philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

…the things that some folks will do for their art. Or the lenghts that they will go to express it. Some might even be willing to die for it. Here it is a sculptor obsessed with the female body. But obsessed in a way that separates him from others. He is blind.

He becomes obsessed all the more by a sculpture of a famous model, Aki Shima. So obsessed that in the disguise of a masseur he kidnaps her and takes her to his studio. He locks her inside. The studio is in an isolated home – an old abandoned warehouse – he shares with his mother.

Then things get really strange. He is intent on exploring Aki’s body from head to toe. And by touch alone. All in order to create his masterpiece. At first Aki is intent only on getting free of him. She tries every trick in the book. But gradually her relationship with him becomes more…complicated. More empathetic you might say. She begins to share his obsession and not only participates willingly, but wants only to takes things to even further extremes. You have to see it to believe it. It’s not for nothing this movie shocked many.

All the while we come to observe the mother’s reaction. The three of them begin to act out this bizarre triangulation of art and love and lust. Only to go on to far, far more destructive…exchanges.

The film also explores a particular narrative about being blind. Not everyone’s narrative of course but being blind is just one possible manifestation of dasein. And as is often the case with the blind, their sense of touch becomes considerably more…heightened.

And then his studio. Walls of protruding lips, eyes, noses, arms, legs, ears, breasts. Even belly buttons.

trailer: youtu.be/SG34PFaQJgE

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

BLIND BEAST [Môjû] 1969
Directed by Yasuzô Masumura

Michio: You are beautiful.
Aki: Flattery? I’m not that pretty.
Michio: To the blind, faces don’t really matter. It’s your body and the silkiness of your skin. The blind have eyes in our fingertips. I know your body better than someone with eyes.

So, it must be just a conincidence then that she is very, very pretty?

[b]Michio: I have been blind since birth. Being blind is miserable. From listening to people and Braille books, I can picture much of the world’s beauty. The sunlight, the color of clouds, splendid scenery and the beauty of works of art. Plays, movies, even TV. But I cannot see a thing. I hate my parents for this. But that doesn’t change a single thing.

…

Michio: All that is left for the blind is sound, smell, taste and our sense of touch. Sounds are like winds, no satisfaction. Smells are useless. Our noses are not sensitive like dogs. Food merely fills our bellies. But what I have discovered is touch. Touch is the only way to amuse oursleves. Our one tactile satisfaction. I’ve touched everything I could…[/b]

His favorite thing to touch though is [gasp!] the naked female body.

[b]Michio: There are many kinds of art in our world. Art for amusing the eye, the ear and the mind. Why can’t touching be an art form? I want to pioneer the art of touching. Where only the blind can appreciate it. A new art form by and for the blind. That’s my life’s mission!

…

Michio: You stripped naked for that photographer! So why not me?
Aki: That’s obvious. Mr. Yamana is a great artist.
Michio: But I also create art.
Aki: That’s crap and you’re crazy. You just want to feel me up.

…

Mother: I know very well what she is up to. She’s making a fool of a blind country bumpkin.
Michio: Is that true, Aki?
Aki: I get it now. Your mother is jealous. She’s bad-mouthing me for stealing her precious son. She sees you as more than just a son. She sees you as a lover or a husband. So she sees me as her rival.
Michio: Is she right, Mother?
Mother: I won’t stand by and watch her make a total fool out of you!

…

Aki: Kill me! Get it over with! I’d rather be dead than suffer like this![/b]

But now the mother is gone. And that turns the world upside down. And for both of them.

[b]Aki: I have started to go blind. Here, in the constant darkness.
Michio: So, you’re blind like me now. Is it a demerit? Are you sad?
Aki: No. Quite the opposite. People pity the blind, what a big mistake. I pity those with sight! They can never know the tactile ecstasy of our caresses. My sense of touch is now so acute.
Michio: So you finally understand?
Aki: Yes. Shape, form and color can’t even approach our tactile level of artistic expression.

…

Aki [voiceover]: The sensation at the tips of my fingers has become so acute I can almost “taste” with them. As sensitive as insect feelers and animal whiskers. Like the lower life forms, without eyes, only able to feel. Like an amoeba or jellyfish at the dawn of life. The same sensations as the most primeval creature. As if going back to the womb of human creation, so dark, so sweet and so pervadingly familiar.

…

Aki: When I look with my eyes, you’re a different man from the one I feel. You look normal. But to the touch you are divine. These small depressions, the large curves and projections. As I caress your body, I perceive constant variations. Like the flow of a musical masterpiece.

…

Aki [voiceover]: As the days passed we both explored the innermost secrets of our bodies. The most subtle and shaded nuance of each other’s flesh. But in our tactile world of touch and feeling, we discovered unwritten, unrelenting, natural laws. So much pleasure only spurred an ever increasing demand for more sensation.

…

Aki: More! Deeper! Harder!
Michio [kneading her thighs]: Like this?
Aki: Not enough! Bite me! Even harder! Make me bleed! Harder! Harder!

…

Aki [voiceover]: That was the beginning. We began to take our pleasure through biting, clawing and beating our bodies in a rage of sensation. But the pain-pleasure from nails, teeth and fists gradually began to lessen in intensity. We began using various devices to stimulate each other.

…

Aki [bound in rope]: Whip me!!

…

Aki [voiceover]: The more I suffered, the more I craved. What is within, that brings forth such ecstasy? Does it mean I was born with masochistic tendencies? Had I arrived at the point where natural law and the sensations of pleasure collide?

…

Aki [voiceover]: We couldn’t stop ourselves…[/b]

And she means it.

[b]Aki: We turned to knives to extract our ecstasy…

…

Michio: You really want me to cut you?
Aki: Go ahead, do it.
Michio: Where?
Aki: Anywhere. Wherever you want. Cut me! Cut me! Hurry!

…

Michio [sticking the knife into her flesh]: Does it hurt?
Aki: It’s agony. But an exquisite agony! More, more. I don’t care if I die! Cut deeper! Cut deeper and twist the knife!

…

Aki [voiceover]: That’s when we began the rite of drinking each other’s blood. The ecstasy of it marked our descent into the abyss.

…

Aki [voiceover]: The stench of the mother’s dead body begin to fill the studio. Our bodies cut and scarred, as if from battle. The loss of blood and constant pain began to sap our vitality.

…

Aki: We won’t last much longer, will we?
Michio: All we have left is to wait for death to claim us. Do you regret it?
Aki: Why should I? I’ve feasted on a bliss that most people never even know exists.

…

Aki: If we are to die anyway, make it an ecstatic death for me. Bring me to tears of joy.
Michio: But how?
Aki: Cut my arms off! My legs too!

…

Aki [now armless and legless]: The world of touch. The world of insects. The lower orders such as jellyfish. Those who venture to the edge of such worlds, can expect only a dark, dank death to envelop them.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Not exactly a well executed film. At least not from the perspective of many critics. And, well, me. But the plot is just so damned intriguing. A woman suspects her husband is being unfaithful but she wants to know for sure. So she hires a very beautiful prostitute to seduce him. Let’s see what happens. And sure enough the prostitute reports back that what she suspected to be true is in fact true. But what if it’s not? What if the prostitute has an entirely different motivation for saying what she does?

We’ve seen this before. The wife is smashing. She is very intelligent, very successful, very appealing. And very attractive. But not very young anymore. And some men just seem to get more handsome the older they become. And everywhere they look and everywhere they go there’s temptation. Especially when the man is successful in acquiring other things. Like social distinction and status.

Alas, the trials and the tribulations of the upper middle class. Oh, and all the rest of us too.

Come on, relationships in the modern world? There are only two things impeding [or rending] them: sex and love. This and psychiatric problems. Nothing really works here. Unless you find something that does.

IMDb

In the middle of March 2009, Liam Neeson interrupted filming his scenes in order to visit his wife Natasha Richardson in hospital after she had a skiing accident. The brain injury she received from this accident lead to her death a few days later. Just few days after her death, Neeson voluntarily returned to the set and completed his performance. The filmmakers changed the script accordingly and Neeson completed his performance in two days.

Hmm. Changed it how? Into a completely different movie?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloe_(film
trailer: youtu.be/a13PqQq4fv0

CHLOE [2009]
Directed by Atom Egoyan

[b]Chloe [voiceover] I guess I’ve always been pretty good with words. In my line of business. It’s as important to be able to describe what I’m doing as it is to do what I’m doing. When to say what. What words to select. Some men hate to hear certain terms. They can’t stand specific moves and then they can’t live without others. It’s part of my job to know where to place my hand, my lips, my tongue, my leg…and even my thoughts. What kind of pressure, for how long, when to stop. I can become your first kiss…or a torn out image from a Playboy magazine that you found when you were 9 years old. Am I your secretary or am I your daughter? Maybe I’m your seventh grade math teacher you always hated. All I know is that if I do it just right, I can become your living, breathing, unflinching dream…and then I can actually disappear.

…

Catherine: Did you find that waitress sexy?
David: Which one?
Catherine: The one you were flirting with.
David: Oh come on, I was being friendly.

…

Catherine [to Chloe]: I think my husband would like you.

…

Catherine [to Chloe]: My husband’s cheating on me. At least, I think he is.[/b]

In other words, the husband’s not the client here, the wife is.

[b]Catherine: How do you do this?
Chloe: I try to find something to love in everybody. Even if it’s a small thing. Something about the way someone smiles. There’s always something, there has to be. I try to make myself generous. I do things I don’t want to do. I… I think about what not to criticize. And the strangest things come back to me.
Catherine: Like?
Chloe: You.
Catherine: Me?
Chloe: Yeah. People like you walk into my life.

…

Catherine: I don’t know whether to be relieved or just go hang myself.

…

Catherine [to Chloe]: This business transaction, which is what this was, is over.

…

Catherine [to David]: You and I used to make love three times a day. And then every day. And then once a week. And then Michael was born and then we became parents and then we became best friends. I didn’t know how to go from being your best friend to being your lover.[/b]

Each relationship is unique and yet this sort of thing is now so common. What does that tell us then? Maybe that variety is the spice of life. For men, it seems to be more about new sex. For women, more about new love. Though with plenty of exceptions. Sort of.

[iambiguous]

American youth. Is it really as bad as this? In a prep school? An “academy”?! In other words, privileged American youth. Please advise.

I would not know myself as I have absolutely no contact with them. Instead, I am prone toward media projects that reinforce stereotypes as I imagine them all to be: pop culture zombies. But maybe it really isn’t this bad at all. Or, sure, maybe it is even worse. But how could it possibly be worse than this? Again, I’m in the dark here.

Not that there aren’t lots of exceptions, I’m sure. But who is going to make a film about that?

Sex, drugs and [now only occasionally] rock and roll. But there is still the gap between boys and girls. They just seem [on average] to react to things…differently. Still, the important point is that in this day and age it just keeps shrinking and shrinking. In our increasingly desensitized youtube world It all still sort of revolves around Bob Dylan’s observation all those years ago:

As human gods aim for their marks
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

So: What else can you show me?

And another confirmation that Catcher in the Rye was spot on in its depiction of the phonies. Not that any of us really know what to put in its place.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterschool
trailer: youtu.be/q85uU-UlAVU

AFTERSCHOOL [2008]
Written and directed by Antonio Campos

[b]Mr. Burke: : Good morning Miss Jameson, did you sleep all right? You just missed a little inspiring speech on announcements about you possibly being inspired to try something that will ultimately be your future, but I wouldn’t worry…McDonald’s will most likely still be hiring after you graduate.

…

Principal: Our kids are good kids. Rob is a little confused but harmless.
Detective: Okay, I’m ready for the next one.

…

Guidance counselor [after the Talbert twins overdose]: Just tell me something, anything. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?
[Rob says nothing]
Guidance counselor [sharper]: Rob. Just say anything.
Rob: My skin’s peeling.
[long pause]
Rob: It’s all dry in parts and coming off. Happy?

…

Guidance counselor [to Rob]: I knew the girls were doing drugs. I knew a year ago. They stopped coming to see me. This year, other kids were talking about it. I hear what’s going on. Anyway, I decided to tell, you know, the school. I felt like the girls were in danger, and, uh, they told me they didn’t want to hear it, that the Talberts were too important to the school and friends with certain people and, uh, they weren’t worried about it so, nothing you can do, nothing I can do. In case you thought there was, there wasn’t.

…

Mr Burke: There was something else, something you kept saying. Do you remember what you kept saying, Rob? You were cursing like a madman, and you were saying, “You killed them, you killed them, you killed them!”[/b]

[iambiguous]

Duty. Honor. Country. Up to a point most folks will snap to attention and salute them. But very, very few were more brainwashed in this regard than the Japanese soldier. After all, he also had an Emperor to add to the list. And that is practically like swearing allegiance to God himself. Isn’t it?

You buy into this bullshit or you don’t. If you see it as bullshit at all. Most of us are citizens of some country. And you either feel more or less willing to fight for what you think that country stands for. Or maybe that matters even less than what your country is fighting against at any particular point in time. For example, think what you will about America…but few were willing to just stand aside when it was confronted with Hitler and his Nazi fanatics. Others feel that way about Communism or radical Islamic jihadists. It’s always rooted in whatever you happen to believe is true about these things.

And then [of course] there are those who profit from war. But that’s another movie.

It’s just depressing [to me] how these different folks embraced these different “conflicting goods” without really pondering in depth how they might have been suckered into it. They are all the same in that what matters most is having a side to choose. So they hardly give much thought at all to how they might be manipulated by others into swallowing this crap hook, line and sinker. Again, if it is crap, of course.

As for the Emperor or the Fuhrer or the Commander in Chief…he will himself be more or less cynical regarding what the hell is really going on. But then which frame of mind is more dangerous, the one that practices the politics of conviction or the one that practices the politics of convenience?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_from_Iwo_Jima
trailer: youtu.be/8vFrTGH9-Ko

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA [2006]
Directed by Clint Eastwood

[iambiguous]

The only conviction Henry Kissinger seems committed to is in the preservation of Henry Kissinger. He is as close to the embodiment of crony capitalism as anyone is ever likely to get. For all intents and purposes he is the Bilderberg group. Which makes him a hop, a step and a jump from all the others in power [Clinton, Bush, Obama etc.] who grasp that crucial distinction between rhetoric and reality in the aiding and the abetting of the capitalist political economy.

Ah, but is this really true? And, even if it is, is it really [necessarily] a bad thing?

And that’s where everyone always gets stuck: dispensing [and then defending] a narrative that, depending on the assumptions one makes, denotes one thing that is entirely at odds with another. And that’s not a good thing [to me] because, in a world without God, there is no way in which to determine who “wins”. Might simply makes some things right as a few would say. Kissinger embodied power politics in pursuit of what was in the best interest of those who owned and operated some of the bigger chunks of the world economy. And he is still doing it today. Only much further back in the shadows.

But it’s always still an exchange of shifting perspectives.

Just look at the one gunning for him here. Christopher Hitchens nails Kissinger’s balls to the wall over Vietnam. And with respect to the Monroe Doctrine right here in our own backyard. Especially regarding Pinochet and Chile. But then the next thing you know he is defending the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. Different war, different assumptions. The only thing that seems to remain the same is the terrible toll inflicted on the folks [millions of them eventually] we have come to call “collateral”. Damaged beyond all repair in pursuit of objectives engrained in the military industrial complex. And that is always about profits and not princples.

So, is this recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize really a war criminal instead? I certainly think so. And this documentary exposes his crimes. But it is impossible to understand someone like Kissinger unless you understand the infrastructure of the global economy. But that too involves making certain assumptions knowing that the “other side” has assumptions all their own. Me, I always get back to the same point: examining the arguments that the powers that be make regarding the policies [the noble ideals] they claim to pursue – freedom, democracy, human rights – and the far more [grubby] material realities behind them: cheap labor, markets and natural resources.

at wiki [where it barely exists…a blip] : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trials … _Kissinger
trailer: youtu.be/w6dj7bQLijI

THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER [2002]
Directed by Eugene Jarecki

[iambiguous]

The choices you make to endure what you at least have a choice to endure. The lessor of two evils, perhaps, in a world of brutally conflicting goods? Or is it a world of even more brutally conflicting evils? Sometimes it just depends on who you ask.

But surely we can all agree that at least some things are either one or the other. Otherwise, the choice to endure living in a world where we can’t can become unbearable.

There are just times only a fool wouldn’t lie. It is only a matter of coming up with the reasons to explain the truth away.

Sometimes [here] we can become infuriated with each other just trying to determine what the words mean. But at least most of us have come to grasp that once you comprehend this, fitting the words together out in the world we live in is then bascially like fitting together cinder blocks or bricks.

Though a few of us still resist that notion.

Sophie chose to embrace her father’s anti-Semitic tirade when she thought it would put her in a better position with the Commandant of Aushwitz. She even claimed to have helped him to write it. Was her motive purely selfish or was she doing only what the Resistance inside the camp had asked of her: to get on the good side of Hoess in order that she might purloin his son’s radio? Or why not for both reasons?

Then she is asked to choose a child to live and a child to die.

And then there are the choices that Nathan makes. Turns out however that his motivation was not so much a complex and cruel world that had twisted him intellectually into knots, but a mind that was rotting from the inside out. Watching this unfold on the screen was no less disappointing than watching it all unfold in the novel. Apparently it can all be explained by way of something as mundane [and predictable] as mental illness. What a kick in the ass that was. And still is.

Stingo is the one with the typewriter and dictionary. He has experienced almost nothing in the world but he longs to be a writer. He’s young though.

IMDb

[b]Meryl Streep did the final scene (her choice) in one take and refused to do it again, saying that as a mother, she found it too painful and emotionally draining. Years later, Streep appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show and the scene of her choice was shown. Meryl was uncomfortable while the clip was playing and she revealed that she had never watched the scene before that very moment.

Meryl Streep begged director Alan J. Pakula for this role literally on her hands and knees. Marthe Keller and Barbra Streisand both tried to win the role also but Pakula ultimately chose Streep.

Meryl Streep not only learned a Polish accent but also learned how to speak German and Polish in order to have the proper accent of a Polish refugee.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie’s_Choice_(film
trailer: youtu.be/STPJVf6wqCk

SOPHIE’S CHOICE [1982]
Written and directed by Alan J. Pakula

[b]Nathan: Me, need you? Let me tell you something! I need you like a goddamn disease I can’t name! I need you like a case of Anthrax, hear me? Like “triquonosys”! I need you like a biliary calculus, palegra, encephalitis…“Bright’s” disease, for Christ’s sake! “parsinoma” of the brain! I need you… like death! Hear me? Like death!
Sophie: No, Nathan!
Nathan: Go back to Krakow, baby. Back to Krakow!

…

Nathan: Did you have a good time? Did you enjoy our little show? Do you get off on a little bit of eavesdropping?
Stingo: My door was open. I just wondered what was going on.
Nathan: Your door was open? You wondered what was going on? Well, shut my mouth if it isn’t our new literary figure from the South. Too bad I won’t be around for a little lively conversation. We would’ve had great time shooting the shit. We could’ve talked about sports…Southern sports like lynching niggers, or coons I think you all call them there. So long cracker. See you in another life.

…

Sophie: Stinko, yes?
Stingo: Stingo…

…

Sophie: I mean, this is a ridiculous language! English! There’s too many words! The word for “velocity”: OK, there’s “fast”, “quick”… “rapid” and they all mean the same thing.
Nathan: “Swift”,
Stingo: “Speedy”
Nathan: “Hasty”.
Stingo: “Flit”.
Nathan: “Brisk”.
Stingo: “Expeditious”.
Nathan: “Accelerated”.
Stingo: “Winged”.
Sophie: No, no! Stop it! It’s ridiculous! Oh, in French it’s so easy. You say: “vit”. Or in polish, “szybko” and in Russian, “bistroy” It’s only in English that it’s so complicated!

…

Leslie [to Stingo]: Before I went into analysis, I was completely frigid. Can you imagine? Now all I can do is think about fucking. Wilhelm Reich has turned me into a nympho. I mean, sex on the brain![/b]

Unfortunately…

[b]Leslie: You don’t understand…I can’t go all the way. I’ve reached a plateau in my analysis. Before I reach this plateau of vocalization I could never say any of those words. Those Anglo-Saxon four letter words that everybody should be able to say. Now I’m completely able to vocalize.
Stingo [voiceover]: Lesley Lapidus could now say “fuck”…but she could not do it.

…

Sophie: Stingo, you look… you look very nice, you’re wearing your cocksucker.
Stingo [laughing]: That’s my “seersucker.”

…

Sophie [to Stingo noticing the scars on her wrist]: I knew that Christ had turned his face away from me and that only a Jesus who no longer cared for me could kill those people that I love, but…leave me alive…with my shame? Oh, God. So I went to that church and I took the glass I knew was there and I…I’ve cut my wrist. But I didn’t die, of course! Of course, not. Stingo…there’s so many things you don’t understand. There’s so many things that I can’t…that I cannot…tell you.

…

Nathan: This toast is in honor of my disassociation of you two creeps. Disassociation from you, coony captive cunt of king’s county. And you, the dreary dregs of dixie.[/b]

Here he goes again…

[b]Nthan: Tell me Sophie. The same anti-Semitism for which Poland has gained such a worldwide recognition…that this similar anti-Semitism guide your own destiny, help you along…protect you in a manner of speaking so you became one of the minuscule handful of people who lived…while the millions died? Tell me. Tell me why. Explanation, please! Tell me why old lucky number 11379…tell me…why you inhabit the land of the living? What splendid little tricks and strategies sprang from inside that lovely head of yours to allow you to breath the clear Polish air while the multitudes at Auschwitz choked slowly…on the gas? Explain! Explain!

…

Stingo: Sophie, I want to understand…I’d love to know the truth.
Sophie: The truth? It does not make it easier to understand. And maybe you think that find out the truth about me and you’ll understand me and then you’d forgive me for all those…For all my lies.
Stingo: I promise I’ll never leave you.
Sophie: You must never promise that. No one…no one should ever promise that.

…

Sophie [to Stingo]: The truth? I don’t even know what is the truth. After all these lies I’ve told…My father…How can I explain how much I loved my father? My father believed that human perfection was a possibility. Every night I pray to God to forgive me for always making a disappointment to my father. And I pray to him to make worthy of such a great good man. Then I was a grown woman. I was wholly come of age. I was a married woman when I realized I hated my father beyond all words to tell it. It was winter. And my father was working for weeks on the speech he calls…“Poland Jewish Problem”. Ordinarily I typed those speeches and I don’t hear the words, their meaning, but…this time I came upon a word that I have never heard it before. The solution for Poland Jewish Problem, he concludes is “vernichtung”. Extermination. I have not meant to go to the ghetto that afternoon but something made me go there. I stood there I don’t know how long…watching these people that my father has condemned to die. All these men, these women, these children would be “vernichtung”. Extermination.

…

Sophie [to Stingo]: I came to work for Rudolf Hoess…Commandant of Auschwitz. The day they took me to work for Hoess I was forced to walk pass block 25. That is where they took the prisoners that were selected for extermination. The people there were made to stand for, sometimes, days. They were naked and they had no water. And their hands reached out from the bars and they cried and pleaded.

…

Sophie: That night…I kept repeating to myself…“I have saved my son, I have saved my son”. “Tomorrow I can see him!” “And I can tell him good bye”. “And he will have been saved”. Oh, my God, I had such happiness that night! Such hope!
[pause]
Sophie: But Hoess did not keep his word. I was never to know what happened to my boy.

…

Larry: My brother thinks the world of you.
Stingo: I’ve never met anybody more brilliant than Nathan. He’s such a breath at knowledge.
Larry: You’re right…He’s told you and Sophie that he is a research biologist.
Nathan: At Pfizer.
Larry: This biologist business is my brother’s masquerade. He has no degree of any kind. All that is a simple fabrication. The truth is, he’s quite mad. One of those conditions where weeks, months, even years go by without any manifestations. I’m not sure Nathan would forgive me if he knew that I told you. He made me swear never to tell Sophie. She knows nothing. The cruelest joke is that he was born the perfect child. He excelled in everything. Even Nathan’s teachers would speculate on what he would achieve. See, he was the kind of child everyone is prepared to take the credit for. When he was 10 we were told that the child genius was a paranoid schizophrenic. From then on, the only schools he attended were expensive funny farms.[/b]

I remember when I came to this part in the novel. I remember how pissed off I was. I wanted Nathan’s demons to reside in the manner in which he saw the world. His choice, in other words, not a clinical affliction of the brain.

[b]Sophie: It’s not just the age difference, you know?..between you and me, Stingo…I’m going to tell you something. I’m going to tell you something I never told anybody.

…

SS officer [to Sophie]: You’re so beautiful. I’d like to get you in bed. Are you a Polack? You! Are you also one of those filthy communists?
[walks away]
Sophie: I am a Pole! I was born in Cracow! I am not a Jew. Neither are my children! They’re not Jews. They are racially pure. I am a Christian. I am a devout Christian.
[the officer comes back]
SS officer: You are not a communist? You are a believer?
Sophie: Yes sir, I believe in Christ.
SS officer: You believe in Christ the redeemer?
Sophie: Yes.
SS officer [looks at Sophie’s children]: Did He not say… “Suffer the children, come unto me?”
[Sophie remains silent]
SS officer: You may keep one of your children.
Sophie: I beg your pardon?
SS officer: You may keep one of your children. The other must go away.
Sophie: You mean, I have to choose?
SS officer: You are a Polack, not a Yid. That gives you a privilege, a choice.
Sophie: I can’t choose. I can’t choose!
SS officer: Be quiet.
Sophie: I can’t choose!
SS officer: Make a choice. Or I’ll send both of them over there. Make a choice.
Sophie: Don’t make me choose! I can’t!
SS officer: Shut up! Enough! I’ll send them both over there! I told you to shut up! Make a choice!
Sophie: I can’t choose! Please! I can’t choose!
SS officer [to an officer]: Take BOTH children away!
[Sophie clings on to her son while the Nazis take her screaming and crying daughter away from her]
Sophie: Take my little girl! Take my baby!

…

Sophie: So…we’ll go to that farm tomorrow. But please, Stingo, don’t…don’t talk about marriage…and children.

…

Stingo [voieover]: I was 22 and a virgin…and I was clasping in my arms at last the goddess of my unending fantasies. My lust was inexhaustible. Sophie’s lust was both a plunge into carnal oblivion…and a flight from memory and grief. More than that, I now see… It was a frantic and orgiastic attempt to beat back death.

…

Stingo [voiceover]: I let go the rage and sorrow for Sophie and Nathan…and for the many others who were but a few of the butchered and betrayed and martyred children of the Earth. When I could finally see again, I saw the first rays of daylight reflected in the murky river. This was not judgment day. Only morning; morning, excellent and fair.[/b]

I don’t buy it. Not any more. Even if that is all we’ve got.

[iambiguous]

Proving yet again that who you come to think you are is who you come to be around when you are trying to figure that out. Then it all comes down to whatever you are able to experience that will either reinforce these perceptions or nudge [shove] them in another direction altogether. Then as you become more self-conscious of this you can [perhaps] begin to ponder what, say, the great philosophers thought of these things. Fortunately, you can never really be wrong regarding whatever it is you come to conclude. Or, rather, for as long as you are able to sustain any one particular story.

Here she is very beautiful but her mother [the poet] has just committed suicide. Fortunately, she has people to go to. In Italy. Very intelligent, artistic and culturally sophisticatecd people able to instill in her a very intelligent and culturally sophisticated appreciation for those things in life that very intelligent and culturally sophisticated people are able to pass down through the generations. Nothing at all, for example, like the folks that raised me.

Of course the only one more beautiful than her is him. Oh how utterly predictable the iconoclasts always are. Stealing beauty? More like bowing down and worshipping it. And not just the Kids.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealing_Beauty
trailer: youtu.be/SStzlZz6lxc

STEALING BEAUTY [1996]
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

[b]Ian: Very strange, that father of hers. He’s never cared about my work. He hated the portrait I did of Sarah. Why does he suddenly send Lucy to come here?
Diana: Maybe it was Lucy who wanted to come.

…

Alex [who is dying]: Go on, tell me. It’s not as though I’m going to know for very long.

…

Diana: Off to the studio. You know, he hasn’t worked at nights for years.
Noemi: But there is now a virgin in the house.

…

Michele: There is not love. There is only proof of love.

…

Alex: You mustn’t let it get to you?
Lucy: What?
Alex: Us. We don’t mean you any harm. It’s just that up on this hill the only thing we have to talk about is each other.

…

Mr. G: I loved you all…when you were still alive.

…

Lucy: It’s my real father.
Alex: It would seem so.
Lucy: It’s not you, is it?
Alex: Can you picture me beating a viper? I don’t even know what a viper looks like.

…

Alex: Did Lucy choose a good one?
Diana: She chose the first one.
Alex: It’s ludicrous isn’t it?
Diana: What?
Alex: About to snuff it, and still…
Diana: Still chasing tail.

…

Ian: Have you ever actually bought a cigarette, Alex?

…

Alex: Lucy. I so enjoyed watching you. All that beauty. Aren’t we lucky?

…

Osvaldo [to Lucy]: It was my first time too.[/b]

[iambiguous]

The other Internal Affairs. The one that is not the Chinese Internal Affairs. The one that is not the Internal Affairs that The Departed is a remake of.

Of course, for some folks it will always be the other way around.

This one is about dirty cops and clean cops too. But the focus is not on moles or rats. Though it’s still about money. And power. That will almost certainly never change.

IAD. The "cops of the cops”. So most IA officiers are both hated and feared by the cops who are not in IA. And this is Los Angeles. Now, the IA commander claims that “contrary to popular opinion” LA cops are some of the cleanest in the nation. But others have their suspicions about that. Besides, what does that really mean anyway?

Some of the shit these cops pull seems okay by me. They skim a little off the top with respect to all the millions of dollars floating around in the drug trade. Or with respect to organized crime. And it’s not like they’re making a bundle just being a cop. Or they pull some strings and get their buddies a job. Mostly misdemeanor stuff in my book.

But then there is Dennis Peck. I know it’s all just scripted here but one suspects that every major police force has a few like him around. He is wired into everything. And he knows everybody. On both sides of the law. You don’t fuck with him though unless you are prepared to be fucked with back. And he hasn’t got what most call moral scruples. Though he is a lot more complex than many would like to admit. Or can admit.

For one thing, he’s got nine kids [from three different marriages] to support. And he loves them. He really does. But it costs a hell of a lot to raise nine kids.

IMDb

Richard Gere and Andy Garcia reportedly did not get along during filming. Some of the scenes in which they were required to hit each other, particularly the confrontation in the elevator, were allegedly for real. Garcia subsequently refused to attend the wrap party.

And does it ever show.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Affairs_(film
trailer: youtu.be/BtNsYa2mxZ4

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

INTERNAL AFFAIRS [1990]
Directed by Mike Figgis

[b]Dennis [planting a knife on a dead perp]: It’s up to you.

…

Van [weeping]: I didn’t know it was going to be like this.
Dennis: How many cops you know, huh? Got nothing. Divorced, alcoholic, kids won’t talk to them anymore, can’t get it up. Sitting there in their little apartments, alone in the dark, playing lollipop with a service revolver?

…

Amy: What Oakes said about your fellow officers respecting and honoring you is, as you probably know, complete crap. Most of the cops hate our guts. To the extent that they credit us with having any. They think we’re climbers who went into I.A.D. for the promotions, which is true, not that we necessarily get them. So, they’re polite because they’re afraid of us. That’s all.

…

Amy [to Raymomd]: You know all the friends you have from the force? You don’t have them anymore.

…

Arrocas [who wants to hire Dennis to kill his parents]: Can I trust you?
Dennis: Of course you can trust me.
[he leans over and whispers in his ear]
Dennis: I’m a cop.

…

Amy [to Raymond]: I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you and Peck both whip them out and I’ll decide whose is bigger.

…

Dennis [regarding Kathleen]: She’s very pretty too. A little skinny for my taste, but they say the skinny ones give good head so…
[Raymond punches him to the ground]
Dennis: OK, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m gonna fuck her for a while and teach her how to come.
Raymond: Get up!
Dennis: Then that way, she can show you what she likes!
[Raymond decks Dennis again]
Dennis: They said you’re a pretty good boxer, Raymond. You’re pretty fucking good.
[coughing blood]
Dennis: Not bad!
Raymond [throws a handkerchief at Peck]: Clean yourself up.
Dennis: Give my best to Kathleen!

…

Kathleen: Sweetheart, you’re a good painter. When you paint.

…

Dennis: You know what she really wanted? You know? Yeah, I should have guessed. She liked it in the ass, Raymond. That’s right. Right in the fucking ass! Drove her crazy. She came so much, for a second I thought she was going to pass out on me.
[decks Raymond again]
Dennis: You know what they say about Latin fighters, Raymond? You know what they say? Too fucking macho! That’s right. Too fucking macho! They don’t backpedal when they have to. So they’re used up. Young.
[dangles a pair of panties in front of Raymond, then gives them to him]
Dennis: Yeah, why don’t you clean yourself up with that. That’s right. Clean yourself up.

…

Heather [to Dennis]: We’re in trouble aren’t we?

…

Raymond: Why are you trying to protect the man who killed your husband? I don’t get it.
[no response from Penny]
Amy: You’re fucking him aren’t you?

…

Raymond: Get off my bed!
Dennis [about shooting Amy]: Sorry about the dyke, Raymond. Cute little ass.
[Raymond belts him]
Dennis: You’re so fucking easy, Raymond. Like a big baby with buttons all over. I push the buttons.

…

Dennis [draws a knife]: I’m going to miss my children. Gonna miss them.
Raymond: Put the knife down!
[Dennis doesn’t, so Raymond shoots him]
Dennis [to Kathleen]: You think he was aiming for my leg?
[to Raymond]
Dennis: That’s pretty good. You’re pretty good there, Raymond.
Raymond: I’m taking you in.
Dennis: Fuck you! You’re so correct. You don’t feel…
[attempts to get up]
Dennis: …because you do not have children!
[gets up]
Dennis: You don’t know what it’s like. Everything changes when you have children. You don’t think about yourself anymore. You think about nothing but them. You’d go around the world for them, you selfish yuppie![/b]

[iambiguous]

El Topo. What’s it about? Next silly question.

Apparently it alludes to something like this:

El Topo: The mole digs tunnels under the earth, looking for the sun. Sometimes, he gets to the surface. When he sees the sun, he is blinded.

In other words, the meaning is surreal.

The mole here sees himself as God. Or seems to at first. As in “vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord”. The Old Testament God for sure.

This one is probably more for gawking at and ever wondering, “What comes next”? Almost as though you were there when the other God created the heavens and the earth. Miracles and murders abound. And, even more so, metaphors.

Look for freaks galore. Or what most would call freaks. But they are only there for us to attach one or another deep meaning to. Like, well, everything else.

El Topo seems to be after enlightenment. I’ll let you decide for yourself if he finds any. Personally, I don’t think he comes close. But no cynic would, I suppose.

Or maybe we should ask the folks from peta. Or the NRA.

IMDb

[b]Years later, Alejandro Jodorowsky, ashamed of the part he forced his own son to play, invited him to his house. He went with his son to the backyard and asked him to dig. Inside the hole, there was an old teddy bear and an old picture of her mother, and Alexandro said: “Now you are 8 years old, and you have the right to be a kid”.

First released as an underground film, it was thanks to John Lennon that the film acquired a worldwide distribution. He was so impressed by this movie that he urged a close friend of his to buy the rights and take charge of distribution.

Other noteworthy figures said to be fans of the film, besides John Lennon and Yoko Ono, include directors David Lynch and Samuel Fuller, actors Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, and performers Bob Dylan, Marilyn Manson, and Peter Gabriel. It has been claimed that this movie was the beginning of Gabriel’s inspiration for the classic Genesis concept album, ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’.

The title of the movie and the main character’s name are a metaphor of the underground cinema in the sixties. The mole digs holes so as to emerge from the underground to the surface. This was happening with some low-budget movies that quickly gained mainstream popularity.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Topo
trailer: youtu.be/3joYVNyyi5w

EL TOPO [1970]
Written and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

[iambiguous]

I didn’t particularly like either one of them. But I’m not Maureen. Did she pick the right one? Well, let’s just say I think she didn’t pick the wrong one. And that’s about as close as I can come to choosing sides here.

What is amazing though is the transformation that Maureen goes through to reach the point of choosing at all. Before and after the dope? Or before and after Eddie? It’s really remarkable. You hardly recognize her as the same person.

And then there’s Eddie before and after the mental institution. Did they fix him? Put it this way: He thinks he was in there for three month but he was really in there for ten years.

They’re both basically wild and wacky [and somtimes wretched] renegades. It’s just that’s Eddie’s bent takes him out of town from time to time. Only this time it sets into motion some much bigger consequences. Among other things, it changes everything. Or, rather, it puts everything on hold for years to come.

It’s all about love barely able to keep from toppling over and love so well grounded it makes you wish that it would topple over. Though, sure, a lot more complicated than that. I guess you could say they were made for each other.

Word to the wise: Don’t order a Siberian Mist.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She’s_So_Lovely
trailer: youtu.be/Mk4xerKgi9o

SHE’S SO LOVELY [1997]
Directed by Nick Cassavetes

[b]Maureen [on phone]: Hey, Georgie, it’s me. Yeah. Any sign of him? No?! I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch!! I swear to God, it’s three days again!

…

Shorty: Maureen, I love you, and I know you’re bent, but how many times you gonna do this? It’s not like he’s never disappeared before. You know the drill. Wait it out. All the rest is just blowin’ smoke, baby.

…

Kiefer [to Maureen]: Shouldn’t get so violent. You’re way too little for it.

…

Eddie: Three dollars. She’s got three dollars in her pocket. She goes to the doctor with a bum carburettor. She’s pregnant, and falls over. It’s all I ever get, Chinese stories. Fables to cover foibles.

…

Eddie [in a cab]: That perfume stinks! I’m not kidding. That perfume reminds me of too many things.
Maureen: Like what?
Eddie: Like a good smell to cover a bad smell. Older women, sweat, my mother…I don’t know. Some other thought, like, something else is goin’ on…another guy or something.
Maureen: Come here. Kiss me, you wacko.

…

Eddie: When you think about it, what an interesting thing a woman is. Tits and ass and… lips, and th…this kills me…hair. Where the fuck did hair come from? What is hair?
Maureen: It’s like nails. Same as nails.
Eddie: Nails? Nails? What kind of nails you got? I don’t have any hair on my nails.

…

Eddie: I wanna ask you a question. Don’t answer me until I ask unless you’re clairvoyant. Which you could be, but you haven’t been up until now. You’re just pretending to understand to be polite. You can’t see my thoughts. You can’t understand…You can’t understand my obscurity. Unless you have infrared vision, which…Do you? Can you see in infrared? Can you type 170 words a minute? Can you sew? Can you cook? Can you dance? What can you do? Nothin’. I wanna know. It’s a simple question. What happened to you?
Maureen: I fell.
Eddie: You’re gonna play games with me? Somebody beats you up, and that’s OK? You come in here with your eyes all bloody, and I’m supposed to love you when everything inside me is telling me I’m bein’ lied to! I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch, and that’ll be the beginning and the end of everything.

…

Eddie: I’m in trouble. The world’s controlled by a computer and seven women. One has brown hair, one has blonde hair, blue hair, black hair, green hair, one has no hair. Is that seven?
Shorty: What’s the matter, Eddie?
Eddie: Love is so difficult. It’s like horse racing. It’s like perfume. It’s like fog. It’s like kissin’. There is no end to love. Cigarettes, you smoke 'em, you put 'em out.

…

Eddie: Jesus Christ. I had a premonition. You know what that is? It has to do with the occult. It was all so clear. There were seven working-class ministers, all in miniskirts. They were working on their computers. Psalm one, psalm two…
Shorty: Eddie. Eddie.
Eddie: Psalm three…
Shorty: Eddie, you know I’m Catholic. You know I don’t like that kind of talk.
Eddie: I’m talking about women, you asshole! I’m talkin’ about nuns! Priests! I’m talkin’ about bad news. I’m talkin’ about love. But there can’t be any love…'cause there aren’t any people. It’s all temporary. I know. I’ve seen it. You get a cold. They turn you in. Did you see how that guy sneezed? Why the hell doesn’t he go home to sneeze? What the fuck is he doing, sneezing in public? He’s got the flu. He’s got cancer. He’s got T.B. He’s got “shititis.” His blowhole is out. Do you know what they do when your blowhole’s out? Nobody wants ya. OK. I wanna buy a drink for everybody. Siberian Mists for everybody. Make mine a double.

…

Eddie [in a straitjacket…to Maureen]: I think we ought to start out life old. We have all the pain, and we’re feeble, and we look at our friends, and they’re feeble. But every day we get younger and we have something to look forward to. You start out old and then you get young. You can’t take care of yourself, but…there’s hope. And then, when you reach nineteen, twelve, ten, every day is really a new day…and it’s really a miracle. And then you’re a baby, and you don’t know your life is endin’. You just suck on your mother’s tit and then you die.[/b]

This seems to be a rather common point of view in the movies. Now on to part two:

Psychiatrist: And your wife? How do you feel about her?
Eddie: I love her.
Psychiatrist: Even though she was the one to turn you in?
Eddie: Yeah.
Psychiatrist: She hasn’t visited you.
Eddie: No.
Psychiatrist: She hasn’t written?
Eddie: No.
Psychiatrist: If your wife were to have divorced you, how would that make you feel? Eddie?
Eddie [weeping]: Well, I don’t know how I’d feel. I haven’t seen my wife for a long time, and I don’t know what she’s doing.
Psychiatrist: The reason I’m asking you this is it’s very important for us to know you won’t leave here with any active hostility towards your wife.
Eddie: No.
Psychiatrist: No enmity whatsoever?
Eddie: No, what you…None of what you said.
Psychiatrist: And if your wife were to have stopped loving you, what would you do?

Let’s just say his face says it all.

Maureen: Look, I turned him in, divorced him, married you. I’m just going to talk to him a little bit. Joey, I love this guy, OK? I love you too, but I love him more, and I told you that. Come on. I’m happy with you now. Don’t rock the boat.
Joey: Don’t rock the boat? Oh-ho, that’s too uptown for me, honey. I can’t live like that. What are you sayin’? I love you. Thank you for takin’ me out of the fuckin’ gutter, but I love my first husband more? So please don’t call him because you might rock the boat! What the fuck is that? Rock what…Rock whose boat? Hey, I’m the guy you married, remember? You had a smile, you wore a veil, you said the vows. We didn’t have those babies by osmosis.

Exactly: He rocks the boat.

[b]Joey [to his daughter]: Jean, you want to meet your daddy?
Jean: You mean my real daddy?
Joey: Sure. Everyone should meet their daddy.
Maureen: You’re making a big mistake here, buuddy.

…

Joey: All the…All the times you held me. All the fuckin’ laughs we had…All the things we did together. Come on! You can’t tell me you was passin’ time. You can’t tell me that. 'Cause I won’t believe it.
Maureen: Believe it.

…

Maureen: Hey, Joey. I had a good life with you, OK? You want to bust it, go ahead.

…

Maureen [on phone]: Joey insisted that he take Jeannie down to see you.
Eddie: Joey? Who is he? Should I know?
Maureen: He’ll tell ya.

…

Eddie: Who is this guy? What do you think of him, Shorty?
Joey [pulling out a gun]: What do you think of this?
Shorty: Hey, Joey. What the hell are you doin’? We came here for dinner. Nobody brought a piece. What are you pullin’ a piece for? It’s not that kind of an evening.

…

Jeanie: Hey Daddy, what are you doing?
Joey: Shut up and drink your beer!

…

Maureen [about to leave her family to go off with Eddie]: I’ll get my coat.
Joey: Bullshit! Looks like a lot of fuckin’ bullshit!
Eddie: Hey, don’t blame her! What difference does it make what she says, what she feels, what she thinks? For whatever reason, she belongs to me. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Spy vs. spy. But they are all on the same side here in one important respect: capitalism won. No one is out to bring the system down. There are no communists with manifestos and nuclear warheads. Instead, they are all capitalists intent on spying on each other. Actually, destroying each other.

Cheating in other words. But they all do it and capitalism is nothing if not amoral. Money is money is money. Power is power is power. And this “regular guy” gets to play James Bond. Or so he programed himself to think.

This is the world of high-tech. Information [the right information] is worth its weight in gold. So folks are hired to get it. But then other folks are hired to stop them from getting it. And that means spies infiltrating the companies that have it and spies intercepting the other spies in order to turn them into [expendable] double agents.

Or that is what we are lead to believe is going on.

But then things can get complicated. Real complicated. Suddenly we are in the world of science fiction. Meaning the kind of stuff that generally revolves around “things are not what they seem”. Not even close. And it goes without saying: TRUST NO ONE. Not even yourself. You’re probably not who you think you are anyway. Will this become the nature of “identity” just a few short years [decades] from now?

Fifty years ago, you’d watch a film like this and think, “no way, these things can’t really happen.” Now you watch it and think, “it’s probably already happening.” This is surely what the folks behind the curtains at the NSA are in hot pursuit of.

IMDb

The character of Virgil C Dunn would appear to be a reference to the Latin poet Virgil, specifically in Dante’s Divine Comedy it was Virgil who was the guide to Hell and Purgatory, as a non-Christian he was unable to enter Heaven.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypher_(film
trailer: youtu.be/KNAnt2FfPiM

CYPHER [2002]
Directed by Vincenzo Natali

[b]Mr.Finster: The stakes in this line of work are very high.
Morgan: I understand.
Mr. Finster: You will be sent to conventions across the country. You will record the speeches. You will have to deceive other people about what you do for a living.
Morgan: Yes. That’s been made very clear.
Mr.Finster: Even your own wife.
Morgan: Yes.
Mr. Finster: You don’t mind lying too much?
Morgan: No…I don’t mind.

…

Morgan [after receiving his new identy card as Jack Thursby]: What’s he like? What’s his personality?
Mr. Finster: He’s whoever you want him to be.

…

Rita: I do health inspections of hotel restaurants.
Morgan: That sounds interesting.
Rita: No it doesn’t.
Morgan: Do you have an answer for everything?
Rita: Yes.

…

Morgan: What is really going on?
Rita [with a very long needle]: If you want answers take the shot.

…

Morgan: I want to see Rita.
Callaway: That’s not possible.
Morgan: Why not she works for you.
Callaway: She does not work for us.
Morgan: Who does she work for?
Callaway: He works for Sebastian Rooks.
Morgan: Who is Sebastian Rooks?!
Callaway: Sebastian Rooks is a freelance operative who we hired to find out how Digicorp was getting their agents past our neurographs. Then we asked him to send us an agent who wasn’t brainwashed. He delivered you.[/b]

You can’t help but wonder how this sort of shit unfolds between, say, Microsoft and Apple. Nothing like this I would imagine but I can well imagine it heading in that direction.

[b]Callaway: I’m sorry, Morgan, but that’s your vision of Jack Thursby, not Digacorps.

…

Rita [to Morgan]: As they copy the Sunways files digicorp will think they have won a major victory against their greatest rival. In reality Digicorp is the loser. Sunways is feeding them corrupt data that will sabotage their operations. But make no mistake Mr. Sullivan, Sunways is just as ruthless as Digacorp. Once the operation is complete, they will eliminate you.

…

Rita [to Morgan]: Please, you can trust me.

…

Mr Finster [to Morgan]: Remember, I’m the only one you can trust.

…

Virgil: You wouldn’t believe the number of times Digacorp has tried to hack into this.
Morgan: Have they ever succeeded?
Virgil: Hell no. This place is tighter than a nun’s asshole.

…

Callaway: Did you get a look at him? Did you see Rooks’ face?
Finster: Just Morgan Sullivan, our pawn.
[then it dawns on him]
Callaway: Jesus, he’s Rooks![/b]

[iambiguous]

As movies that make you think go, this one is just a light snack. But a really delicious light snack.

And it’s a very clever movie. It’s an independent movie about the making of an independent movie. An independent “horror” film here. One that has a fantastic plot twist at the end.

I didn’t see it coming myself but then I don’t spend much time trying to figure these things out in the course of actually watching a film. I want to be surprised. Just as I want to be amazed in the presence of a great magician.

Four “struggling actors” [in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere] set out to write a screenplay in order to make a film – one like all the other great independent productions they have come to love. And, sure, if it becomes another Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, all the better.

Here’s the thing though: The screenplay that they are writing starts to come true. And before long they are all scared shitless. Or, rather, three of them are.

Then comes the law of unintended consequences.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghead
trailer: youtu.be/RHHdIXSNgyM

BAGHEAD [2008]
Written and directed by Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass

[b]Matt: How did you make the movie so cheap?
Jett: Well, I used my parents camera, a mini dvd camera, shot it in my town, shot it with real light. Hollywood has us convinced that it takes a 100 million dollar budget to make a qualtiy piece of art and that’s a bunch of crap.

…

Michelle Oh, no, Chad and I are just friends.
Catherine: Does he know that?

…

Matt: That’s it! A guy running around in the dark with a bag over his head killing people!

…

Chad: Swear on your left gonad that you will not have sex with Michelle.
Matt [grabbing his left gonad]: I sear that I am not going to fuck her.
Chad: Fuck who?
[Matt stammers]
Chad: See? You’re all ready trying to…You’re like Bill Clinton!

…

Chad [to Matt]: You get all the chicks. You’ve got Elvis hair.

…

Matt: If someone is playing a fucking trick, they better fess up right now!

…

Jett: This wasn’t supposed to happen!

…

Chad: Matt’s dead…[/b]

What do you think? Is he?

[iambiguous]

It’s all about the magic.

They live among the other citizens of the United States. But they also inhabit a tiny community out in the vastness of a desert locale in the American Southwest. What some might even call a wasteland. They are, in other words, a colorful and idiosnyncratic lot.

But they haven’t seen anything yet: Jasmin Münchgstettner is in, uh, town. And they already have Brenda.

And then the look on Brenda’s face when Jasmin first walks up to the Cafe. Jasmin’s face wet from sweat, Brenda’s from tears.

I think when push comes to shove the film tries to depict what Bob is talking about with respect to “love and magic” between people. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=184874 . Or maybe not. Of course this is all scripted. And how many people are there in the whole wide fucking world like Jasmin? So, really, it’s just a fairly tale. I mean, come on.

Anyway, you still wish we could live in a world where all folks come [eventually] to interact like this. Unless of course you are, say, one of the Ubermen. But here no one talks about things like race and IQ. It never even occurs to them.

This film also features one of the most beautiful [haunting] songs ever wriiten: youtu.be/mj2qFjBKxmI

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagdad_Caf%C3%A9
trailer: youtu.be/HUEyRwMHZyg

BAGDAD CAFE [Out of Rosenheim] 1987
Written in part and directed by Percy Adlon

[b]Brenda [to Sal]: Mind if I ask you a question? What is that thing up on your shoulders?

…

Brenda: Sal Sal Sal…you’re such a child. Only problem is I got two children. I don’t need a third.

…

Jasmin: The center?
Brenda: What center? The shopping center?
Jasmin: Of Bagdad.
Brenda: Of Bagdad? This is it. This is Bagdad.

…

Brenda [aloud to herself]: I knew she was weird.

…

Brenda: Don’t tell me that was it, Arnie! I mean, you gotta be kidding! That what I had you come up here for? I don’t believe it! I mean she, she shows up outta nowhere without a car, without a man. She ain’t got nothing but a suitcase filled with men’s clothing. How come? How come she act so funny like she was gonna stay here forever? And with no clothes?! No! I don’t like it! It don’t make no sense at all! No, no, no, no, no! IT DON’T MAKE NO SENSE!!

…

Jasmin: That’s not coffee, it’s brown water.

…

Rudi [to Jasmin]: Would you like to see my other paintings?

…

Brenda: Go play with your own kids!
Jasmin [softly]: I don’t have any.

…

Jasmin: Goodbye Miss Brenda.
Brenda: Bye Miss Jasmin.

…

Brenda: Now why would you want to leave?
Debby: Too much harmony.

…

Rudi: Will you marry me?
Jasmin: I’ll talk it over with Brenda.[/b]

[iambiguous]

He teaches them, they teach him. They change him, he changes them. Well, some of them. And sort of.

He is the grizzled set in his way senior citizen. The curmudgeon. A real sourpuss.

And conservative as hell. On the other hand, he is an atheist. Or he seems to be. But God does manage to sneak back in at the end.

He still lives in the “old neighborhood”. But this ain’t the 1950s anymore. The neighborhood has, uh, changed. For example, right next door is a family of Hmong immigrants. Or as Walt prefers to call them “swamp rats”. Or gooks. Or chinks. Or slopes. Or zipperheads. And then there are the thugs. Thugs are everywhere. Mexican. Asian. Black.

And then there is Sue Lor. She just wants to mind her own business and make something of herself in the world. But the thugs won’t let her.

What could possibly go wrong?

In other words, a clash of cultures intertwined with a culture transported to America such that the younger family members are willing [or able] to absorb the new culture more fluently. And it all takes places in a run down working class neighborhood. So it is hardly “universal”.

How far-fetched is it? It’s pretty far-fetched. I mean, suicide by thugs?

IMDb

[b]When Walt is at the Hmong’s party, he pats the head of a young Hmong girl passing through, causing the family members to audibly gasp. In Hmong culture, the human head is believed to house the soul, and any touching of the head is believed to jeopardize this, and is thus considered very disrespectful.

Open casting calls for Hmong actors were held in Hmong communities in Detroit, Michigan; Saint Paul, Minnesota; and Fresno, California. Only Doua Moua had been in a film before.

Clint Eastwood encouraged the Hmong actors to ad-lib in Hmong.

Walt fires a weapon only once in the movie, accidentally.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Torino
trailer: youtu.be/9ecW-d-CBPc

GRAN TORINO [2008]
Directed by Clint Eastwood

[b]Mitch: Look at the Old Man glaring at Ashley. He can’t even tone it down at Mom’s funeral?
Steve: What do you expect? Dad’s still living in the ‘50s. He expects his granddaughter to dress a little more…modestly.

…

Ashley: Grandpa Walt, can I help you with the chairs.
Walt: No, I’ll take care of it. You probably just painted your nails.

…

Ashley: Wow, Grandpa, when’d you get the vintage car?
Walt: 1972.
Ashley: I never knew you had a cool old car.
Walt: It’s only been in here since before you were born.
Ashley: So, what are you, like, going to do with it, like, when you die?

…

Walt [answering the door]: Who the hell are you?
Thao (very quietly): I’m Thao, I live next door.
Walt: What?! Speak up, boy, get the shit out of your mouth. What do you want?
Thao: Do you have jumper cables? My uncle’s car is old and…
Walt: No. And have some goddamned respect, zipperhead, we’re in mourning here.
[Walt slams the door in his face][/b]

There, it’s all set up. All that’s missing now is the gang of thugs.

[b]Walt [watching a Hmong man slaughter a chicken]: Damn barbarians.

…

Walt [aloud to himself]: What the hell did the chinks have to move into this neighborhood for?

…

Walt [to his buddies in a bar]: Oh, I’ve got one. A Mexican, a Jew, and a colored guy go into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, “Get the fuck out of here.”

…

Father Janovich: I promised your wife I’d get you to go to confession.
Walt: Jesus Christ, why’d you do that?
Father Janovich: She was very insistent. She made me.
Walt: You sure are fond of promising people stuff you can’t deliver on.
Father Janovich: Let’s talk about something else.
Walt: Like what?
Father Janovich: Life and death.
Walt: What would you know about it?
Father Janovich: I’d like to think I know a lot. I’m a priest.
Walt: You stand at the altar and preach on and on about life and death without knowing anything other than what you learned in priest school. Everything you say sounds like it’s out of the Rookie Preachers Handbook.
[Walt quotes from the priest’s sermon]
Walt: ‘Death is bittersweet? Bitter in the pain, sweet in the salvation.’ That’s what you know of life and death? Good God, it’s pathetic.

…

Walt [to Father Janovich]: I think you’re an overeducated 27-year-old virgin who likes to hold the hands of superstitious old ladies and promise them everlasting life.

…

Father Janovich: Why didn’t you just call the police?
Walt: Well, you know, I prayed for them to come but nobody answered.

…

Walt [to Father Janovich]: The thing that haunts a guy the most is the stuff he wasn’t ordered to do.

…

Martin: There. You finally look like a human being again. You shouldn’t wait so long between hair cuts, you cheap son of a bitch.
Walt: Yeah. I’m surprised you’re still around. I was always hoping you’d die off and they got someone in here that knew what the hell they were doing. Instead, you’re just hanging around like the doo-wop dago you are.
Martin: That’ll be ten bucks, Walt.
Walt: Ten bucks? Jesus Christ, Marty. What are you, half Jew or somethin’? You keep raising the damn prices all the time.
Martin: It’s been ten bucks for the last five years, you hard-nosed Polack son of a bitch.
Walt: Yeah, well keep the change.
Martin: See you in three weeks, prick.
Walt: Not if I see you first, dipshit.

…

Duke [a thug]: What you lookin’ at old man?
Walt: Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn’t have fucked with? That’s me.

…

Sue Lor: Hmong girls over here fit in better. The girls go to college and the boys go to jail.

…

Walt [reading aloud from the newspaper to his dog]: “Your birthday today, Daisy. This year you have to make a choice between two life paths. Second chances comes your way. Extraordinary events culminate in what might seem to be an anticlimax. Your lucky numbers are 84, 23, 11, 78, and 99.” What a load of shit.

…

Sue Lor: All the people in this house are very traditional. Number one: never touch a Hmong person on the head. Not even a child. The Hmong people believe that the soul resides on the head, so don’t do that.
Walt: Well…sounds dumb, but fine.
Sue Lor: Yeah, and a lot of Hmong people consider looking someone in the eye to be very rude! That’s why they look away when you look at them.
Walt: Yeah. Anything else?
Sue Lor: Yeah…some Hmong people tend to smile or grin, when they’re yelled at. It’s a cultural thing, it expresses embarrassment or insecurity. It’s not that they’re laughing at you or anything.
Walt: Right, you people are nuts.

…

Walt [to Thao]: Take these three items, WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone.

…

Thao [practicing how to talk like a man]: Excuse me Sir, I need a haircut…if you ain’t too busy you old Italian son of a bitch prick. Boy, does my ass hurt from all of the guys at my construction job.

…

Walt [in a rage over his responsibility for Sue’s rape]: You rotten fuck…
[begins punching the doorframe]
Walt: You rotten fuck!
[overturns his kitchen table]
Walt: YOU ROTTEN FUCK!
[drives his fist through the plate glass cabinetry][/b]

And then armed only with the script he goes after the thugs. A bloodbath for sure, we’re thinking. And it is. But not the way most expected I’m sure.

[b]Walt [in church]: I’m here for a confession.
Father Janovich: Oh, Lord Jesus what have you done?!

…

Lawyer [reading from Walt’s will]: And I’d like to leave my 1972 Gran Torino to…
[the lawyer pauses and looks up at Ashley, who smiles expectantly]
Lawyer: …my friend…Thao Vang Lor. On the condition that you don’t chop-top the roof like one of those beaners, don’t paint any idiotic flames on it like some white trash hillbilly, and don’t put a big, gay spoiler on the rear end like you see on all the other zipperheads’ cars. It just looks like hell. If you can refrain from doing any of that…it’s yours.[/b]

[iambiguous]

AIDS is one of those calamities that come along and, for millions of human beings, nothing is ever quite the same. It changes how we think about so many different things. And some will find themselves asking, in particular, “how ought I to live now?”

For most, there is only “before” and “after” they tumble down into a hole this big. And you really get a close up look at just how the personal and the political can become intertwined. And how discussions of morality can get tied into altogether different kinds knots. After all, this is a matter of life and death. And sexual freedom.

And then there’s the part about dollars and cents. And the part about egos.

This all unfolds at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic. The disease was brand new and the symptoms were so strange and atypical the medical community was scrambling just to get a grip on anything at all that might help them to treat the patients. Or even to tell them what it is they had. But, unfortunately, the disease started to spread at the dawn of the Reagan administration as well. Many of the reactionaries here could not even bring themselves to say the word homosexual.

Then related to this is the gap between what can be “irrefutably proven by science” and the way in which the politicans [and the moneymen] can twist this into anything that might expediently protect their own vested interests.

IMDb

Produced despite heavy misgivings in the film industry. When film star Richard Gere accepted a small role, he broke the taboos - at grave risk to his career - about both the subject and major film stars taking small parts in TV productions. Subsequently Steve Martin, Alan Alda, Phil Collins and Anjelica Huston were willing to appear.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_the_Ba … d_On_(film
trailer: youtu.be/PaHUzy-A05U

AND THE BAND PLAYED ON [1993]
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode

[b]Dr. Dritz [at the dawn of the disease]: Last night we lost another one. In less than three weeks, this handsome young guy turns into the elephant man. Which we found out was caused by some rare parasite that only sheep get. So I called a vet, to ask what they do when sheep get it. They shoot them he said.

…

Don [looking at his new “lab”]: Hopeless I can live with but this is ridiculous.

…

The Choreographer: They got a name yet for this disease?
Mary: The gay press calls it gay pneumonia or gay cancer. And the straight press doesn’t mention it at all.

…

The Choreographer [staring out the window at a man dressed up as the Grim Reaper in the Halloween gay pride parade]: The party’s over.

…

Congressman Burton: I’ll introduce a bill. But if all the angels came dancing down to earth like the Rockettes, even they couldn’t get a dime out of this administration for anything with the name “gay” on it.

…

Don [to Harold]: What do we think? What do we know? What can we prove? I’m so sick of that. The only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know anything. Which also happens to be the only thing we can prove. We think. Or do we know? Or do we think we know? I don’t even know what the hell it is.

…

Don [watching Harold play Pac-Man]: Something’s gobbling up the t-cells…

…

Chip [a patient afflicted with AIDS]: 666…
Dr. Darrow: Excuse me?
Chip: …that’s my room number.

…

Don [to Harold regarding the relationship between sex and AIDS]: When your house is on fire you don’t wait for scientific proof that it is on fire before you start to put it out.

…

Eddie: Let me tell you people something, no matter what happens here today, if you try to close my joint, I’ll sue the ass off you.
Don: Doesn’t it bother you knowing that the people who have sex in your bath-house are playing Russian roulette?
Eddie: Please just cut out this bullshit. We’re all in this for one thing: money. I make it when the guys come in. You doctors, you make it when they go out.

…

Bobbi: Now for years and years and years people in my hometown were telling me I was a freak because of my sexual orientation, until I came to San Francisco, and I found a community of freaks just like me. We stood together. We stood together! And it took a long time. But we finally forced this one tiny spot of the universe, the Castro, to realise that how we choose to have sex, and where, is our own damn business. Which to all other people who haven’t gone through what we’ve gone through sounds funny and they may laugh, but I know speaking for most of us, I would rather die as a human being than continue living as a freak.
Dr. Silverman: Clearly there’s a lot of strong feeling on the subject…
Voice in the crowd: What good is all the gay rights in the world if we are all dead?

…

Dr. Montagnier: It’s amazing to me that Americans can think a disease has a sexual preference. But that’s all Americans think of… Sex. Sex. Sex.

…

Don [to Mary]: This may be the first epidemic in history of which no one officially died.

…

Don: It’s in the bloodstream…[/b]

An example of how thorny the moral/political thicket could become: conflicting goods.

[b]Dr. Curran [at a hearing linking AIDS and the nation’s blood supply]: One option is to establish guidelines to keep people who are at high risk from donating blood.
Black man at hearing: Banning homosexuals from giving blood won’t protect the blood supply. What it will do is stigmatize them. Reminds me of blood banks rejecting donations from blacks for fear of syphilis.
Man at hearing: Do you have any idea of the implications for civil rights if…
Woman at hearing: Civil rights my ass. My son’s a hemophilliac and if homosexuals are infecting the blood supply why not keep them from donating?
Man at hearing: The entire gay community? Then what? Separate drinking fountains?! One for gays! One for humans!
Woman at hearing: Don’t start that gay rights crap! There are 20,000 hemophiliacs in this country and GRID [AIDS] has become the second leading cause of death amongst them. We have rights too. And one of them is the right to stay alive.

…

Blood Bank executive: Is the CDC seriously suggesting that the blood industry spends $100M a year to use the test for the wrong disease because we have a handful of transfusion fatalities and eight dead hemophiliacs?
Don: How many dead hemophiliacs do you need? How many people have to die to make it cost effecient for you people to do something about it? A hundred? A thousand? Give us a number so we won’t annoy you again until the amount of money you begin spending on lawsuits make it more profitable for you to save people than to kill them.

…

Dr. Donohue: Let me ask you this, when the doctors start acting like businessmen, who do the people turn to for doctors?

…

Dr. Gallo: All right, explain one thing to me. Ten times ten times ten, my name is in every book ever written on the human retrovirus. Why would you get in bed with the French instead of me?
Don: Is it you against the French? I thought we were all against the virus. If you go to court now, everybody loses. You, the people who die while you quibble…
Dr. Gallo [Interrupting]: What do you want?
Don: I want to stop you from turning a holocaust into an international pissing contest!

…

Roger Lyon: This is not a political issue. This is a health issue. This is not a gay issue. This is a human issue. And I do not intend to be defeated by it. I came here today in the hope that my epitaph would not read that I died of red tape.[/b]

[iambiguous]

She’s a “family woman” accused of murder. She is tried, convicted and sent to prison. Did she do it? Of course, if you are her husband and you love her dearly that might not matter. Not when it comes to breaking her out.

What’s tricky here though is that she tells her husband that she did do it.

Anyway, he intends to spring her. But the husband teaches literature at a community college. He doesn’t even know how to put bullets in a gun. So obviously he is going to need some help.

This is basically one of those films that stretches your credulity to the breaking point. But then that’s never stopped you before. You like the guy, you like the wife. You want justice. And since that hardly ever happens in the real world you have to settle for something like this. Or most of us do.

It’s not really a well-executed film though.

Anyway, at the heart of this [for me] is trying to imagine how someone must feel spending the rest of their life in prison for something that they did not do. In part because we know that this has happened time and again “in the real life”.

Then I started wondering. Suppose you are in prison for a crime you did not commit. You break out and commit another crime. They catch you but are then able to establish that you were in fact wrongfully accused and imprisoned. Are you still arrrested and charged with the new crime?

IMDb

[b]The “bump key” technique used by Crowe does actually work as portrayed, on cylinder locks.

Mark Isham, director Paul Haggis’s regular collaborator, did not compose the score to this film, due to their falling out over Haggis’s highly publicized decision to leave the Church of Scientology, of which Isham is still a member.[/b]

Fucking religion!

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_Three_Days
trailer: youtu.be/JkmCHXIfMMg

THE NEXT THREE DAYS [2010]
Written in part and directed by Paul Haggis

[b]Lara: Can you do me a favor?
John: I don’t know, I’m kind of busy.
Lara: I need you to run for governor.
John: I can do that.
Lara: You can change this rule about no conjugal visits, 'cause I don’t think I can last another 20 years.

…

Meyer: I need you to look at the evidence and just forget Lara is your wife.
John: I’ve seen the evidence, Meyer.
Meyer: I’m not saying judge her innocent or guilty, I’m just saying look at it. Her co-worker sees her leaving the scene, she has the victim’s blood on her clothes, her fingerprints on the murder weapon.
John: We went out for dinner! How do you do that after you kill somebody? She would have to be a psychopath!
Meyer: And the fight in the office…
John: Everyone fights with their boss!
Meyer: But this one ended up dead.

…

John: So, what are you saying, Meyer?!
Meyer: That it no longer matters what we believe; Lara’s not getting out!![/b]

It’s almost time for plan B.

[b]John: So, the life in times of Don Quixote, what is it about?
College Student: That someone’s belief in virtue is more important than virtue itself?
John: Yes… that’s in the there. But what is it about? Could it be how rational thought destroys your soul? Could it be about the triumph of irrationality and the power that is in that? You know, we spend a lot of time trying to organize the world. We build clocks and calendars and we try to predict the weather. But what part of our life is truly under our control? What if we choose to exist purely in a reality of our own making? Does that render us insane? And if it does, isn’t that better than a life of despair?

…

John: I teach a course that investigates what drives men to be free, no matter the cost.
Damon: Somebody else had dibs on Papillon?

…

Damon [to John]: Escaping is easy; the hardest part is staying free.

…

Damon: From the time they make the call, the police can have the center of the city sealed tight in fifteen minutes.
John: How can they be so exact?
Damon: After 9-11, Homeland Security made every city have a lock-down plan – downtown Pittsburgh, Philly, Boston, Minneapolis – fifteen minutes. They can do DC in under ten.

…

Damon: But before you do anything, you have to ask yourself if you can do it. Can you forget about ever seeing your parents again? Can you kill a guard? Leave your kid at a gas station? Push some nice old lady to the ground just because she gets between you and the door? Because to do this thing, that’s who you have to become. And if you can’t, don’t start, 'cause you’ll just get someone killed.

…

John: How did you get caught?
Damon: I gave myself up. I couldn’t take wondering when someone was gonna come through the bedroom door.

…

Harv: How do you know Mouss?
John: He babysits my kid.

…

Mike: What do you need?
John: Passports, driver’s license, a social security number that’ll take a credit check.
Mike: $3,700.
John: That’s too much.
Mike: It is if you never get them.

…

John [purchasing a gun]: Show me where the bullets go.

…

Mike [to John]: You want this too much. You’re gonna fuck it up.

…

Major: You know what a bump key is?
John: Sorry?
[Major puts a key on the desk and just stares at John]
Major: If this was you on the video, you might want to think about what’s going to happen to your kid if both of his parents are in prison.

…

Lara: You know you never even asked me if I did it. If I killed her.
John: Because I knew you didn’t.
Lara: Then you’d be wrong.

…

Detective Collero [to her partner]: You really thought you were going to find it… [/b]

[iambiguous]

Thelma and Louise are really really easy on the eyes. Hell, some would call them gorgeous. But then you almost have to be when you’re discovering feminism out there in Hollywood. Especially 20 years after the women’s movement had tried to take us in exactly the opposite direction with respect to all that beauty shit.

And then there’s that J.D. dude. He’s kinda gorgeous too.

But then this is what some in the women’s movement call “bourgeoise feminism”. It’s all about personal freedom and not taking anymore shit from men. It’s funded for example by resorting to crime. And it don’t come anywhere near grappling with pathriarchy in a more, say, systemic manner?

They do get around to the part about money though. How so much of the gap between what you want to do and what you can do seems always to be dependent on your access to it.

And there aren’t a whole lot of men in the film that are not either grieviously pathetic or complete fucking assholes. Though I suppose there might be any number of women who would insist they got that part right.

Of course once Louise shot and killed Harlan, there weren’t but one way this one was going to end.

IMDb

[b]Then struggling actor George Clooney auditioned five times for Ridley Scott for the part of J.D. that went to Brad Pitt.

For the more raunchy sex scenes between Brad Pitt and Geena Davis, director Ridley Scott had assumed that a body double would be needed for Geena. Shortly after he’d begun auditioning prospective doubles, Davis learned of Scott’s intentions and insisted that no doubles were needed in those steamy scenes.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelma_%26_Louise
trailer: youtu.be/PRr0HY9MPZ0

THELMA AND LOUISE [1991]
Directed by Ridley Scott

[b]Louise [to Thelma]: Well, you get what you settle for.

…

Louise: I’ve never seen you this way. You’re usually more…sedate.
Thelma: Well, I’ve had it up to my ass with sedate.

…

Louise [in the parking lot outside the bar where Harlan is attempting to rape Thelma]: Get away from her you fuckin’ asshole or I’m gonna splatter your ugly face all over this nice car.
Harlan [getting off of Thelma]: Easy, we’re just having a little fun.
Louise: Sounds like you got a real fucked up idea of fun. Turn around. In the future, when a woman’s crying like that, she isn’t having any fun!

…

Thelma: Shouldn’t we go to the cops? I mean, I think we should tell the police.
Louise: Tell them what?! What, Thelma? What do you think we should tell them?
Thelma: I don’t know. Just tell 'em what happened. All of it. That he tried to rape me.
Louise: Only about a hundred people saw you cheek to goddamn cheek with him all night, Thelma! Who’s gonna believe that?! We just don’t live in that kind of world.

…

Louise: We’re gonna need more money.

…

Louise: I’m in deep shit, Jimmy; Deep Shit, Arkansas.

…

Thelma: I had a plan, I said we should go to the police, but you didn’t like that.
Louise: Well what’s the rush, Thelma? If we wait long enough, they’ll come to us.

…

Louise: I don’t want to go that way. Find a way that we don’t have to go through Texas.
Thelma (looking at map): Wait. What? You want to go to Mexico from Oklahoma and you don’t want to go through Texas?
Louise: You know how I feel about Texas. We’re not going that way.
Thelma: I know, Louise, but we’re running for our lives! Don’t you think you could make an exception just this once?! I mean, look at the map. The only thing between Oklahoma and Mexico is Texas!

…

Thelma: You could park a car in the shadow of his ass.

…

Louise [to Thelma]: Look, you shoot off a guy’s head with his pants down, believe me, Texas ain’t the place you want to get caught.

…

Thelma: Jimmy! Hello, stranger. What in the world are you doin’ here?
Jimmy: Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.
Thelma: Good answer. Same goes double for me.

…

J.D. [to Thelma]: Well, I’ve always believed that if done properly, armed robbery doesn’t have to be an unpleasant experience.

…

Thelma: Hey Louise, better slow down, I’ll just die if we get caught over a speeding ticket. Are you sure we should be driving like this, I mean in broad daylight and everything?
Louise: No we shouldn’t, but I want to put some distance between us and the SCENE OF OUR LAST GOD DAMNED CRIME!

…

Thelma [after Louise tells her the police probably tapped Darryl’s phone]: Tap the phones? What’re you talking about?
Louise: Come on, Thelma, murder 1 and armed robbery.
Thelma: Murder 1? We can’t even say it was self defense?
Louise: Well it wasn’t, we got away, we were walking away.
Thelma: Yeah but they don’t know that. It was just you and me there. I’ll say he raped me and you had to shoot him, that’s almost the truth.
Louise: Won’t work.
Thelma: Why not?
Louise: There’s no physical evidence, we can’t prove he did it, we probably can’t even prove by now that he touched you.
Thelma: God, the law is some tricky shit isn’t it? Hey, how do you know about all this?
Louise: Besides, what’re we going to say about the robbery? There’s no such thing as justifiable robbery.
Thelma: Alright Louise…
[she sees a white cowboy hat in the backseat]
Thelma: …where’d you get this?
Louise: Stole it.

…

Thelma [with her gun to the state trooper’s head]: I swear 3 days ago neither one of us would’ve ever pulled a stunt like this, but if you’d ever meet my husband you’d understand why.

…

Louise: Should’ve gone to the police in the beginning, why didn’t I?
Thelma: You said why before.
Louise: What’d I say?
Thelma: That nobody would believe us. You know that jerk was really hurting me, and if you hadn’t come along when you had he would’ve hurt me even worse. And probably nothing would’ve been done with him because I was dancing with him all night and everybody saw it and they’d figure I had it coming. My life would’ve been ruined a whole lot more than it is now, now I’m having fun. I’ll tell you something else, I’m not the least bit sorry that creep is dead, I’m just sorry it was you who did it and not me.

…

Hal [on phone]: At least you’re still on the face of the earth.
Louise: Well, we’re not in the middle of nowhere, but we can see it from here.

…

Louise [on the phone]: Certain words and phrases just keep drifting through my mind, things like, “incarceration”, “cavity search”, “death by electrocution”, “life in prison”, shit like that, know what I’m sayin’, so do I want to come out alive? I don’t know. I’m gonna have to think about that.
Hal: Louise, I’ll do anything. I know what’s making you run. I know what happened to you in Texas.

…

Thelma: But, umm, I don’t know, you know, something’s, like, crossed over in me and I can’t go back. I mean I just couldn’t live.
Louise: I know, I know what you mean. I just don’t wanna end up on the damned Geraldo show.

…

Thelma: You awake?
Louise: Guess you could call it that…

…

Thelma: Now what?
Louise: We’re not giving up, Thelma.
Thelma: Then let’s not get caught.
Louise: What are you talkin’ about?
Thelma (indicating the Grand Canyon): Go.
Louise: Go? You sure?
Thelma: Go.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Love and human remains? Indeed and times three here. Delia, the battered wife and mother of three from the Catskills, Greta, the successful but sometimes unfaithful editor from the big city and Paula, the wayward soul on the run from a tragedy, stumbling into a new one.

It shows just how different individual lives can be in terms of the factors that shape them. And how different the narratives can be in piecing them together.

Of course the characters do share one thing in common – their uncommon beauty. And you know me: always compelled to point this out.

This time the focus is on forks in the road. Some reach them and some don’t. For those that do it is crunch time. It suddenly all comes boiling down to an opportunity…an opportunity to choose another direction. Of course, they really don’t have the capacity to determine the right choice anymore than the rest of us. It just depends on how you construe yourself within the context of the, uh, human condition. But, hey, come on, some directions seem clearly more constructive than others. Still, there are always trade-offs here. We do the best we can. Or, if we are not able to do that, at least there might be a possibility for choosing a direction affording us the least amount of further damage.

The film is extremely effective in the way it shows these women as inhabiting a world we can more or less imagine and yet making it crystal clear that we can never really know what it must be like for them to see themselves and their world around them as they do. We can share things with them but then the distance just becomes too great. Just as it would be if the three of them tried to share things with each other.

This film had a whopping $125,000 budget. So it probably never made it to all of the 3800 odd screens out there in the American heartland. Thank God for dvd.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_V … _Portraits
trailer: youtu.be/18KquenWhj8

PERSONAL VELOCITY: THREE PORTRAITS [2002]
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Rebecca Miller

[b]Delia

Narrator: Delia Shunt was 34. She had fine, dirty-blond hair and a strong, heavy ass… which looked excellent in blue jeans. And Delia was tough. She beat up a guy in a bar once, just for grabbing her ass. He hit her back, and she broke a chair over his head.

…

Narrator: Delia was embarrassed to be seen, because she had recently grown breasts. No one else in class had them, and they were huge. She felt separated from her breasts, and kind of awed by them. They were magical objects…and definitely not Seventh-Day Adventist material.

…

Narrator: “Shunt” rhymes with “cunt.” That’s not the reason Delia became the school slut, but it didn’t hurt. Plus, she loved kissing.

…

Narrator: Delia married Kurt because he asked her. He asked her because he couldn’t stand the idea of any other guy with his hands on Delia. Her ass, especially. That beautiful, ripe ass. Delia could stop traffic with that ass. So, he married it.

…

Narrator: It was her kids’ pain that finally broke through her inertia. Listening to her babies screaming and pleading…and being unable to comfort them, was like being murdered slowly. After two hours, it didn’t matter that she loved her husband. It didn’t matter that she had no place to go. She was taking her kids away.

…

Delia [to her son]: Are you coming or not?

…

Delia: It must be nice doing good 24 hours a day.
Pam: I don’t know. Some days, I don’t think it makes any difference.
Delia: Does that get you down, Pam?
Pam: We all have problems, Delia.
Delia: You ever been in love with a man who hits you?
Pam: No.
Delia: Do you have any kids?
Pam: I don’t.
Delia: Then leave me alone. I’m sick of seeing your face every fucking day…smiling like you just took the greatest shit of your life.

…

Narrator: Delia was a good waitress. She worked fast, remembered everything…and frightened the customers just enough to keep them in line…while inciting their lust, if they were men…and wariness, if they were women. If anyone was rude to her, she spat in their food. It seemed fair. She never did it when she had a cold.

Greta

Thavi Matola [to Greta]: My friend Felicia Wong said you were great at trimming fat.
Narrator: Felicia Wong had written short stories at Harvard. Greta was the editor of The Advocate. She had an eye for the inessential. The writers called her “The Grim Reaper”… but they all wanted her to comb through their work.
Patricia [to Thavia in a flashback]: She’s a castrating bitch. You’re a lying bastard. You deserve each other.
Thavia [to Greta]: I have a tendency to overwrite. I need someone to kick my ass.
Greta: I can kick your ass.

…

Narrator: Oscar had been a suitor of Greta’s at Harvard, but she would not sleep with him. Now, there was a gentle neutrality in Oscar’s tone. He was speaking to her as if she was mentally ill, or had cancer. She knew why, too. It was because she had turned out to be a loser.

…

Narrator: The truth is Greta had a little problem with fidelity.

…

Narrator: The next week was a tangle of wedding preparations and subterfuge…what with traveling uptown to see Max, and downtown to see Lee. The fittings…the fucking… the bachelorette party…It didn’t occur to Greta to call the marriage off because she was having a torrid affair. She kept the two narratives distinct in her mind. They coexisted, as if in twin universes…separated by vast fields of space.

…

Party Guest: She’s played dead all these years, and now look at her.
Dad: Everyone has their own personal velocity.

…

Greta [voiceover]: How could he still love me? If he does, it’s because he doesn’t know me. I’m rotten with ambition, a lusty little troll, the kind of demon you’d find at the bottom floor of hell pulling fingernails off the loansharks.

…

Narrator: Suddenly a terrible thought came into Greta’s mind, clear and cruel. She was going to dump her beautiful husband…like a redundant paragraph.

Paula

Paula: You’re my first hitchhiker.
Narrator: She had known he was a sign…

…

Mom: What happened to you?
Paula: I was in an accident. I was with this guy, and he got run over.
Mom: Oh, my God.
Paula: We’d just switched places. Sixty seconds earlier, and it would have been me.

…

Paula: I used to write. Then I used to paint. I think I’m going to be one of those people with a lot of potential who never really takes off.
Norwegian Man: Those are always the best people.

…

Paula: And we were walking and talking…and this car drove by, and muddy water splashed all over me.
Man [in flashback]: I’m sorry. My fault.
Paula: He apologized, and he said that the man should walk on the outside…so the woman doesn’t get dirty. So we switched. And then I heard a noise, like a shot. I said, “Is that a shot?” He said, “No, it’s a car.” Then we kept walking. And then there was a smack on my arm. And he vaporized, next to me.

…

Paula [to the hitchhiker looking at his arm]: Oh, my God…
Narrator: She saw the edge of a wound, bruises.
Paula: We’re going to the hospital. That’s it.
[the boy golts from the car]
Wait! Get back here. Wait! Please stop!
[she catches up to him]
Paula: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We don’t have to go to the hospital, okay? I promise. We’ll go to a pharmacy. We’ll just get some disinfectant and some gauze, okay? And then I’ll let you go on your way.

…

Vincent [on the phone]: Where are you?
Paula: I’m in a hotel.
Vincent: What’s the problem?
Paula: I don’t know. I was driving down the road, and there was this boy on the road. He looked so cold. I picked him up. And I found out he was really badly beaten. It looks like somebody tied him to something, and tortured him. It’s so awful…He doesn’t have anywhere to go. He’s just a baby, Vincent. Can’t we take him home? Just back to Brooklyn, just for a little while?
Vincent: Are you crazy? We’ve got no space. You don’t know this kid.
Paula [weeping]: Please. Please, honey. Don’t make me leave him. I can’t.

…

Paula [on phone] Listen…something happened. I was with this guy, and he got hit by a car. We’d just traded places.
Vincent: Your mother just told me.
Paula: I don’t know what all of this means…but it’s got to mean something, don’t you see that? If he hadn’t been with me, he wouldn’t be dead.[/b]

And then there’s the part about the boy stealing her car…after all that she has done for him. And then there is her reaction. What does that mean?

[iambiguous]

I’m addicted to Shameless. Emmy Rossum [and not the old man] is [along with Jeremy White] Shameless. Emmy Rossum stars in this film. You do the math.

I suspect that some of the kids in this film are more in touch with what can be the existential agony embedded in “how ought I to live my life?” than many of the mental maturbaters that pass themselves off as “intellectuals” here.

He said with a [sort of] contemptuous grin.

Oh, the trials and tribulations of teens figuring all this stuff out. Think of Heathers if they had played it straight.

This is also about being an actor. And in part that is like being a philosophyer. Which is to say you can mouth all the right words in the right order but unless you have a whole lot of well earned experiences “out in the world” to back them up they are probably just going to sound hollow and/or shallow. At least with respect to some, well, really important things.

Otherwise, this one too is bursting at the seams with all the usual tropes ingested by American Youth. Anyway, those endemic to the upper middle class.

And then there is Ben and Johnny. Floating around out there in the middle of their own social [and psycho-sexual] angst.

In other words, you can easily imagine American Youth from “the hood” thinking, “I should be so lucky to have their problems.” But our bullshit consumption culture is still largely the common denominator:

Johnny: Where are your parents?
Courtney: They’re at the beach house partying.

These things do get complicated.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dare_(film
trailer: youtu.be/UTqKkA0Ch_c

DARE [2009]
Directed by Adam Salky

[b]Doctor: You’re not sexually active, are you?
Alexa [after pondering that]: I’m sorry, but why did you just assume that I wasn’t…sexually active?
Doctor: Well, I did just perform a pelvic examination.

…

Gabby: Excuse me Ms. Davis… um… I talked to my mom, and she said to tell you I’m really not comfortable playing Donna’s girlfriend in some lesbian play.
Ms. Davis: Please tell your mother that ‘The Children’s Hour’ is a famous piece of literature, not some lesbian play.

…

Grant [on the stage]: What were you doing up here?
Alexa: I was trying to show how Blanche feels about Stanley.
Grant: Uh-huh. And what does Blanche feel about Stanley? Hm?
Alexa: I think that she is afraid. I think that she feels threatened. At the same time, I think she is still drawn to him. It’s his brute strenght versus her femininity, her power of seduction.
Grant: Okay, you’re smart, so that’s not the problem. But tell me something, Alexa, have you ever felt threatened?
Alexa: I feel a little threatened right now.
Grant: No, I mean have you ever been afraid of being hurt, destroyed…raped?
Alexa: No.
Grant: Have you ever fucked anyone?
Alexa: Sorry, but I don’t think that has anything to do with…
Grant: It has everything to do with it! You shouldn’t be playing Blanche Dubois, honey, you’re a child. Acting is not about making up how you think someone else feels, it’s about having something to draw on. A feeling of your own.

…

Grant: Have you ever been hungry for something?
Alexa: I don’t know…I’m not sure I know exactly what…
Grant: Hungry. Like wanting something or needing something so badly that you will do anything to get it.

…

Grant [to Alexa]: Look, life’s going to be easy for you. You’re pretty. You’re smart. You got it real good. So be a doctor or a lawyer. Or better still, marry one.
Alexa [enraged]: You have no fucking idea who I am!
Grant: This is what it’s about, right now, the feeling you want to slap the shit out of me!
[boom. it dawns on her]
Alexa: I’ll learn it. I’ll start with the Stanislavsky book.
Grant: No book in the whole world can teach you how to feel. You gotta figure that shit out for yourself.

…

Alexa: What’s wrong with you?
Ben: Me? Nothing. What’s wrong with you?
Alexa: What?
Ben: What are you doing, Alexa? You ditch me to play with the really cool kids. You put this streak in your hair…and all of a sudden you’re with Johnny?

…

Alexa: Why are you being such an asshole? This has nothing to do with you.
Ben: You can try and play all mature and worldly, but you’re not. You’re still the same scared, pathetic, perfect little girl.
Alexa: And you’re still the same bitter, lonely loser. You can’t stand to see me have a life because you never had one.

…

Courtney [to Ben]: Alexa has really lost her mind. I guess that’s what happens when you discover the power of a dick.

…

Johnny: I’m not a fag, man.
Ben: Whatever, I’m not the sensitive one.
Johnny: When did you turn into evil, Light Boy?
Ben: When you turned out to be a total poser.

…

Ben: I had my first kiss tonight.
Alexa: What? With who?
Ben: I also gave my first blowjob.

…

Alexa [to Ben]: Come on, did you really think that I didn’t know.

…

Alexa: So, who was it?
Ben: Johnny.

…

Johnny: Where’s my dad?
Mom: Belgium.
Johnny: Why did you even marry him? He’s never around. What’s the point?
Mom: Because, Johnny, not all of us have the luxury of doing whatever the hell we want and never suffering the consequences.

…

Actor: So, are you in the ensemble?
Alexa: Uh, no.
Actor: So who are you supposed to be?[/b]

The look on her face: priceless.

[iambiguous]

Duplicate post.