. They really like your show. They just want you to do it a little bit better.

…

G2: When I get stressed out I play video games. I love the games where you can lose yourself in them. I Iove that it’s a different world but exsisting at the same time. It’s better than real life. When you get stuck you can always hit reset. That’s what life needs—a reset button.

…

S2 [after G2 slaps her]: Is that all there is? Do you feel like a man? Because I’ll tell you a little secret - you’re not.

…

G3 [to S3]: Look, I’m not some crazy Ted Bundy guy. I’m not going to rape or kill you or anything…which is of course what Ted Bundy would say.

…

S3: You’re a crackhead, G. Thing is, this planet and these people are your drug of choice. It wasn’t that hard to make a universe. At first, you just checked in every once in a while, see how the Neanderthals were doing, move a couple of continents around. But then you got more into it. You started playing a couple of characters of your own. Slaves, kings, messiah, priest. Soon, you were playing 24/7.
G3: How long have I been…
S3: You’ve been gone for four thousand years. Not that time means the same for us.
G3: You came looking for me.
S3: That’s what a girl does.
Gabriel: Why now?
Streetwalker: Because you forgot who you were.
Agitated Man: You forgot this wasn’t real.
S3: We couldn’t just storm in on a fiery chariot. It was your universe. We had to play by your rules. We had to show you how limited and corrupt your little world was. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice place, it’s cozy. But do you remember where you came from? Do you remember where you came from?
G3: It was warm and white, like…
Agitated Man: You can’t describe it with human words.
Streetwalker: You can’t think it with human thoughts.
S3: I need you to come back…with us. Come back with me.

…

G3: I guess I’m more worried about the human factor. You guys kill each other a lot.
M3: In fairness it’s usually in your name. Plus, we’ve gotten much more efficient at it.
G3: I like this world. I like my life here with you and Noelle.
M3: It’s not real. I’m not really your wife. You’re not really my husband. On some level it’s all pretend. How many versions were there?
G3: Ninety. This is the last one.
M3: Wow.
G3: I’ve destroyed billions of people with a thought, and you like to think that it’s painless?
M3: Stop. You don’t have to explain or apologize. Everything that is is because of you. And if that’s all there is, that’s enough.[/b]

iambiguous · November 3, 2013, 7:56pm

The “theme” here revolves in large part around the relationship between a father and his son. Around a reconcilation between them. And around the relationship and reconciliation between what is true and what is…exaggerated.

It’s something I think about from time to time because the relationship I had with my own father was so strained it never reached a point where it could be reconciled. And yet there were parts I knew about his past that often made me wish that we had. I knew for example he wanted to be an artist. That he trained to be one. And his drawings were incredible. But he had lost the tips of his fingers to a machine in a printing factory. And then there was the time I heard him tell my sister’s husband that he had been a local legend as a taxidermist. He knows this guy for two weeks and he’s telling him something about himself he never once bothered to mention to me.

Not that I really blamed him. The gap between us was a lot more my doing than his.

Here too you have these gaps. A father so wrapped up in his own world his son becomes merely a footnote in all the stories [tall tales] he spins. Or so the son believes. He makes certain assumptions about just how tall the tales are. And everything else flows from how the gaps are bridged.

And then aside from that, it’s all, well, Tim Burton. A fairy-tale in other words. A populist fairy-tale.

Lesson learned? You’ll need to spruce up the truth from time to time as necessary. Then pass this exaggerated wisdom on down to the next generation. Or something like that.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Fish
trailer: youtu.be/-d-kjzBmz6I

BIG FISH [2003]
Directed by Tim Burton

[b]Ed Senior: Everyone loves that story!
Will: They don’t. I don’t love that story. Not anymore. Not after a thousand times! I know every punch line, Dad. I can tell them as well as you can! For one night, one night in your entire life…the universe did not revolve around Edward Bloom. How can you not understand that?
Ed Senior: I’m sorry to embarrass you.
Will: You’re embarrassing yourself, Dad. You just don’t see it.
Will [voiceover]: After that night, I didn’t speak to my father again for three years.

…

Will [voiceover]: The truth is, I didn’t see anything of myself in my father. And I don’t think he saw anything of himself in me. We were like strangers who knew each other very well. In telling the story of my father’s life it’s impossible to separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth. The best I can do is to tell it the way he told me. It doesn’t always make sense, and most of it never happened.
[long pause]
Will: But that’s the kind of story this is.

…

Young Ed: I was thinking about death and all. About seeing how you’re gonna die. I mean, on the one hand, if dying was all you thought about it could kind of screw you up. But it could kind of help you, couldn’t it? Because everything else you’d know you could survive. I guess I’m saying I’d like to know.
[the witch lifts up the eye patch]
Young Ed: Huh. So, that’s how I go.

…

Young Ed [to Karl]: Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you’re not too big? That maybe this place is just too small?

…

Young Ed: The biggest fish in the river gets that way by never being caught.

…

Young Ed: There comes a point when any reasonable man will swallow his pride and admit he made a mistake. The truth is I was never a reasonable man.

…

Norther Winslow: I’ve been working on this poem for 12 years.
Young Ed: Really?
Norther Winslow: There’s a lot of expectation. I don’t wanna disappoint my fans.
Young Ed: May I?
[he reads the poem]
"The grass is green
Skies so blue
“Spectre is really great!”
Young Ed: It’s only three lines long.
Norther Winslow [grabs back the poem]: This is why you should never show a work in progress.

…

Josephine: I’d like to take your picture.
Ed Senior: Oh, you don’t need a picture. Just look up “handsome” in the dictionary.

…

Amos: Tell me, Karl, have you ever heard the term “involuntary servitude”?
Karl: No.
Amos: “Unconscionable contract”?
Karl: Uh, nope.
Amos: Great!

…

Young Ed: I just saw the woman I’m going to marry. I know it. But I lost her.
Amos: Oh, tough break. Well, most men have to get married before they lose their wives.

…

Amos [to Young Ed]: You were a big fish in a small pond, but this here is the ocean and your drownin’. Take my advice, go back to Puddleville; you’ll be happy there.

…

Ed Senior: There’s a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost…the ship has sailed and only a fool would continue. Truth is I’ve always been a fool.

…

Will [to Ed Senior]: You’re like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny combined - just as charming, and just as fake.

…

Norther Winslow [bumps into Ed in a Savings and Loan]: Edward? Edward Bloom! It’s me, Norther Winslow.
Young Ed: I don’t believe it.
Young Ed [voiceover]: I was astonished to see the greatest poet of both Ashton and Spectre all the way out in Texas.
Norther Winslow: I want you to know, when you left Spectre, it opened my eyes. There was a whole life out there that I was not living. So I traveled. I saw France, Africa, half of South America. Every day, a new adventure. That’s my motto.
Young Ed: That’s great, Norther. I’m happy for you. What are you doing now?
Norther Winslow: I’m robbing this place.[/b]

Too late. The real crooks beat him to it.

[b]Young Ed [voiceover]: I told Norther about the vagaries of Texas oil money and its effect on real-estate prices…and how lax enforcement of fiduciary process had made savings and loans particularly vulnerable. Hearing this news, Norther was left with one conclusion: “I should go to Wall Street. That’s where all the money is.”

…

Will [voiceover]: That was my father’s final joke, I guess. A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him. And in that way, he becomes immortal.[/b]

If you want to call it that.

iambiguous · November 4, 2013, 1:33am

Insect. Incest.

Nature holds her secrets. And it is up to the scientist to pry them out. But what is the scientist up against when it comes to secrets rooted in the human heart? He can pry those out at his peril. Or by putting others in peril as well. If they can be pried out at all.

And there are other organs equally as treacherous.

The truth here is no where near so cut and dry. In fact, you made say they breed an unending clutter of conflicts.

The rest is a variation on upstairs/downstairs: the insufferably vain yet shallow aristocrats and the so much more humble yet fascinating “servants”. With obvious exceptions in both camps.

Only the scientist here is not quite a servant. Though practically penniless. Which for some of noble birth amounts to the same thing. He is fortunate though that head of the household shares his keen interest in natural science. And in insects. And in having his daughter marry.

Meanwhile, the scientist is so keen on observing ants he fails spectacularly in observing with keener obsevations the comings and goings of one Miss Compton.

In the end though, we are left to ponder: What does it mean to be “civilized”? And it’s not like the ants ever do.

trailer: youtu.be/XBBab1eOKxA
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_&_Insects

ANGELS AND INSECTS [1995]
Written in part and directed by Philip Haas

[b]Eugenia: Did you live entirely without the company of civilized peoples among the savages?
William: Not entirely. I had various friends of all colors and races during my stays in various communities but vsometimes, yes, I suppose I was the only white guest in tribal villages.
Eugenia: Is it true they are really naked…?

…

Edgar: Everyone seems to have taken an interest in the natural sciences since your arrival here Mr. Adamson.
William: It’s a wothwhile pursuit, I hope.
Edgar: My father seems to think so. Which is fortunate for you. Saved you from the poorhouse, I’d say.
William: My origins are humble, but I doubt it would have come to that.

…

William: Excuse me, I must now take tea with Lady Alabaster.
Edgar: While you are taking tea with my mother and talking about whatever it is you talk about with my father just don’t get too comfortable. You’re not one of us.

…

William: Ants are social beings. They exist, it would appear only for the good of the whole nest.
Matty: I’d like to believe humankind capable of such altruistic virtues, but when I look around me I think socialist society may never be realized.

…

Eugenia [to William]: I don’t need to marry a fortune. I have one of my own.

…

Edgar: I don’t like your attitude, sir. I’ve never liked it. I believe that you sneer in your heart.

…

Edgar: You are a miserable creature without breeding or courage.
William: As for breeding, I count my father as a kind man, an honest man…and I know no other reason for respect. As for courage, I think I may claim that to have lived for ten years in the Amazon, to have survived murder plots, poisonous snakes, shipwreck and fifteen days on a lifeboat in the mid-Atlantic may reasonably compare to driving a poor horse into a house through a window.

…

William [gazing down at the new-born twins]: They do not seem to resemble me at all.

…

Edgar: There is no substitute for pure blood. Keep the breeds separate and you can’t go far wrong. That is the cardinal rule. God made creatures distinct. It is our job to keep them that way. Am I not right?
William: Well, a breed like a dialect of language can hardly be said to have a distinct origin. Indeed, the evidence is that all horses have descended from the same animal.
Edgaqr: Don’t be absurd! A dray horse has nothing in common with an Arab. There is no blood shared there. They’re different. Quite different. And if you knew horses you would see that.
Willaim: It is hard to believe, I agree. But you do not have to take my word for it. There is plenty of evidence…
Sir Harald: Mr. Darwin makes his argument very clear in “Origins of the Species”, very clear, which you would know Edgar if you ever took any interest in the important ideas of our time. Indeed, we need look no further than our own flock of small black sheep to see that careful breeding with the flock of our neighbors has produced an entirely new breed.
Edgar: Father…
Sir Harald: Think, Edgar, before you speak.

…

Sir Harald: The world has changed so much William in my lifetime. I am old enough to have believed in the Garden of Eden…in Satan hidden in the serpent…the Archangel with his flaming sword closing the gate. And now I am supposed to believe in a world in which we simply are what we are because of mutations which go on and on and on through unimaginable millenia. A world in which angels and devils do battle for vice and virtue but in which we eat and are eaten and are absorbed into other flesh and blood. I shall molder like a mushroom when my time comes and it will always be soon. I shall end my life like a skeleton leaf about to be humus, a mouse clutched by an owl, a bull calf going to the slaughter through a gate which leads only to one way…to blood and dust and destruction. And then I think no brute beast would think such things. No frog, no hound even, would have such a vision of the Angel of Annunciation. Where does it all come from?

…

William [to Eugenia]: It’s like a whorehouse!

…

Eugenia: Will you tell?
William: Whom can I tell, Eugenia, that I should not destroy in the telling.

…

Eugenia: I know it was bad. I know it. But you must understand it didn’t feel bad.
William: Breeders know even first-cousin marriages produce inherited defects, increase the likelihood…
Eugenia: That was a cruel thing to say.[/b]

iambiguous · November 4, 2013, 10:27pm

It’s hard to put into words just how remarkably strange and strangely remarkable this love story is. One of a kind doesn’t even come close to describing it. In fact, nothing I have come across [on or off the screen] does either. It blew me away.

He is just out of prison. He served two and a half years for a crime his brother committed. And he’s not altogether there in the head. She is afflicted with a neurological condition that leaves her barely able to move about or to communicate. Both of them appear to be basically burdons to their families. The family of Gong-Ju is particularly despicable. They use her to obtain a better apartment in a building for the disabled. And then once the social workers are gone they dump her somewhere else and pay the neighbors to look in on her.

They meet when he tracks down the family of the man he was sent to prison for killing…killed in a hit and run automobile accident. The man that his brother killed drunk behind the wheel. She is the man’s disabled daughter. In the beginning he is only interested in having sex with her. He all but rapes her the first time they are alone. But the experience – her terrified reaction – has such an effect on him that everything begins to change.

So-Ri Moon’s performance here is nothing short of amazing. I had assumed they hired an actor who really was afflicted with this disease. But there are scenes in the film imagining her not afflicted at all. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oasis_(2002_film
trailer: youtu.be/c7YNo_b16ws

OASIS [Hangul] 2002
Written and directed by Chang-dong Lee

[b]Jong-Il [to Jong-Du]: It’s about time you grew up. Huh? Do you know what that means? Being an adult means you can’t just do what you like. You have to be responsible for your actions. You have to fit into society, be aware of how others see you. That’s what being an adult is all about.

…

Sister-in-law [to Jong-Du]: I’m sorry to tell you this but I really don’t like you. I know this sounds harsh but with you out of the way, I felt good about life. Without you, we had no worries. It’s not only me but your brother and your mother feel the same way.

…

Family member [at a birthday dinner for the mother]: Who is she?
Jong-Du: Remember that sanitation worker who died in the accident?
Uncle: Accident?
Jong-Du: Yeah. I went to prison because of that accident. She’s his daughter.

…

Jong-Du: Time to go. I’ll see ya.
Gong-Ju: Don’t go.
Jong-Du: What? You want me to stay?
Gong-Ju: I want to sleep with you.
Jong-Du: Sleep with me?
Gong-Ju: Don’t you know what a woman means when she says “I want to sleep with you”?

…

Jong-Du [after sawing off the last tree branch]: Your Highness![/b]

iambiguous · November 5, 2013, 9:59pm

No way in hell is this movie for everyone. Simply put, some will be absolutely repulsed by the violence. And even though it can seem cartoonish at times [the gun with a thousand bullets] it is always pervasive and graphic. Consider: For the shootout at the beach house, 20,000 rounds of ammunition were fired. The final shootout at the church 40,000 rounds were expended. Body count: 120.

But it did garner a 100% fresh rating [on 34 reviews] at RT. That’s pretty impressive for film like this.

What we follow here is the relationship between the two main protagonists. They are more or less in the same ballpark with Lt. Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley. One is a cop and the other is a criminal. A professional hitman. A hitman being set up by a friend to be the target of another professional hitman.

He is also a hitman beginning to see how the times have changed for gangsters. There is no “code of honor” left to speak of. Now, it is pretty much every man for himself. This is clearly a major theme here. That, in the postmodern world, no matter which side of the law you are on everything seems to be sliding narcissistically into crass materialism. Money is God and all that matters is getting it.

Over time they both come to recognize enough of themselves in each other to forge a friendship…one you just can’t help but root for. They are after all – each in their own way – honorable men in an increasingly corrupt world. In fact, this is “male bonding” on a whole other level. Again, if you can get past the numbing brutality of the violence.

IMDb

All of the guns in the film are real. Because of Hong Kong’s very strict gun laws, they had to be specially imported, and their use on-set was closely monitored. The gunfights in the streets of Hong Kong drew complaints from residents. Many local police officers are John Woo fans, and they usually let him keep filming. The shootout on the tram caused chaos in the Causeway Bay district; people thought a real robbery was going on. Woo had to talk to the Police Superintendent himself before he was allowed to resume filming.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killer_(1989_film
trailer: youtu.be/QwKKzaCAFHs

THE KILLER [Dip Huet Seung Hung] 1989
Written and directed by John Woo

[b]Fung Sei [in a church setting up a hit with Ah Jong]: Do you believe in God?
Ah Jong: No, but I enjoy the tranquility here.

…

Ah Jong [holding a gun]: Easy to pick up, hard to put down.

…

Detective Ying: Any hospitals nearby?
Sgt. Chang: Think he has a conscience?
Ying: He won’t let that little girl die.

…

Ying: Life’s cheap. It only takes one bullet. But he’s no ordinary assassin; I hope we’re just looking for one man. If I’m not mistaken, this man is not a cold-blooded murderer.
Sgt. Chang: It only takes one bullet, cold-blooded or not.

…

Ah Jong: Who wants me dead?!
Fung Sei: Answer me first: Do you have any bullets left?
Ah Jong: I always leave one bullet, either for myself or for my enemy.

…

Ah Jong [to Fung Sei]: Our world is changing so fast. It never used to be like this.

…

Ah Jong: I thought those I killed deserved to die. Now I believe everbody has the right to live.[/b]

Well, we’ll soon see about that.

[b]Sgt. Chang [to Ying]: You can’t win all the time. But you can’t lose forever, either.

…

Ying: Sometimes, I really do envy you your freedom. It’s something I don’t have. I believe in justice, but nobody trusts me.
Ah Jong: I have the same problem.
[pause]
Ah Jong: You’re an unusual cop.
Ying: Well, you’re an unusual killer.

…

Ying: Do all killers have a sense of honor?
Ah Jong: The world has changed. Honor is now a dirty word.

…

Fung Sei: Am I a dog?
Ah Jong. No, you are not a dog. You are a great man.
Fung Sei: We’re outmoded characters. We’re outcasts. I don’t want to die like a dog. But you see, I didn’t keep one last bullet.
Ah Jong: I have one.
[Ah Jong shoots and kills him: an honorable death]

…

Ah Jong [to Ying]: They aren’t just gonna let me walk out. I have no future! Can’t you see that? Walk out and tell 'em you’re a cop; see what happens to you! You think that’ll make any difference?[/b]

iambiguous · November 6, 2013, 7:53pm

[b]wiki: Film Noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations.[/b]

That is what this film is described as. And it’s a good thing too because that is exactly what we get: sex and cynicism.

And [or course] the sucker that falls for it. Here though one of the cynics isn’t able to sustain it from beginning to end. For one thing, she falls in love with the sucker. And things then get complicated.

Not many critics liked this. On the other hand, only top 5 “top critics” at RT even bothered to view it. And only 10 critics altogether. Me, I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. But then few are more cynical than I.

I thought it was clever the way the mark was set up…then I came to like the mark. Like she did. But that’s the way it always seems to go though. Cynicism cuts both ways.

wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Moon
trailer: youtu.be/H561NjjQ8zA

CHINA MOON [1994]
Directed by John Bailey

[b]Kyle: Boy, whoever did this fucked up all over the place. This is the Gong Show of murder.

…

Kyle: He hadn’t fucked up enough so he goes back into the bathroom and begins to clean the blood off the wall. I never heard of a rapist or robber who does your apartment afterward.

…

Kyle: It was her husband. You find him and you find the gun. There’s no reason for him to throw it away. He’s done everything else wrong.

…

Kyle: Murderers are dumb shits. They always screw it up sooner or later.[/b]

Boy, will that remark come back to haunt him. If only as the accessory.

[b]Lamar: You see how nervous she was?
Kyle: Was she?
Lamar: Oh man, you could have bounced a golf ball off her.

…

Lamar [to Kyle]: Hell, everybody knows she is going to get a load of dough.

…

Kyle [on phone]: Who called Munro from your room?
Rachel: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Kyle: You know. You put someone in there and you came up here to kill him.
Rachel: I didn’t.
Kyle: Tell me the truth goddamn it.
Rachel: Oh, please. I am. Nobody was there.
Kyle: Somebody is lying. This doesn’t make any sense.

…

Medical examiner: Looks like you got yourself a big fat murder, Kyle.

…

Lamar: Well, Kyle, you were right…sooner or later they all fuck up.

…

Detective: Sorry Kyle you’re gonna have to come with us.
Kyle: What’s going on?
Lamar: You tell me. You’re the one who gave them the wrong gun.
Kyle: What are you talking about?
Lamar: Wrong serial number. You didn’t give him your gun.

…

Captain: Smarten up, Kyle. You’re going to fry for this, and she’s going to walk. That must have been what she had in mind all along.

…

Kyle: So we were just a lie?
Rachel: It changed, Kyle. It changed after I met you. I came back from Miami to be with you.

…

Rachel: Don’t look at me like that, Kyle, please. I’m not a stranger to you.
Kyle: Yes, you are.
Rachel: No. Don’t say that. I love you.
Kyle: Then why didn’t you tell me the truth?
Rachel: I would have lost you for good.
Kyle: You were just fucking me, weren’t you?! I was loving you and you were fucking me![/b]

In the end they all get fucked.

iambiguous · November 7, 2013, 7:42pm

It might be argued there are two kinds of science fiction movies. First, there are those set so far in the future and involving technologies so far advanced it is very, very unlikely any of us now will be around to see it all unfold “in reality”. Our reality in other words. Then there are those films set “in the not too distant future”. Here the new technologies are [often] already unfolding “in reality” now. It is just a question of imagining their applicability a bit further down the road. Not down my road, I suspect, but maybe down yours.

Gattaca is more the latter.

GATC. Guanine, Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine. Components of the DNA molecule. Figure out how they interact and then learn how to control them — how to manipulate them into replications more of our own choosing. It is going to happen. But who is going make the decisions? Or perhaps the moral objectivists will have by then taken their definitions down off the skyhooks and made them more readily applicable to the world we actually live in. One thing does remain largely intact though. It’s still a world overwhelmingly dominated by white males. Albeit right-handed white males.

Yep. I’m a lefty.

Here of course dasein too would have to make its adjustments. But only regarding the parts that really could by measured objectively. All the other parts were still as subjective as they are now. Unless there is gene for value judgments.

IMDb

[b]When Gattaca was first released, as part of a marketing campaign there were adverts for people to call up and have their children genetically engineered. Thousands of people called, wanting to have their offspring genetically engineered.

Many of the “futuristic” buildings in the film are actually quite old. Many of these represent a type of postmodern architecture called “brutalism”, which was popular in the 1950s. The two massive arches seen behind Jerome and Irene during their talk are actually the spillway of the Sepulveda Dam in Los Angeles, which was built in the 1930s.

The icons used to denote a Valid versus an In-Valid have significant meaning. On the scanners, an infinity symbol appears next a Valid’s name, denoting their “infinite potential.” Next to an In-Valid’s name, a dagger appears. In taxonomy, a dagger next to a taxon indicates extinction. In addition, the dagger symbol resembles a cross, a reference to In-Valids being referred to as “God Children”[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
trailer: youtu.be/ZppWok6SX88

GATTACA [1997]
Written and directed by Andrew Niccol

[b]Title Card: “Consider God’s handiwork; who can straighten what He hath made crooked?” - Ecclesiastes 7:13

…

Title Card: “I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to.” - Willard Gaylin

…

Vincent [voiceover]: There is truly nothing remarkable about the progress of Jerome Morrow, except that I am not Jerome Morrow.

…

Vincent [voiceover]: I was conceived in the Riviera.
[the camera pans down to reveal Vincent’s parents beginning to make love in the back of a Buick Riviera parked by the beach]
Vincent: Not the French Riviera, the Detroit variety. They used to say that a child conceived in love has a greater chance of happiness. They don’t say that anymore. I’ll never understand what possessed my mother to put her faith in God’s hands, rather than her local geneticist. Ten fingers, ten toes. That’s all that used to matter. Not now. Now, only seconds old, the exact time and cause of my death was already known.

…

Geneticist: You’ve already specified blue eyes, dark hair and fair skin. I have taken the liberty of eradicating any potentially prejudicial conditions - premature baldness, myopia, alcoholism and addictive susceptibility, propensity for violence and obesity–
Maria (interrupting, anxious): We didn’t want diseases, no. But we were wondering if we should leave some things to chance.
Geneticist: You want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection built-in already. Your child doesn’t need any additional burdens. And keep in mind, this child is still you, simply the best of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result.

…

Antonio [father]: Listen, Vincent, you have to understand something. The only way you’re going to see the inside of a spaceship is if you were cleaning it.

…

Vincent [voiceover]: I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin. No, we now have discrimination down to a science.

…

Vincent [voiceover]: I was never more certain of how far away I was from my goal than when I was standing right beside it.

…

German: You serious about this? I hope you’re not wasting my time.
Vincent: No, I…I’d give 100 percent.
German: That’ll get you half way there.

…

Vincent [voiceover]: For the genetically superior, success is easier to attain, but it is by no means guarenteed. After all, there is no gene for fate.

…

German: They don’t care where you were born only how. Blood has no nationality.

…

Vincent: Jerome, there’s more vodka in this piss than there is piss!

…

[Vincent applies for employment at Gattaca. He has supplied a urine sample for analysis. When Dr. Lamar puts the sample into a genetic analyzer, the machine identifies it as “VALID”, “MORROW, JEROME”, “011010100-09564”]
Dr. Lamar: Congratulations.
Vincent: Well, what about the interview?
Dr. Lamar: That was it.

…

Vincent [voiceover]: Each day I would remove as much loose skin, fingernails and hair as possible…to limit how much of my In-Valid self I would leave in the Valid world.

…

Vincent: They think I killed the mission director.
Jerome: What makes you think that?
Vincent: They found my eye lash.
Jerome: Where?
Vincent: In the corridor.
Jerome: Ah well it could be worse. They could have found it in your eye.

…

Vincent: I can’t go anywhere without seeing my own face. They’ll recognize me.
Jerome: They won’t recognize you.
Vincent: They’ll recognize me.
Jerome: I don’t recognize you!

…

Irene: Who’s Vincent?

…

Irene: I don’t even know who you are.
Vincent: I’m the same person I was yesterday.
Irene: I can’t hear any more of your lies Jerome…
Vincent: My name is Vincent, all right? Vincent Anton Freeman, and I’m a “faith birth” or a “de-gene-erate”, whatever you want to call it; but I am NOT a murderer!
Vincent: You’re a “God-child”?

…

Vincent: But we do have one thing in common, only I don’t have twenty or thirty years left in mine. Mine is already ten thousand beats overdue.
Irene: It’s not possible.
Vincent: Oh, and you are the authority on what is not possible, aren’t you Irene? They’ve got you looking for any flaw…after a while that’s all you see. For what it’s worth, I’m here to tell you that it is possible. It is possible.

…

Lamar: For future reference, right-handed men don’t hold it with their left. Just one of those things.

…

Vincent: [voiceover] For someone who was never meant for this world, I must confess I’m suddenly having a hard time leaving it. Of course, they say every atom in our bodies was once part of a star. Maybe I’m not leaving… maybe I’m going home.[/b]

iambiguous · November 8, 2013, 3:36am

Some people are weird. And, like Adam, I like weird. But some people are weirder than that. And, like Adam, I like them too. But some weird people are also dangerous. And I know from personal experience you can like them at your peril. Though the peril I encountered was not nearly in the same league with Adam’s.

Bottom line: Weird is just a whole lot more problematic than not weird. But then you take your chances with what passes for normal these days too.

Also, if one or both of your parents are weird it increases the odds that you will be too. The dangerous part can come from that as well. Fortunately, there are a lot more of these crazy bastards in the movies than there are out there walking among us. Unless, of course, it’s the other way around. Either way we live in a world now where every relationship is a calculated risk.

Or maybe this is all just a metaphor for love and friendship. The fantasy of being able to take the parts we love most about different people and putting them all together into that “perfect person”. Probably not though. Psychopaths are always so much more entertaining.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_(film
trailer: youtu.be/DwytTsUy0kg

MAY [2002]
Written and directed by Lucky McKee

[b]Young May: What’s wrong with my eye, mama?
Mama: Doctor says it’s lazy eye. But, we’re going to make you look perfect.

…

Mama: I’ve always said, “If you can’t find a friend, make one.”

…

May [to Suzy]: I’ll bet you’re wondering what I’m making!
[pause]
May: Okay, I’ll tell you.
[giggles]
May: I saw someone today. A boy. You know how when you meet someone and you think you like them? And then, the more you talk to them, you see parts that you don’t like. Like that guy on the bench. And sometimes, you end up not liking any parts at all. But this boy is different. I like every part of him. Especially his hands, they’re beautiful.

…

Distraught Man in the Veterinarian Office: When I left for vacation my dog had four legs, okay? Then I came back - now he only has three. I mean I looked everywhere, I can’t find her leg. I mean, what do I do?

…

May: I work at the animal hospital. And I sew.
Adam: Okay. Animal hospital.
May: Some people think it’s kind of gross.
Adam: I love gross.
May: Really?
Adam: Mm-hmm. Disgust me, please.
May: Okay. A couple of weeks ago, an old man comes in, and says his dog is dying. And he begs us to save it. A 90-pound black lab named Seymour. We take him in and run some tests, and find that he has a twisted bowel, and needs to be operated on immediately. So we shave Seymour’s tummy, we cut him open, and take out a piece of intestine about - about the size of a hot dog. Everything went smooth, but…when we went to sew Seymour back up, we realized we were out of the heavy sutures your supposed to use for large dogs. So the doctor decided that if we tripled up on cat sutures, that should do the trick. Well…a few days go by, and the old man calls up hysterical. The sutures had burst while he was at work, and by the time he got home, Seymour was sprawled out on the back porch with his guts spread all over the concrete, and the fence was soaked in blood all around the yard. It was a mess.
[Adam stares in disgust]
May: I had to sew that one back up.
[May giggles]

…

May: You don’t think I’m weird?
Adam: I do think you’re weird.
May: I knew that.
Adam: I like weird. I like weird a lot.

…

Adam [to May]: You want to see my room?[/b]

In a word: weird.

[b]Adam: Does this stuff freak you out?
May: Nothing freaks me out.
Adam: That’s right, it wouldn’t, would it?
[may picks up a knife and examines it]
Adam: You’re on to me. I’m a psycho.

…

Adam: Whoa! Jesus Christ! Who taught you how to kiss?!
May [at barely a whisper]: Suzie.

…

Polly [who is a lesbian]: Do you like pussy?
May [startled]: What?!
Polly: Cats? Do you like pussycats?

…

Adam [after showing May his gruesome cannibalism movie]: So, what’d you think?
May: It was sweet.
Adam: Sweet…
May: I don’t think she could’ve got his finger off in one bite, though. That part seemed a little farfetched.

…

Adam [after May bites down his lip…hard]: Ow! God damn it! What the fuck is that? Oh, fuck, I’m bleeding.
May [rubbing the blood on her face]: I know.
Adam: May, what are you doing? Please. I need a towel. I think…I think I’m gonna go.
May: What?
Adam: I’ll see you around.
May: But it’s just like your movie.
Adam: May, this is weird.
May: You like weird.
Adam: Not that weird.

…

[Adam leaves May’s apartment…then he hears distant whispering, then glass cracking, then glass breaking, then glass crashing to the floor, then May screaming]

May: I told you to face the goddamn wall!

…

Polly: Do you feel weird doing this?
May: I am weird.
Polly: I love weird.
May: Are you serious?
Polly: Yeah.
May: About me?
Polly: Dead.

…

May [to Blank after he finds Lupe]: So, are we like best friends now that you’ve seen what’s in my freezer?

…

May [aloud to herself]: I need more parts.

…

Adam: Whatcha readin’ about?
May: Amputation.
Adam: Is that for work?
May: Nope. It’s just for fun.[/b]

iambiguous · November 8, 2013, 11:12pm

As the opening scene clearly conveys, Hedwig is not for everyone. In most parts of the world she is not for anyone at all. In fact, in most parts of the world Hedwig would be lucky to get out of town alive.

And yet as time goes by the barriers begin to crumble. But don’t fool yourself. There are plenty of folks out there more than willing to put them back up. And then some.

LGBT? The age-old questions never really change though. Sex and love. How do we fit them together in the least dysfunctional manner? Either in the privacy of our own little domain or out in the world [politically] with others?

It’s all so fucking surreal: Hedwig and the Angry Inch performing live at the…Bilgewaters. Including one in, uh, Baltimore.

And all of this unfolds with the unfolding of history: starting with the building of the Berlin Wall and ending with, well, where we more or less are now I guess. But these “freaks” can never be more than on the fringes. After all, their food, their clothes, their homes, their equipment, their venues, their means of transportation. And all the rest of it. What, do they think this stuff just grows on trees? Nope. It is manufactured, distributed and then sold by all the “squares” out there.

But trust me: You’ve never seen anything quite like this.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedwig_and … Inch_(film
trailer: youtu.be/8tgy9ODhwNI

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH [2001]
Written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell

[b]Hedwig: How did some slip of a girly boy from communist East Berlin become the internationally ignored song stylist barely standing before you?

…

Hedwig [voiceover]: It is clear that I must find my other half, but is it a he, or a she? What does this person look like? Identical to me? Or somehow complementary? Does my other half have what I don’t? Did he get the looks? The luck? The love? Were we really separated forcibly, or did he just run off with the good stuff? Or did l? Will this person embarrass me? What about sex? Is that how we put ourselves back together again? Or can two people… actually become one… again?

…

Hedwig [six years old]: Jesus says the darndest things.
Mother [slaps him]: Don’t you ever mention that name to me again.
Hedwig: But he died for our sins.
Mother: So did Hitler!
Hedwig: Huh?

…

Hedwig [voiceover]: As a boy, our apartment was so small, that mother made me play in the oven. Late at night I would listen to the voices of the American masters, Tony Tennille, Debby Boone, Anne Murray…who was actually a Canadian working in the American idiom. And then there were the crypto-homo rockers: Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Bowie who was actually an idiom working in America and Canada. These artists, they left as deep an impression on me as that oven rack did on my face. To be an American in muskrat love, soft as an easy chair not even the chair, I am I said, have I never been mellow? And the colored girls sing… doo do doo do doo do doo… but never with the melody. How could I do it better than Tony or Lou…HEY BOY, TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE!

…

Hedwig: One day in the late mid-eighties, I was in my early late-twenties. I had just been dismissed from the University after delivering a brilliant lecture on the aggressive influence of German philosophy on rock ‘n’ roll entitled ‘You, Kant, Always Get What You Want.’ At 26, my academic career was over, I had never kissed a boy, and I was still sleeping with mom.

…

Luther: To walk away Hedwig you’ve got to leave a part of you behind.

…

Hedwig [singing]: My sex change operation got botched; my guardian angel fell asleep on the watch; now all I got is a Barbie doll crotch; I’ve got an angry inch; six inches forward, five inches back; I got an angy inch! youtu.be/ZTpk9x4V53Q

…

Hedwig: It’s my first day as a woman, and already it’s that time of the month.

…

Hedwig: After my divorce from Luther I scraped by with baby-sitting gigs and odd jobs - mostly the jobs we call blow. I had lost my job at the base PX, and I had lost my gag reflex. You do the math.

…

Tommy: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour?
Hedwig: No, but I… I love his work.

…

Tommy: What Jesus was saving us from was his fucking father. What kind of god creates Adam in his image and then pulls Eve out of him to keep him company? And then tells them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge? He was so micromanaging. So was Adam. But Eve…Eve just wanted to know shit. She took a bite of the apple, and she found out what was good and what was evil. Then she gave it to Adam, so he would know, because they were in love. And that was good, they now knew.

…

Hedwig [voicover]: For his high school graduation present, I gave him his name: Tommy Gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge. We collaborated. Songs exploded out of us. Teenage girls started showing up. In three months, we were outgrossing monster trucks in Wichita.

…

[someone is singing “I Will Always Love You” in the background]

Tommy: What do you think? Do you think love lasts forever?
Hedwig: No, but this song does.

…

Tommy: Oh, God, oh, Hedwig, when Eve was still inside Adam, they were in paradise.
Hedwig: That’s right, honey.
Tommy: When she was separated from him, that’s when paradise was lost. So when she enters him again, paradise will be regained.
Hedwig: However you want it, honey. Just kiss me while we do it.

…

Tommy [touching Hedwig’s angry inch]: What is that?
Hedwig: It’s what I have to work with. [/b]

iambiguous · November 9, 2013, 10:26pm

The human chameleon. He can be whatever he has to be in order to belong. And he must belong because the whole point of his existence is to belong. Belong to what? Well, to anything. But basically he is a reflection of the fact that one way or another every human aggregation, community, group etc. is able to find folks who actually don’t have to be chameleons at all. What most folks don’t think much about however is how under different sets of circumstances they may as well be. We all have the potential to reconfigure our persona such that it is seen as conforming. It’s only a matter of recognizing that potential as a crucial component regarding how we do come to acquire an identity. And why we are motivated to steer it in one direction rather than another.

Here is a man so lacking in an identity of his own he takes on the identity of practically anyone he might be around. And then they are able to react to him through the particular identity they have come to imagine is “real” instead. But then lots of us actually fantacize about becoming someone else. What would it like to be…

And this film takes the Marshall Mccluan moment from Annie Hall and expands on it all the more cleverly still. The film is made as though it were a documentary of events occuring in the 1920s and 30s. Allen then has comtemporary intellectuals – Susan Sontag, Irving Howe, Saul Bellow, Bruno Bettelhein etc – commenting on it as though it were more anything but faux.

I know I say this over and over again but here it is especially true: you will never quite come across another film like this. I truly feel sorry for folks who have not yet seen it. But then [hopefully] they’ll still have time before they die.

Oh, and interspersed between the intellectuals pontificating on the significance of Zelig are some really, really funny jokes.

IMDb

[b]Because it took so long to match Woody Allen to the old newsreel footage, Allen managed to film and complete A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy and Broadway Danny Rose, in the time it took to complete this. He later claimed that there is no mechanical way to ‘age’ film, so they would either scrunch the negative up, or stomp on it.

Cinematographer Gordon Willis has said of this film: “There was a point when I thought we were never going to finish, a point when I thought I was going to go nuts. I have never worked so hard at making something difficult look so simple”.[/b]

wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelig
movie clip: youtu.be/qUW8JsLDsNo

ZELIG [1983]
Written and directed by Woody Allen

[b][Zelig thinks he’s a psychiatrist.]
Zelig [to Dr. Fletcher]: I worked with Freud in Vienna. We broke over the concept of penis envy. Freud felt that it should be limited to women.

…

The Narrator: Who was this Leonard Zelig that seemed to create such diverse impressions everywhere? All that was known of him was that he was the son of a Yiddish actor named Morris Zelig, whose performance as Puck in the Orthodox version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was coolly received. The Elder Zelig’s second marriage is marked by constant violent quarreling. So much so that although the family lives over a bowling alley, it is the bowling alley that complains of noise. As a boy, Leonard is frequently bullied by anti-Semites. His parents, who never take his part and blame him for everything, side with the anti-Semites. They punish him often by locking him in a dark closet. When they are really angry, they get into the closet with him. On his deathbed, Morris Zelig tells his son that life is a meaningless nightmare of suffering and the only advice he gives him is to save string.

…

Dr. Fletcher [putting Zelig under hypnosis]: Tell me why you assume the characteristics of the person you are with.
Zelig: It’s safe.
Dr. Fletcher: What do you mean safe?
Zelig: Safe. Safe to be like the others.
Dr. Fletcher: Do you want to be safe?
Zelig: I want to be liked.

…

Socialist [speaking at large demonstration]: This creature Leonard Zelig personifies capitalist man. A creature who takes many forms to achieve ends…the exploitation of the workers by deception.

…

The Narrator: The Ku Klux Klan, who saw Zelig as a Jew, that could transform himself into a Negro and an Indian, saw him as a triple threat.

…

Bruno Bettelheim: The question of whether Zelig was a psychotic or merely neurotic was a question that was endlessly discussed among his doctors. Now I myself felt his feelings were really not all that different from the normal, what one would call the well-adjusted, normal person, only carried to an extreme degree, to an extreme extent. I myself felt that one could really think of him as the ultimate conformist.

…

Zelig [as a doctor]: I have an interesting case. I’m treating two sets of Siamese twins with split personalities. I’m getting paid by eight people.

…

Zelig [in a hypnotic trance]: My brother beat me. My sister beat my brother. My father beat my sister and my brother and me. My mother beat my father and my sister and me and my brother. The neighbors beat our family. The people down the block beat the neighbors and our family.

…

Zelig [in hypnotic trance]: I’m 12 years old. I run into a Synagogue. I ask the Rabbi the meaning of life. He tells me the meaning of life… But, he tells it to me in Hebrew. I don’t understand Hebrew. Then he wants to charge me six hundred dollars for Hebrew lessons.

…

Zelig [in hypnotic trance]: No more pancakes…

…

The Narrator: That Zelig could be responsible for the behavior of each of the personalities he assumed means dozens of lawsuits. He is sued for bigamy, adultery, automobile accidents, plagiarism, household damages, negligence, property damages, and performing unnecessary dental extractions.

…

Zelig: My deepest apology goes to the Trochman family in Detroit. I…I never delivered a baby before in my life, and I… I just thought that ice tongs was the way to do it.

…

Saul Bellow [interviewed after Zelig is spotted as a Nazi]: It made all the sense in the world because although he wanted to be loved…craved to be loved…there was also something in him that desired immersion in the mass and anonymity. And Fascism offered Zelig that kind of opportunity so that he could make something anonymous of himself by belonging to this vast movement.

…

Zelig: I had never flown in my life and it shows what you can do when you’re a total psychotic.

…

Epilogue: Leonard Zelig and Eudora Fletcher lived full and happy years together. She continued practicing psychoanalysis while he gave occasional lectures about his experiences. Zelig’s episodes of character change grew less and less frequent and eventually his malady disappeared completely. On his deathbed he told doctors that he had had a good life and the only annoying thing about dying was that he had just begun reading Moby Dick and wanted to see how it came out. [/b]

iambiguous · November 10, 2013, 8:49pm

Another superb “psychological horror film” in which the horror itself emanates from within the human mind. All the strange and twisted places it can go. All the strange and twisted places mine has never been.

Maybe someday [a la Total Recall] a technology will be invented that will allow us to become immersed in a frame of mind much like this. What must it be like to think these thoughts and to feel these emotions? Thoughts and feelings we can only try to imagine vicariously through experiences like this one. Sure, they would still be at a distance but not just something you are watching up on a screen. More like being immersed in dream able to recreate these mind-blowing realities virtually.

In reality tough, thousands upon thousands of children actually experience this trauma. One of their beloved parents is lost to them. The other parent finds someone to replace her [or him]. But the step-parent is simply no match for the one lost. Or may be implicated somehow in the loss. All sorts of emotional reactions can occur. Some of them twisted into really frightening consequences. But here again there are just too many possible variations to ever fully grasp it. And then, what here is real and what is only imagined to be real? But isn’t what is imagined real enough in the end?

Or is this just a “ghost story”? Nope. No way in my view.

You have to keep reminding yourself though that most families are not like this. Anymore than they are like mine. That, instead, this sort of dysfunction [with its inherent drama] is what sells tickets to the theater. After all, how entertaining can a “normal” family be?

IMDb

The movie is inspired by a famous Korean folk tale “Janghwa Heungryeon jeon.”

[see wiki article below]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Sisters
trailer: youtu.be/nQV7ejqpbPc

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS [Janghwa, Hongryeon] 2003
Written and directed by Kim Jee-Woon

[b]Su-mi: Shall we kill them?
Su-yeon: Let’s set them free.

…

Su-mi: Just get rid of Su-yeon’s closet.
Father: Su-mi, we agreed not to talk about that closet. You promised, right?

…

Father: Su-mi I know you’re very angry with me. And I know I’m a bad father.
Su-mi: You’re not even a bad father.

…

Su-mi [seeing bruises on Su-yeon’s arms]: What is this? Who did this to you? Tell me, who did this? It’s okay, tell me. She did this, huh? She did this, didn’t she? Su-yeon what’s wrong with you? I told you to tell me everything! She did this, right? She did this, huh? Did she do this? Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!

…

Eun-ju [step-mother]: Listen carefully. I’m your mother, got it? As much as you hate it I’m the only one in this world you can call mother, got it?..Hard to handle, huh? That’s too bad. But that’s how the world is. The world isn’t as sweet as you picture it. Sometimes you have to bear the worst and live on. Like the way I’m bearing you two!

…

Mi-hee: Honey
Husband: Yes?
Mi-hee: I saw something strange in that house.
Husband: What did you see?
Mi-hee: There was a girl under the sink.

…

Eun-ju [to Su-mi]: Do know what’s really scary? You want to forget something. Totally wipe it off your mind. But you never can. It can’t go away, you see. And…and it follows you around like a ghost.

…

Su-mi: Do me a favor. Stay out of our lives. Now, can you get out of the way? I have to go.
Eun-ju: You…You might regret this moment. Keep that in mind!
Su-mi: What can be worse than standing here with you?[/b]

I can think of one thing.

iambiguous · November 11, 2013, 6:02pm

This is America. So it’s probably not so much a question of, “is this based on a true story?” as it is “which true story is this one based on?” Or, maybe, “how many murders were commited to copy this one?”

And it is based on a true story. This one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_ … nee_Conrad

American youth? Let’s move on. To men like Feck? To kids like Tim?

And some of us really can’t afford to avoid the neighborhoods where these creatures dwell. I’m reasonably certain there are more than just a handful of them within a stone’s throw of my place.

But it’s always the Kims that bear the brunt of it. And the only hope for them is that somehow they are able to get out from under all these assholes. Because if they don’t the chances are they will just end up being assholes themselves one day.

IMDb

[b]Although it is a work of fiction, the movie was inspired by the actual murder of Marcy Conrad, who was killed by her boyfriend Anthony Jacques Broussard in Milpitas, California in 1981. Neal Jimenez read the story in the newspaper while visiting friends, wrote a script and turned it in to his instructor while he was an English major at Santa Clara University. Jimenez said “that the incident is merely the inspiration for the screenplay”.

Neal Jimenez based the characters on friends he went to school with in Sacramento, California.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River’s_Edge
trailer: youtu.be/wiKuO-dABjY

RIVER’S EDGE [1986]
Directed by Tim Hunter

[b]Feck: Check’s in the mail!

…

Layne: Didn’t think you’d make it today. Where’s Jamie?
Samson: I killed her.
Maggie: What?
Samson: I killed her.
Maggie: You’re strange, John.
Tony: What’d you do, man? Sit on her?
Samson: They don’t believe me. Come on, I’ll show you.

…

Layne: Why did you kill her?
Samson: She was talking shit.

…

Matt: Why are you two such delinquents?
Tim: Because of our fucked up childhoods.

…

Clarrisa: What’s going to happen with John and all that?
Lanye: Nothing’s going to happen. Tonight I’m going to tie up a few loose ends…
Carissa: That’s it? He murders Jamie and we just ignore it?
Layne: He had his reasons.

…

Det. Bennett: Did the sight of this dead girl move you in any particular way?
Matt: I don’t know.
Det. Bennett: Were you shocked, angry, saddened? Did the sight please you?
Matt: I don’t know how I felt.
Det. Bennett: You knew this girl?
Matt: Yeah.
Det. Bennett: How did you feel about her?
Matt: I don’t know.
Det. Bennett: Hey, I’m getting sick of “I don’t know”. Do you hear me?

…

Feck: I killed a girl, it was no accident. Put a gun to the back of her head and blew her brains right out the front. I was in love.
Samson: I strangled mine.
Feck: Did you love her?
Samson: She was okay.

…

Madeleine [Tim and Matt’s mom]: You let them both get away?
Tom: Madeleine, I’ve got enough troubles of my own.
Madeleine: You don’t even care do you?
Tom: Look, you’re the mother here. I didn’t give birth to the monsters.

…

Tim [to his friend]: My fucking brother. Go get your Dad’s car. I know where we can get a gun.[/b]

They’re both about 12 years old.

[b]Samson: I got this philosophy. You do shit. Then it’s done. And then you die.

…

Madeleine: I give up this mother bullshit, it’s not worth it! You’re all a mistake anyway!

…

Clarissa: I hear they’re having an open-casket funeral for Jamie. I think that’s in bad taste.
Tony [mocking the teacher]: “This whole episode is in bad taste. You young people are a disgrace to the human race. To all living things, to plants even. You shouldn’t be seen in the same room with a cactus.”[/b]