philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

Love and madness. Love and human remains. Bleak and beautiful.

This one elicited boos at Cannes. And only 6 critics managed to review it at all at RT. Of course [as we all know] these things can be frightfully subjective. At least the critic over at The New York Times managed to dip below the surface long enough to acknowledge the layers that most others missed. Or did not even bother to broach at all.

nytimes.com/2009/03/06/movie … .html?_r=0

This is the sort of “art film” that many will hate loathe because “nothing really happens”. And it is true that if what does happen has never happened to you, it might be a long slog to the end. If you make it to the end at all. But I was myself once involved in a relationship with a woman who had a “breakdown”. There is just something about people who shift back and forth between being “able to cope” and being “unable to cope” with life/reality/existence etc. that draws me in. Being one of them myself.

To wit:

Gabe [Woody Allen in Husbands and Wives]: See, I will always have this penchant for what I call kamikaze women. I call them kamikazes because they, you know, they crash their plane, they’re self-destructive. But they crash into you, and you die along with them.

youtu.be/ja-D9YxmtvY

Only sometimes you don’t die.

Look for the subconscious to appear. The subconscious “that never lies”.

It’s filmed in gorgeous black and white. And the soundtrack is absolutely perfect.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_of_the_Dawn
trailer: youtu.be/DNFW7gEwd6A

FRONTIER OF THE DAWN [La Frontière de L’aube] 2008
Directed by Philippe Garrel

[b]Man: I bet he has never photographed a star before.
Carole: I’m not a star. I’m an actor.

…

Carole: We got married on impulse. I must have wanted to. I often do stupid things you know.
François: You do stupid things? Such as?
Carole: I don’t want to do any now. Or talk about it.

…

François [aloud to himself in bed with Carole]: The day the last concentration camp survivor dies, World War III will start…

…

François: I wonder what will happen when your husband comes home.
Carole: I don’t know. He may not stay, you know. Even if he does…
François: Won’t you be joining him in Hollywood?
Carole: Have you had enough of me?
François: You’re totally crazy.
Carole: If you’ve had enough, just say so. It doesn’t matter. No one will die.
François: But I think I’m in love with you.
Carole: You think so?
François: No. I’m sure.
Carole: What do you know? You say that because we are good in bed. But that’s not love. If I were sick would you still love me? What if my hair fell out? Or my teeth fell out? Would you still love me? What if I went crazy? What if I were crazy?

…

Carole: You mustn’t say you love me. We mustn’t say we love each other. Because we don’t know. We’re living it, that’s all. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts. The day it’s over – pop! – we’ll disappear like a bubble bursting in mid-air.[/b]

This is where I fucked up. I ended up popping it myself. I created the very situation that I had tried to avoid.

Carole: You think I slept with him?
François: I don’t know what you do when I’m not there.

Love without trust: The pop gets closer.

[b]Carole [in a letter to François]: “François…François…François. I know you know how much I need you, because it hurts so much, you must feel it. You want to punish me? What for? For getting married before I met you? I’ve been so hurt. You had your revenge, you can come back. You must come back. You know it as well as I do.”

…

François [voiceover of sorts]: Carole. Carole. Can you hear me? I’ll always be near you now, because I protect you. What’s wrong? What are you writing? Don’t kill yourself. Don’t die. You know…we are the people who sleep. The people who make history are far more common. So, go to bed.

…

Carole [in the asylum to François]: Why didn’t you come sooner? Waiting for me to be like this? I’m harmless now, is that it?[/b]

Then the pop. The horrific suicide. Then the film sort of pops too.

[b]François: Were you coming to see me when you died?
Carole [now an apparition in the mirror]: Yes.
François: What do you want me to do?
Carole: I want you to come with me. Abandon your life of resignation.
François: I won’t kill myself to make up for abandoning you.
Carole: You will. Not to make up for it. To prove you loved me. You have nothing keeping you. You’re alone.
François: I’m not alone, I love a woman who loves me. It’s none of your business.
Carole [shaking her head]: You only ever loved me. I’m your love.
François: Leave me alone.
Carole: No. I’m waiting for you. You’re mine. And if you won’t join me, you’ll know only torment.

…

François: She has come to me several times. She’s calling me.
Friend: Come on, you’re having hallucinations. Maybe because you realize only now that Carole loved you madly. You feel guilty because she took her life. But you couldn’t help it. You can’t help someone who is desparate. Now, everything is sorted out.
François: Sorted out?
Friend: You’re having a baby with Eve. You love each other. You’re getting married. That’s what is tormenting you.
François: What’s tormenting me?
Friend: Happiness. Conventional bourgeois happiness. Scary, isn’t it?

…

François [looking into the mirror]: Carole…Carole…Carole…
[Carole appears]
François: What should I do now? That’s it. I love you. It’s you I love.
Carole: Join me. Fast. Join me now.[/b]

And so he does.

[iambiguous]

The first thing that pops into your head while watching a film like this – a film “based on a true story” – is the question, “how true is it?”

And not just the events that swirl around these particular characters. You wonder how those events that are depicted fit into the larger political context. And how this fits into the historical arc that revolves around the history of Africa before, during and after European colonialism.

For example, here is one rather critical take on the film:

umuvugizi.wordpress.com/2011/11 … esabagina/

But then these folks too have their own moral/political axe to grind. There’s just no getting around this when it comes down to piecing together “the whole truth”. Instead, we almost always have only conflicting narratives.

As for why the “civilized world” basically just sat back and allowed these events to unfold, how close or how far is this from the truth:

Colonel Oliver [explaining why the world will not intervene]: You’re black. You’re not even a nigger. You’re an African.

Or this:

Jack [after Paul thanks him for shooting footage of the genocide]: I think if people see this footage, they’ll say “Oh, my God, that’s horrible”. And then they’ll go on eating their dinners.

Think back on your own reaction to the unfolding genocide. The gap between how you felt and what you could do. Or the gap between what you might have done and what you did not do instead. How does one wrap their mind [and their behaviors] around something like this?

And there is always the part about political economy. The part where skin color and ethnicity are just used as a pretext by some in order to seize power. The part where might makes right. If only for all practical purposes.

Then [for the outside world] there’s this: How do you define “genocide”?

And Rwanda today? Here is one recent report:

articles.latimes.com/2014/apr/07 … e-20140407

IMDb

[b]The real Paul Rusesabagina met with Don Cheadle.

Director Terry George had Don Cheadle in mind for the lead part from the beginning of his involvement. During pre-production, potential investors and interested studios wanted Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Mekhi Phifer and even Will Smith because of their suggested bigger drawing capacity at the box office. But due to ultimately producing the film independently and coming up with the money himself, George was able to go back to his original choice.

Nick Nolte’s character (Col. Oliver) is modeled in part on Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian commanding officer of the UN Peacekeeping mission in that country who attempted to interfere with the Rwandan Genocide despite his superiors’ indifference to the atrocity. Dallaire was also the subject of Sundance audience award documentary Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (2004), and witnessed such horrible acts in Rwanda that he later suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite these facts, this is the only fictional character (name and facts) depicted in the film.

It was later revealed by one of the survivors of the hotel, Pasa Mwenenganucye, that Paul Rusesabagina, was not as heroic as he was depicted to be. The people who sought shelter at his hotel were made to pay for their stay, with priorities given to the wealthier people. The backlash was so bad that Rusesabagina was pressured into cancelling an appearance at a Canadian festival by members of Toronto’s Rwandian community, who accused him of being “genocide revisionist and denier.” The head of the UN’s peacekeeping force in Rwanda at the time, Canadian Romeo Dallaire, addressed the controversy by simply calling the movie “junk”. Despite all the claims, Paul Rusesabagina has stood by the movie and denied all claims of any wrongdoing on his part.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Rwanda
trailer: youtu.be/qZzfxL90100

HOTEL RWANDA [2004]
Written in part and directed by Terry George

Rutaganda [on the radio]: When people ask me, good listeners, why do I hate all the Tutsi, I say, “Read our history.” The Tutsi were collaborators for the Belgian colonists, they stole our Hutu land, they whipped us. Now they have come back, these Tutsi rebels. They are cockroaches. They are murderers. Rwanda is our Hutu land. We are the majority. They are a minority of traitors and invaders. We will squash the infestation. We will wipe out the RPF rebels. This is RTLM, Hutu power radio. Stay alert. Watch your neighbours.

So much for “senseless violence”. And anything can be rationalized.

Dube: Aah, that is a fine cigar, sir!
Paul: This is a Cohiba cigar. Each one is worth 10,000 francs.
Dube: 10,000 francs?!
Paul: Yes, yes. But it is worth more to me than 10,000 francs.
Dube: What do you mean, sir?
Paul: If I give a businessman 10,000 francs, what does that matter to him? He is rich. But, if I give him a Cohiba cigar straight from Havana, Cuba. Hey, that is style, Dube.

That’s his frame of mind now. He is just a businessman. But that’s all about to change.

[b]Tatiana [to her husband Paul as they watch soldiers brutally beat and then take away their neighbors]: We must do something.
Paul: There is nothing we can do.

…

Paul: All day long I work to please this officer, that diplomat, some tourist to store up favors so if there is a time when we need help I have powerful people I can call upon.
Tatiana: But Victor was a good neighbor.
Paul: He is not family. Family is all that matters. Please. Please. Leave these things to my best judgment.

…

Jack: So what is the actual difference between a Hutu and a Tutsi?
Man at bar: Well, according to the Belgian colonists, the Tutsis were taller, more elegant. It was the Belgians that created the differences. They picked peole…people with thinner noses, lighter skin…they used to measure the width of people’s noses. The Belgians used the Tutsis to run the country. And when they left, they left the power to the Hutus. And of course the Hutus took their revenge on the Tutsis for all those years of repression.

…

Rutaganda [RTLM broadcast]: Listen to me good people of Rwanda. Terrible news. Horrible news. Our great president is murdered by the Tutsi cockroaches. They tricked him into signing their phony peace agreement then they shot his plane from the sky. It is time to clear the great brush good Hutu’s of Rwanda. We must cut the tall trees. Cut all tall trees now!

…

Reporter: We have reports of reprisal massacres. Will the U.N. intervene to stop the violence?
Colonel Oliver: We’re here as peace keepers, not peace makers. My orders are not to intervene.

…

Paul: I am glad that you have shot this footage and that the world will see it. It is the only way we have a chance that people might intervene.
Jack: Yeah and if no one intervenes, is it still a good thing to show?
Paul: How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?
Jack: I think if people see this footage they’ll say, “oh my God that’s horrible,” and then go on eating their dinners.

…

Pat: When I reached the orphanage, they had already started killing the children. They made me watch. There was one girl. She had her little sister wrapped on her back. As they were about to choke her she looked at me and pleaded, “Please don’t let them kill me. I…I promise I won’t be Tutsi anymore.”
[she turns to Paul]
Pat; They’re targeting Tutsi children so they can wipe out the next generation.

…

Colonel Oliver: You should spit in my face.
Paul: Excuse me, Colonel?
Colonel Oliver: You’re dirt. We think you’re dirt, Paul.
Paul: Who is we?
Colonel Oliver: The West. All the super powers. Everything you believe in, Paul. They think you’re dirt. They think you’re dung. You’re worthless.
Paul: I am afraid I don’t understand what you are saying.
Colonel Oliver: Oh come on don’t bullshit me, Paul, you’re the smartest man here. You got 'em all eating out of your hands. You could own this frigging hotel, except for one thing. You’re black. You’re not even a nigger. You’re an African. They’re not going to stay, Paul. They’re not going to stop this slaughter.[/b]

In other words, the soldiers are only there to get the whites out.

[b]Paul: They told me I was one of them, and I… the wine, chocolates, cigars, style… I swallowed it. I swallowed it, I swallowed all of it. And they handed me their shit. I have no…no history. I have no memory. I’m a fool, Tati.
Tatiana: You are no fool. I know who you are.

…

Jack [walking towards the bus carrying all the whites who are leaving Rwanda while the blacks are left behind]: Oh, God, I’m so ashamed!

…

Paul: You saved all of our lives. What did you do?
Mr. Tillens: I got through to the French President’s office. I pleaded with the French and the Belgians to go back and get all of you. I am afraid this is not going to happen. They are cowards, Paul. None of this is worth a single vote to them. The French. The British. The Americans. I am sorry Paul.

…

Paul [to the hotel staff]: There will be no rescue, no intervention for us. We can only save ourselves. Many of you know influential people abroad, you must call these people. You must tell them what will happen to us…say goodbye. But when you say goodbye, say it as if you are reaching through the phone and holding their hand. Let them know that if they let go of that hand, you will die. We must shame them into sending help.

…

Rutaganda: Soon all of the Tutsis will be dead.
Paul: You do not honestly believe that you can kill them all.
Rutaganda: And why not? We are halfway there already.

…

Paul: General, these are difficult times, we need to help one another.
General Bizimungu: And what help can I get from you, Paul?
Paul: You are a marked man, sir!
General Bizimungu: How so?
Paul: You’re on a list, the Americans have you on a list as a war criminal!
General Bizimungu: Paul, I am sick and tired of your lies.
Paul: Are you stupid General? How do you think these people operate? You sit here with five stars on your chest! Who do you think they’re coming after?
[pause]
Paul: Fine, we will go to Gitzarama and you will stay on that list.
General Bizimungu: I committed no war crimes.
Paul: Who will tell them? You need me to tell them how you helped at the hotel. They blame you for all their misfortunes. They say you lead the massacres!
General Bizimungu: I lead no massacres!
Paul: Do you think they will believe you?
General Bizimungu: You will tell them the truth!
Paul: I will tell them nothing unless you help me!
[General Bizimungu reaches for his gun]
Paul: What- what are you going to do… shoot me? Shoot me. Please shoot me. It would be a blessing. I will pay you to shoot my family. You can not hurt me.
General Bizimungu: You will tell them I did nothing!
Paul: We are leaving. Right now.

…

Title cards:

Paul Rusesabagina sheltered 1268 Tutsi and Hutu refugees at the Milles Collines Hotel in Kigali.

Paul and Tatiana now live in Belgium with their children, Roger, Diane, Lys, Tresor and their adopted nieces Anais and Carine.

Tatiana’s brother Thomas and his wife Fedens were never found.

In 2002, General Augustin Bizimungu was captured in Angola and transported to the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in Tanzania. At the same tribunal the Interhamwe leader George Rutuganda was sentenced to life in prison.

The genocide ended in July 1994, when the Tutsi rebels drove the Hutu army and the Interhamwe militia across the border into the Congo.

They left behind almost a million corpses.[/b]

[iambiguous]

If you like your aristocracy free of all the grim squalor that is usually associated with a “period piece” of this sort, then welcome aboard. And this is 1645. The class struggle comes later.

Here we can focus instead on characters living in what, from their perspective, is the only possible world.

But even here [and then] there are always going to be those who are considerably better off than others.

So folks like Jean-Baptiste Poquelin [Moliere on the stage: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moli%C3%A8re] were required to insinuate themselves in all manner of social contexts.

Think Amadeus for example. Only he was not Mozart. Only he was not nobody either.

And if you perform for the ruling class who knows what the potential might be if one of them takes note of you. Or a shine to you. And for any number of reasons.

But there were also “commoners” back then who had managed to become quite wealthy. Filthy rich you might say. But money only takes one so far in a hierarchy that is as much about caste as it is class.

The key therefore [for someone like Moliere] is to know how to act off the stage. In other words, different folks, different masks. Different contexts, different rules.

Here his benefactor, Monsieur Jourdain, wishes a path into the aristocracy. In particular into the arms of the beautiful Célimène. Which is to say this is a world in which wealth and royalty are not necessarily the same thing. And yet they would often court each other in order get, shall we say, the optimal results? Then there were the shot callers and the pawns. But where things could get particularly messy is when love becomes tangled up in it as well. Even if, in the end, it is really only lust.

IMDb

The plot of “Moliere” was actually loosely based on two of his plays, ‘Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme’ and ‘Tartuffe’.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moli%C3%A8re_(2007_film
trailer: youtu.be/CmEFxbsAo8Q

MOLIERE [Molière] 2007
Written in part and directed by Laurent Tirard

[b]Colleague: Jean-Baptiste, you’re not thinking of staging a tragedy?
Moliere: Look around. We are not in the provinces. The Royal Court will come here to see us. They deserve better than vulgar farces.

…

Madeleine: The King’s brother gave us this theartre to play comedy.
Moliere: I will talk to him today.
Madeleine: And say what.
Moliere [adamantly]: That I want to play only tragedies. He’ll have to find another buffoon to entertain him. [/b]

Or maybe not.

[b]Moliere [snootily]: The theater I know does not lend itself to such whims. I’m sorry.
Monsieur Jourdain: You’re sorry?
[he turns to the door]
Monsieur Jourdain: Mr. Bonnefoy! Take him back to prison. I would’ve paid your debt, but…Good day, sir.
Moliere [his demeanor quite different]: What would be the exact terms of our contract?

…

Moliere [to M. Jourdain]: How will you bring me to your home without arousing suspicion?

…

Elmire [to Molière]: Mr. Tartuffe, I understood long ago that men of the Church are for the most part mere actors, who endlessly repeat the same lines, with more or less conviction.

…

Dorante [to Célimène]: I wasn’t born for love on credit.

…

Moliere [teaching Monsieur Jourdain to “act”]: Your’e a dewdrop, hanging from the tip of a leaf, a drop of water growing larger and heavier. Now it quivers and falls…It falls, Monsieur Jourdain!!
[it falls]
Moliere: Good. Another one.
Monsieur Jourdain: That’s enough for tonight. The rattle, the flower, the dewdrop. I’m spent.
Moliere: Exactly! It’s when you’re exhausted and can’t think anymore that the work begins! Come on, let’s do…the horse.
Monsieur Jourdain [aghast]: No. Not the horse. No! No! No! Not the horse!![/b]

Yes, the horse.

[b]Dorante: Never say that word, Thomas!
Thomas: I’ll say it, Father, because…
Dorante: Quiet! I don’t want to hear it!
Thomas: I want to work! I want to work, Father. I want to put my education to use, to earn money in trade.
Dorante: In this house, one does not earn money. One marries it. Work? How pathetic!

…

Dorante [to Monsieur Jourdain after shooting his dog instead of the rabbit]: It’s very strange. These dogs usually know to avoid the line of fire.

…

Elmire: You have true talent. You were born to make people laugh. But you don’t wish to play comedies? Now what I have said has hurt you.
Moliere: Acting is a serious art that deserves respect.
Elmire: Was I disrespectful?
Moliere: Yes, Madam. You confound farce and theater. Theater, Madam, is far greater, nobler and more essential than what I’ve shown you here.[/b]

Ah, perhaps, but, at times, that depends on who the farce is aimed at. And how skillfully this is able to be kept hidden from the target.

[b]Elmire: Your pranks are more touching than any tragedy.
Moliere: No, Madam. It’s impossible.
Elmire: Impossible? But why?
Moliere: Because comedy, of which you are so fond, relies on mechanical effcts. Tragedy explores the infinite complexity of the human soul.
Elmire: Then play comedies that explore it.
Moliere: They do not exist.
Elmire: Then invent them!

…

Monsieur Jourdain: What do you think? Did you relish the way I delivered my lines?
Moliere: Yes, yes.
Monsieur Jourdain: Honestly, I think I’m ready. Let it be said now. Either I triumph tomorrow at Celimene’s, or you shall find me dead drunk in a tavern.
[cut to him dead drunk in a tavern]

…

Monsieur Jourdain: If only there were some way I could see into Celimene’s mind.
Moliere: Perhaps there is…

…

Célimène: What angel sent you to make us laugh like this? We’re so dreadfully starved for entertainment.
Moliere: What, madame? I thought the greatest minds jostled their way in here.
Célimène: If you knew what we endured. It’s often a draw between boredom and the grotesque. People jostle, yes, only to declare their unwanted passion. Like that poor Mr. Jourdain.
Molerie: Mr. Jourdain, you say?
Célimène: Imagine a farmyard rooster, disguised as a pheasant, sputtering rhymes in my face a child of eight would no longer dare read. You see my predicament. Then the oaf gazes stupidly at me hoping to be loved in return. As if I could possibly be interested in every uncouth merchant and farmer who aspires to become a marquis.
Monsieur Jourdain [revealing himself after having been disguised as a woman in the background]: How right you are, Madame. How clever your mind is at unmasking our weaknesses. The truth be told, I admire you. I thought it was your intelligence that made you an exceptional being. I realize now it’s only your upbringing that gives you style for your soul is entirely devoted to cruelty. You amuse your suite with jokes about those who are absent. But I say it is an insult to your beauty, your intelligence, and your rank that you’re incapable of stating what you truly think to one’s face. You used the donkey as an example: an animal that waits until you’re not looking to kick you. I shall go now, Madame, and leave you to bray about me in my absence.[/b]

But then Monsieur Jourdain bestows upon us his greatest performance yet! And we have our happy ending to boot. Which is to say that Moliere learns [at last] that you can mock the ruling class provided only that you make them laugh. Until…

Elmire: Tragedy never was your strong point. Dry your tears and make me laugh in my few remaining hours.
Moliere: I’m afraid the situation is no laughing matter.
Elmire: You are wrong. Unhappiness has comic aspects one should never underestimate.
Moliere: How could I joke about that which makes me weep? This type of comedy does not exist.
Elmire: Well, then invent it.

[iambiguous]

Under the skin: in reality, as opposed to superficial appearances.

The woman who fell to Earth?

And this is one of those films where many of the characters have no names. There’s the “the female” and “the swimmer” and “the hitchhiker” and “the first victim” and the “leering man” etc… So this cues you to put your thinking cap on in order to come up with something that you can discuss with others pertaining to what the interactions of the characters in the film “mean”.

Here, for example, are the first lines:

Female Voice [with a mechanical buzz over shadowy morphing orbs]: T- D, S- Z- Th, B- T- V, H- T- D- K- G, S- Z- P- B, Ba-Ba- T- T, K- Kuh- Ch, Th- V- Th, Zzz- Sss- Bzz- Ch, B-B-Buh- V-V-Vuh, G-G-Guh D-D-Duh.
Female Voice [now over a shiney white torus, slowly morphing]: B-B-Buh- B-B-Buh, B-B-Beh, B-B-Beh, Bah, N-N-Nuh- N-N-Nuh, N-N-Nuh- No. N-N-Nuh, F- Feel- Field, Fill- Filled- Filts, Foil- Failed- Fell, Felds- Pill- Pills, Pall- Nall.
Female Voice [now over a watery chestnut-brown eye]: Foal- Foals, Fold- Fold, Pool- Pool, Sell- Se…

And this can mean almost anything, right? And, with aliens, you are always able to bring a point of view that can literally be out of this world. Who are we to ever really undertand them?

We are left then to figure out – “in our heads” – the parts that are on the surface and the parts that go deeper. Only this can mean aiming the beam as much at our own culture as theirs. Isn’t that often the point of films like this? Not, “look at them”, but “look at us”.

In particular, look at the roles we have come to embody with respect to, among other things, gender and beauty and lust. And yet it all unfolds in the belly of the working class beast in Scotland. So, what on earth does that mean?

And yet within the framework of our own species, meaning is at least circumscribed by the parameters in which we all interact. Imagine then encountering an extraterrestrial lifeform – an extraterrestrial frame of mind – in which we have nothing comparable to a rosetta stone in order to bridge the gaps.

And this film is from the director of Birth above.

Anyway, if you absolutely, positively must understand what it means, try this: youtu.be/nyW01TOyEKI

Or, instead, you can approach it as some do 2001 A Space Odyssey. Never mind what it means. Just look at it.

IMDb

[b]The men lured into the van by Scarlett Johansson’s character were not actors. Jonathan Glazer had hidden cameras installed in the van and only informed the men afterwards that they were in a movie.

Scarlett Johansson did the nude scenes herself without the use of a body double.

The film took nearly 10 years to be made, and one of the early drafts of the scripts included a Scottish married couple, who were revealed to be aliens in disguise. Brad Pitt was, at the time, cast as one half of the couple.

Gemma Arterton, Eva Green, January Jones, Abbie Cornish, and Olivia Wilde were considered to play the lead role.

A paparazzi still of Scarlett Johansson, in character, falling down became a wildly popular Internet meme in which users would Photoshop Johansson into various situations. As the scene was shot with hidden cameras, it was not until the movie’s release that it was revealed the fall was intentional.

Adam Pearson, who plays the disfigured man that is lured into the vehicle, broke his leg when he was struck by a cab on his way to audition for his role. Director Jonathan Glazer auditioned him the next day at the hospital and gave him the job.[/b]

trailer: youtu.be/NoSWbyvdhHw
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Skin_(2013_film

UNDER THE SKIN [2013]
Written in part and directed by Jonathan Glazer

[b]Laura: No girlfriend? Really?
Hitchhiker: No, I don’t have a girlfriend at all.
Laura: You’re very charming… Yeah, that’s better… You have a handsome face.
Hitchhiker: Do I?
Laura: Yeah.
Hitchhiker: Thanks a lot. Cheers.
Laura: You think I’m pretty?
Hitchhiker: I think you’re gorgeous.
Laura: Do you?
Hitchhiker: Aye, definitely.
Laura: Good.

…

Laura: Where you from?
Swimmer: I’m from Czaech Republic.
Laura: Why are you in Scotland?
Swimmer; I just…I just wanted to get away from it all.
Laura: Why here?
Swimmer: Because its…it’s nowhere.

…

Laura: So, why do you shop at night, then?
Deformed Man: People wind me up.
Laura: How?
Deformed Man: They’re ignorant.

…

Laura [to the deformed man]: You have very nice hands…You have beautiful hands.

…

Laura: You don’t want to wake up, do you?

…

Laura: So you never think about it then?
Deformed man: Think about what?
Laura: Being with a girl.
[the deformed man does not respond]
Laura: When is the last time you touched someone?

…

Laura: I have a place about thirty minutes away. Will you come with me there?
[cut to the deformed man pinching himself][/b]

[iambiguous]

Is this about the gap between the life that Warren Schmidt has lived and the life that he might have lived insead? Or, instead, is it more about the gap between how he imagines the life of Ndugu and the life that Ndugu does live?

Which gap is more excruciating? Or more heartrending? And whose life is “smaller”?

Anyway, the lesson here [apparently] is not let your own life come down to this. Still, let’s face it, the overwhelming majority of men and women live the sort of lives that Warren did. They have jobs and live lives that are veritably bursting at the seams with one or another rather pathetic accumulation of superficial alienation.

Ordinary lives, you might call them. Lives in which, for all intents and purposes, they seem to just go through the motions.

How ordinary?

When Jack Nicholson met Alexander Payne to discuss his role, Payne had a one-sentence directive for him; it was “Jack, I want you to play a small man.” IMDb

Small people seem to abound here. Whatever that means.

It almost makes you want to abandon your family obligations altogether.

True, not all families are a pack of lies. But enough of them are so that a film like this will resonate for many. Few of us won’t be able to see at least some resemblance to our own lives.

IMDb

[b]When Jack Nicholson received the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama, he commented afterward, “I’m a little surprised. I thought we had made a comedy.”

The production crew created a lifetime Endowed Scholarship for the real-life Ndugu, Abdallah Mtulu, through the real Childreach organization.

The Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Society is an actual organization. Jack Nicholson filmed his scenes at the company’s offices and was given a plaque making him an honorary Woodmen member. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About_Schmidt
trailer: youtu.be/M9OHT6EErbY

ABOUT SCHMIDT [2002]
Written in part and directed by Alexander Payne

Ray [at Warren’s retirement dinner]: How do you feel about these young punks taking over our jobs? Seems like some kind of conspiracy to me. Now I’ve known Warren here. Probably longer than most of you people who’ve been alive. Warren and I go way back. Way back… to the horse and buggy days at Woodman, but that’s ancient history. Anyway I know something about retirement. And what I wanna say to you out loud, Warren, for all of these young hotshots can hear. Is that all those gifts over there don’t mean a goddamn thing. And this dinner doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. And the social security in pension, don’t mean a goddamn thing. None of these superficialities mean a goddamn thing. What mean something. What really mean something, Warren. Is the knowledge that you devoted your life to something meaningful. To being productive. And working for a fine company, hell one of the top rated insurance carriers in the nation. To raising a fine family. To building a fine home. To being respected by your community. To having… wonderful lasting friendships. At the end of his career the man, can look back and say “I did it. I did my job”. Then he can retire in glory and enjoy riches far beyond the monitory kind. So all of you young people here. Take a good look at a very rich man. I love you, buddy.

That’s not nothing, right?

Angela Lansbury on TV: There is a wonderful organization called Child Reach, that is making a profound difference in the lifes of children just like these. For just $22/month, just 72 cents/day, you can become a Child Reach sponsor and not only personally touch the life of a needy boy or girl overseas. But also help the child’s family and community. Think of it, just $22/month, and a little girl like this will never feel the agony of dysentery from dirty water. A child like this will be able to go to school, to learn and grow.

That’s when Ndugu Umbo comes into focus. If only from a great distance.

Warren [in a letter to Ndugu]: Dear Ndugu, My name is Warren R. Schmidt. And I’m your new foster father. I live in Omaha, Nebraska. I am 66 years old and recently retired, as assistant vice-president of the Woodman of the World insurance company. And goddamnit if they didn’t replace me some kid who, all right, so maybe he’s got a little theory under his belt, and can plug a few numbers into a computer. But I can tell right off, that he doesn’t know a damn thing about genuine real-world risk assessment, or managing a department for that matter. Cocky bastard!.."

Oops. Better scratch that part out. But then he can still use Ndugu to vent regarding all those huge gaps in his life – the ones between the way his life has become and the way he had hoped it would instead.

Warren [in his letter to Ndugu]: …I’ll close now and get this in the mail. Here I am rambling on and on and you probably wanna hurry on down cash that check, and get yourself something to eat. So…take it easy and best of luck with all your endeavours.

Could he possibly be more out of touch with reality? But then he does listen to Rush Limbaugh.

Jeannie: Dad…Why did you get such a cheap casket?
Warren: What?
Jeannie: I could tell you got the cheapest casket. Everybody could.
Warren: That is not true. That is not true! I specifically did not choose as you say, the cheapest casket. There was one less expensive, which they showed me and I refused it.
Jeannie: You mean a pinebox?

Family…

[b]Warren: Dear Ndugu, I hope you’re sitting down, because I’m afraid l got some bad news. Since I last wrote to you, my wife, Helen, your foster mother, passed away very suddenly from a blood clod in her brain…

…

Warren [in letter to Ndugu]: I believe I mentioned in my previous letter that I was an actuary at the Woodman insurance company. lf I’m given a man’s age, race, profession, place of residence, marital status and medical history, I can calculate with great probability, how long that man will live. In my own case now that my wife has died, there is a 73% chance, that I will die within 9 years, provided that I do not remarry. All I know is, I’ve got to make best of whatever time I have left. Life is short, Ndugu.

…

Jeannie [on the phone]: You are coming now?
Warren: If I drive straight through, I’ll be there in time for supper.
Jeannie: Gosh, I don’t think so dad, this is not a good idea.
Warren: Sure it is. Don’t tell me you couldn’t use a little extra help with all those wedding arrangements. I’ll help to take the burden off.
Jeannie: The thing is that, Roberta and I and Jill we’ve pretty much got everything under control. It’s such a nice offer, but let’s stick to the plan. You get here a day or two before the wedding like we said.
[he finally gets it]
Warren: I assume you won’t object to me sending more of those checks.[/b]

This after discovering his best friend had an affair with his wife.

[b]Warren: Randall, what happened about that investment opportunity? You never called me back.
Duncan: You mean that pyramid scheme?
Larry: Let’s not talk about that now.
Duncan: All I know is I lost $800.

…

Larry: All I was doing was welcoming somebody into the family.
Roberta: Larry, we’ve been welcomed by you, thank you so much, now would you please just drink your fucking milk and shut the fuck up.

…

Warren: You’re making a big mistake, don’t marry this guy, don’t do it.
Jeannie: What are you talking about?
Warren: The other night I had a dream and it was very real. Your mother was there and you were there and your aunt Estelle. And there was a, well, it wasn’t really a spaceship, it was more like a blimp or an orb of some kind. And then a bunch of weird creatures came out and started trying to take you away, and you wanna know what? They all looked like Randall. Do you understand? And I was jumping up and down to save you.
Jeannie: Ok…dad, it’s okay. You’re just wigging out a little and Mom is not here to calm you down so…
Warren: No, this isn’t like that. I am begging you not to marry Randall! This guy is not up to snuff. He’s not in your league. I can’t let this happen. I will not allow it. I mean look at these people…!!!
Jeannie: All of a sudden you’re taking an interest in what I do? You have an opinion about my life now? Okay, you listen to me. I am getting married the day after tomorrow and you are going to come to my wedding and you are going to sit there and enjoy it and support me or else you can just turn right around right now and go back to Omaha. [/b]

No dog in this fight.

[b]Roberta: You already know how famously they get along as friends, but did you know that their sex life is positively white hot? The main reason both of my marriages failed was sexual. I’m an extremely sexual person, I can’t help it, it just how I’m wired, you know, even when I was a little girl. I had my first orgasm when I was 6 in ballet class. Anyway, the point is that I have been always very easily aroused and very orgasmic. Jeannie and I have a lot in common that way. Clifford and Larry, they were nice guys, but they just could not keep up with me. Anyway, I don’t want to betray Jeannie’s confidence, but let me just assure you that whatever problems those two kids may run into along the way, they will always be able to count on what happens between the sheets to keep them together. More soup?
Warren: Eh… no, I think I’m fine now.

…

Warren [in a letter to Ndugu]: I know we’re all pretty small in the big scheme of things, and I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference, but what kind of difference have I made? What in the world is better because of me? When I was out in Denver, I tried to do the right thing, tried to convince Jeannie she was making a big mistake but I failed. Now she is married to that nincompoop and there is nothing I can do about it. I am…weak. And I am a failure. There is just no getting around it. Relatively soon, I will die. Maybe in 20 years, maybe tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. Once I am dead and everyone who knew me dies too, it will be as though I never existed. What difference has my life made to anyone. None that I can think of. None at all.[/b]

Can you say the same? Now to put all of this in perspective:

Dear Mister Warren Schmidt, my name is sister Nadine Gautier, of the order of the sisters of “the secret heart”. I work in a small village near the town of Embeya in Tanzania. One of the children I care for is little Ndugu Umbu, the boy you sponsor. Ndugu is a very intelligent boy, and very loving. He is an orphan. Recently he needed medical attention for an infection of the eye. But he is better now. He loves to eat melon and he loves to paint. Ndugu and I, want you to know that he receives all of your letters. He hopes that you are happy in your life and healthy. He thinks of you everyday. And he wants very much your happiness. Ndugu is only 6 years old and cannot read or write. But, he has made for you a painting. He hopes that you will like his painting. Yours sincerely…sister Nadine Gautier.

[iambiguous]

The father is terminally ill. The son is autistic. The father sets out to teach the son all that he can in order that the son is better able to survive on his own after his death.

In other words, a small film. How small? Well, there was not a single critic review over at RT. And if that doesn’t speak volumes regarding the state of the film industry, what does? After all, just think of all the shit that is routinely reviewed by upwards of 220 critics or more over there.

The father is Jet Li.

In fact, this is Jet Li’s first dramatic lead. He received no money for his performance.

Autism. To most of us it remains this mysterious frame of mind that we bump into from time to time “on the news” — or in characters that we come across on television or in film. It always seems to vary significantly regarding the extent to which those afflicted with it are or are not able to function out in the world with “normal people”. Not many autistic men and women are able to function on the level of Temple Grandin, for example. Not many become “autistic-savants” like Raymond Babbitt. Instead, the symptoms run along a “spectrum”. And, depending on where you fall along it [and the historical, cultural, experiential context in which you find yourself] your experiences with autism can, to say the least, vary dramatically.

Consider, say, these folks: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pe … _disorders

For some people it is hard to imagine making the sort of commitment that must be made to care for an autistic child. Not when the the love they want in return is often lacking. Many autistic kids are just not able to experience the sort of emotional bonding that parents come to expect from their children. There is a distance that simply is not able to be bridged.

The bottom line then is that every community has to create a public policy that accomodates those with autism; and those with loved ones afflicted with it. And that will vary considerably. This is just one snapshot.

Also, every parent has to create a set of expectations and be willing to live within the bounds of them. This is just an extraordinary situation because the loving father is more than willing to accept that — but he is dying. And hs son may well be lost without him.

In fact, the very first scene shows us where this film might have gone.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Heaven
trailer: youtu.be/EJemRXBaO80

OCEAN HEAVEN [Hai Yang Tian Tang] 2010
Written and directed by Xiao Lu Xue

[b]Wang: Dafu. Did you untie that rope? Don’t you want to go with Dad?
Dafu: Don’t want to go with Dad. Dad is talking with you seriously.
Wang: You don’t want to go with me, right?
Dafu: Don’t want to go with me, right?
Wang: Don’t repeat me, Dafu. If you don’t go, but Dad leaves, who’ll take care of you? Who will?

…

Feng: Dafu is autistic?
Wang: We noticed something was wrong when he was about 3 years old. The local hospital said he was mentally retarded. Then we sent him to hospitals in Beijing and the diagnosis was autism.
Feng: Has he been studying here?
Wang: He came when he was 8. No school in my hometown would take him. Finally we found only this school takes kids with autism.[/b]

Autism in China: senmagazine.co.uk/articles/ … t-epidemic

[b]Feng: What brings you here today?
Wang: Principal Feng, I want to send Dafu back to school.
Feng: Send him here again? Peizhi School is an educational institution. And the state regulates nine-year compulsory education. That also applies to kids with mental disorders. Dafu looks older than 16.
Wang: He’s 21. He just had his birthday.
[Wang shows him a hospitial report]
Wang: Look at this.
Feng: Late liver cancer? Are you kidding?
Wang: How could I? When Dafu was 7, his mother died. I’m his only family. If I die, where can I send him?

…

[repeated line]
Wang: Dafu, don’t put the dog on the TV.

…

Teacher: This home takes kids diagnosed with intellectual disabilities and orphans sent by the police. We seldom offer services to individual families. As you can see, we basically take in children. Otherwise, all adults with disabilities would come here. We wouldn’t be able to afford it.
Wang: What about him. Isn’t he older?
Teacher: Lele came here before he was a month old. Cerebral lesion. He’s an orphan.
[he takes the treacher aside]
Wang: To be blunt, I’m dying. Dafu will become an orphan soon. Is it ok in that case?[/b]

Apparently not.

[b]Chai: No place will take him? I can’t believe that.
Wang: I’ve tried almost everywhere. The orphanage says he’s too old and the elderly home says he’s too young.
Chai: Let’s go online and look.
Wang: After Dafu left Peizhi School at 16, I wanted an institute to look after him and give special training. I can’t do anything so I havehim stay with me every day.
Chai: How about insurance companies?
Wang: They don’t take applications for people with disabilities. Same with state social welfare. I’ve already asked.
Chai: What if we left Dafu at the door of an orphanage? Wouldn’t they take him?
Wang: What if they don’t? And even if they do, will they look after him all his life? Will he live happily there? I want to be sure of that before I die.

…

Chai reads the note from Wang: “Dafu and I are leaving. I’ve got a few things to entrust you with, Wang Xincheng.”
Chai: What do you mean?
Wang: I’d rather take him with me than leave him suffering alone.
Chai: So your last trip wasn’t a tour?
Wang: We went to our hometown. Dafu’s a good swimmer, like his mother. Even the Grim Reaper can’t get him. So I think there’s some place on earth for him to live.

…

Chai: This institution was just set up and the conditions aren’t so good. I don’t know if Dafu can get used to it.
Wang: Principal Liu has taken care of Dafu for 9 years. An institution she recommends should be the best.

…

Wang: I don’t think autism is that bad. They live in their own world without worrying about anything. When I left him, Dafu didn’t seem reluctant to say goodbye.
Principal Liu: As you’d know Dafu can’t express himself like others do.
Wang: I never expected Dafu would do anything for me. I’m happy with what he has now. It’s pretty good. And I’m relieved.[/b]

But not for long.

[b]Chai: You’re leaving now?
Wang: Yes. I’ve brought up Dafu since he was a baby. He’s not used to being without me. Dafu is a burden on everyone. I’m his dad so I have to take responsibility.

…

Teng: Don’t swim. You said Dafu’s mom died in an accident while swimming. It seems you’re asking for the same fate.
Wang: I’m fine. It won’t happen to me.
Teng: Dafu’s mom was good at swimming. Didn’t you tell me that?
Wang: To tell you the truth, I don’t believe she had an accident when she was swimming.
Teng: What do you mean?
Wang: Dafu’s mom loved him heart and soul. She held him and played with him every day in the water. Later, when we found out Dafu was autistic she couldn’t accept it. I don’t blame her. Not everyone can face it.

…

Title card: This film is dedicated to all the ordinary heroes among our parents.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Here some folks have a problem “with everybody”. And they may or may not “work at the mill”.

In fact some of these folks consider it lucky if they can work in the mill. It’s that kind of an economy if your collar is blue. Most of the industrial jobs have already shifted to one or another of the “cheap labor markets” overseas. Places where there are no unions and folks are willing to work almost for peanuts. And this mill is about to join them.

So that means entire communities where people live from paycheck to paycheck. Again, if they are lucky enough to even have a paycheck. Or have one that actually amounts to a living wage. So some folks seek alternative sources of income. Like gambling. And fighting. And gambling on fighting.

And that’s not even counting Petty’s “inbreds” up in the mountains.

Sure, people still have loved ones here…but love is always harder to sustain when you are struggling just to subsist from day to day.

I worked in a couple renditions of this myself. Bethlehem Steel and Maryland Shipbuilding and Drydock. Both now defunct.

And then there’s the part where, in the blink of an eye, your whole fucking life can change.

This is a film in which you can either relate to the charaters in it or you can’t. And I can well imagine any number of people figuring, “what would you expect from characters like these?” They won’t give a shit about them because they live about as far on the other side of the tracks as one can get.

IMDb

[b]Christian Bale actually learned to operate a real furnace for the film and didn’t use a double for his scenes inside the steel mill.

In 2011 Scott Cooper promised Christian Bale that the director wouldn’t make this thriller without him. Unfortunately Bale’s schedule didn’t permit him to participate in the project, but the actor couldn’t get the story out of his mind. Later on Bale’s schedule cleared up and the shooting of the film commenced in April of 2012.

The term “Jackson Whites” to describe the “inbred” mountain folk of New Jersey’s Ramapo Mountains appears to have disappeared and been replaced in the DVD version by reference only to the “Ramapos” people. That change may have been due to a civil suit filed against the filmmakers in 2012 by members of Jersey’s Ramapo native-American tribe, two of whose common tribal surnames were actually the same as two of the movie’s violent characters.

The character of Russell Baze, played by Christian Bale, is based on someone very dear to director Scott Cooper.

Eddie Vedder wrote a number of songs for the film, but director Scott Cooper thought they were too perfect and powerful, which could pull the audience out of the story, so they mutually decided to leave them out of the film and unreleased.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Furnace
trailer: youtu.be/ClzRVlMhU2E

OUT OF THE FURNACE [2013]
Written in part and directed by Scott Cooper

Ted Kennedy on TV: …to stand with you. To teach America. To restore it’s future. To rise to our best ideals; and, to elect Barack Obama president of the united states.

Right. There’s a man for the working class.

[b]Harlan: I want my fucking money, Petty. You hear me, you fucking cunt. Give me my fucking money. I don’t give a shit how you get it, give me it. You fucking cunt.
Petty: Now, will you calm down. I’ll get you the money, Harlan. I’m fixin’ for a fight this week.
Harlan: You’ve been saying that but you’ve been fuckin’ jerkin’ me off. Give me my fucking money, you cunt.

…

Harlan: Your Mama teach you to barge in like that?
Russell: You got a problem with me?
Harlan: I got a problem with everybody.

…

Petty [to Russell]: I hate that you work your ass off to pay his debt. Rodney needs to watch it I like him, Russell. I really do. But I worry that, well, he might be safer over in Iraq.

…

Russell [about jail]: Could be worse.
Rodney: How could it be worse?
Russell: Well, I could’ve gone to Iraq with you.

…

Rodney: He was trying to hang on till you got out. He wanted to see you. That just ate him up.
Russell: You put him next to Mom?
Rodney: Yeah.[/b]

Russell loved his pop. But when you drive drunk, smash into another car and kill a little boy, they put you in prison.

[b]Petty: Look, Rodney, go work in the mill. Like your father and brother. This isn’t a way for you, to make a living. You’re…you’re a good kid, with a good heart. You can do a lot worse than living your life like your brother, believe me.
Rodney: I don’t wanna work in the fuckin’ mill, man. I wanna be just like you, John.

…

Russell: Come work at the mill. I told you Roach would give you a job.
Rodney: No, man, I’d rather be fucking dead. Fuck the mill.
Russell: Fuck the mill? I work at the mill, you little fucker. It’s good enough for me, it was good enough for our dad.
Rodney: That fucking mill killed our dad!

…

Russell: Just don’t be too proud, to work for a living. There’s nothing wrong in it.
Rodney: What did you say?
Russell: There’s nothing wrong in working for a living.
Rodney: Working for a living?
[Rodney pulls up his shirt revealing a scar over a foot long]
Rodney: What do you call this, motherfucker? Is that working for a living? Huh? Is that working for a living? When I carry my best friend leg under this arm and the rest of it, under this arm? I saw a fucking baby with his fucking head cut off. I saw a fucking pile of feet in the middle of the street. And I had to clean it up. I gave my fucking life for this country. That’s not work? And what’s it done for me? Huh?
[he smashes the kitchen cabinet]
Rodney: WHAT’S IT FUCKING DONE FOR ME!!![/b]

My own war was Vietnam. His is Iraq.

Rodney: I need one last fucking fight, John. Just give me one good fight, please? One good fucking fight. Please, that’s all I’m asking you. Can you please do that for me?
Petty: You gotta trust me when I tell you, you don’t wanna set foot in those mountains.
Rodney: What is the big fucking deal?
Petty: The big fucking deal is I’ve dealt with these guys. For a long time. And when they don’t get what they want they get nasty.
Rodney: Oh, they get nasty. Do they?
Petty: Yeah. You don’t know.
Rodney: Well, John I don’t really have a lot of fucking options, man. I can’t fucking catch up doing this small time shit!
Petty: I am trying to protect you!
Rodney: Just fucking call 'em up, please?
Petty: I’m not doing it, Rodney. I’m not going to call them.
Rodney: Well, I’m not leaving until you do. Call 'em up. Just please, call them up. John, please call them up. Please call them up. I’m asking for one fight. Please, call them up. Please, call them up.
Petty: Fuck, Rodney! You fuck with these inbreds, you will come crawling back. If you are lucky.

He calls them up

[b]Lena: You’re staying at your Dad’s?
Russell: Yeah. I’m trying to give it some life.
Lena: I went to his funeral.
Russell: I know. Thank you, that was important to me. Thank you.
Lena: You’re back at the mill?
Russell: Just can’t get enough of it. You know?
Lena: I heard they are gonna close it.
Russell: Yeah, looks like it. It’s cheaper to…uh…to get steel from China.

…

Harlan: What’s your name?
Rodney: Rodney. Rodney Baze.
Harlan: Rodney Baze. Well, Rodney Baze, I hear you’re quite the crazy fucker in the ring. Makes me wanna jump in there, with you. See who walks out.
Rodney: With you standing so close, I guess we could do it right now.
Harlan: Are you gonna be a good boy, and take a dive like Petty said you would. Or am I gonna have to teach you a lesson?

…

Rodney: I should have popped that motherfucker.
Petty: That would be the last motherfucker you ever popped.
Rodney: Am I supposed to be scared of him because he sucks on a lollipop?

…

Harlan: You ain’t fighting with that shit on, are you? It’s bare knuckle up here.
Petty: Take 'em off.

…

Petty: Oh, what the fuck? What the fuck is this?! Okay. Okay, okay, okay. What’s the game?
Harlan: I think, your left wheel is doing down.
Petty: What?
Harlan: I said, I think your left wheel is going down.
Petty: What shit are you talking?
Harlan: I ain’t talking shit. I ain’t talking shit. And, our slate ain’t clean, Motherfucker.
[he pulls out a gun and shoots him in the head]
Harlan [of Rodney]: Get that other one out.

…

Rodney [in a letter to Russell]: Russ, I’m sorry about the other day. I know you’re looking out for me. But you gotta understand that I’m different than I was before I left. And I think that I always will be. I can’t explain how exactly. My head is just full of stuff and I can’t get it out.
[cut to Harlan putting a bullet in his head up in the mountains]
Rodney: But I’m gonna turn things around. I’m gonna do this one last fight and then I’ll be done. Then I’m gonna shovel asphalt or dig for coal or I’ll work with you and Roach at the mill. I’ll do anything. I’m gonna get things back on track. I promise. I love you, man. I’ll see you tomorrow when I get back.

…

Chief Barnes [to Russell]: I spoke with the Jersey State, over at County, Fish and Game. All of them had dealt with this, Harlan DeGroat, before. The problem is that the people up in those hills they don’t co-operate. Getting information from this people is like pulling teeth. It’s a whole another world, up in there. Generations of generations upon these people. They don’t even come down off that mountain. They’ve got their own breed of justice that does not include us.

…

Russell: It sounds like they’re not doing a goddamn thing. Now, either you’re all afraid to go in there…or, uh…you just don’t give a shit.
Chief Barnes: You’re walking down the wrong road. I said I’m into it, and I said I’ll handle it. Don’t make this personal. You need to stay out of my business.
Russell: Stay out of your business. Stay out of your business? You know what? While I was away, it seems that all that you was was into was my business.

…

Dan: I know this guy. This DeGroat is a nasty son of a bitch.
Russell: You let me worry about who is a nasty son of a bitch.

…

Dan: Looks like John still owes money, to these peoples. Hell, a lot of money. I know they had this whole deal. But I didn’t realise know it was this big.
Russell: What deal?
Dan: Well, this bare knuckle deal. Up and down the Appalachians. I don’t know that much about it. But, my guess is that Rodney went up there to fight.

…

Russell: I’m Rodney Baze’s brother.
Harlan: Tough kid.

…

Chief Barnes: Don’t do it, Russell! Russell? Drop your weapon! Russell. Drop it. Walk away. Drop it, Russell. Drop it. Just listen to me. Listen to me, Russell. Russell. Let me make this right!
[Russell puts a bullet in Harlan’s head]
Chief Barnes: For God’s sake…
[cut to Russell sitting alone at his kitchen table][/b]

What’s it mean?

Here’s one take on it:

huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/0 … 65572.html

[iambiguous]

“Based on a true story.”

Sometimes you come across this and find yourself considerably more skeptical about the gap between what did happen and what you see happening up on the screen.

Here are the folks this story is said to be based on: nytimes.com/2005/09/23/nyreg … .html?_r=0

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_and_Rosemarie_Uva

This is a “fictionalized” account of whatever the actual reality was.

From the start it seems clear that Tommy and Rosie are a couple of losers who have no where to go but up. Five minutes into the film and you know how far down in the hole they are. So, is it time to stop digging? Or maybe they have just been going about the business of robbing people the wrong way. Robbing the wrong people, for example. Liquor stores? Flower shops?

Why not rob the mob instead? What could go wrong?

On the other hand, once the media and the Feds get involved, what doesn’t go wrong. In other words, they’re doomed.

Still, there is just something about Tommy and Rosie that make you almost want to root for them. Besides, the mob fucked over his father. So this is personal. He doesn’t just rob them in other words, he humiliates them. In this calamity, the past and the present become hopelessly entangled.

Look for Lip Gallagher.

IMDb

This is the third time Andy Garcia starred in a movie about real life mafia that was dramatized for the silver screen, first in in The Untouchables and then Hoodlum.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_the_Mob
trailer: youtu.be/2aDphVOLHPo

ROB THE MOB [2014]
Directed by Raymond De Felitta

[b]Flower shop lady [firing a shotgun at a fleeing Tommy]: Happy Valentine’s Day, you fuck!

…

Tommy [watching John Gotti being arrested on TV]: Bunch of greasy old guys coasting on their reputations. Bullshit. They used to fuck with my father every day. They would humiliate him because he borrowed money to start his flower shop. They were all fucking rats. Even before RICO.
Rosie: Who’s RICO?

…

Tommy: Hey…Ma, seriously? You’re not even going to say hello?
Mom: Yeah. Hello. What do you need? Money?
Tommy: No, I…I don’t need anything. I just…
Mom: When do we see you, huh, Tommy? Either you need bail or you’re in trouble.
Tommy: Come on, Ma. Stop it.
Mom: You come around only when you need things and then you leave, and you go on again, and it’s bye-bye. And then I’m stuck here every night wondering if the next time I see you, I’m burying you.

…

Prosecutor: Can you talk to me about the nigh! of August 20th ?
Sammy the Bull: We was at a sitdown at the Pizalo Club over on Union Avenue.
Prosecutor: So at this social club, you had your gun with you?
Sammy the Bull: No. No guns in the club. It’s against the rules. Guns and wiseguys is a bad mix.[/b]

The seed is planted…

[b]Rosie: Where were you?
Tommy: I went to one of those social clubs.
Rosie: Like a mafia social club?
Tommy: Yeah, the Italian social club out on Union Avenue. I was curious, you know. So I walked in. You know what was going on in there? Nothing. Nothing was going on. Absolutely nothing. A bunch of old guys playing cards. You know, there’s no guns allowed in those clubs. Did you know that?
Rosie: Oh, yeah ?
Tommy: Yeah.
Rosie: Where did you hear that?
Tommy: At the Gotti trial.
Rosie: You went to the Gotti trial?!!

…

Tommy: We’re going to have to sell your car.
Rosie: My father gave me that car. I am not selling the car.
Tommy: Well, then we’re going to have to go back to your mother’s…
Rosie: I am not going back to my mother’s!
Tommy: Well, then we’re going to have to go to plan B.
Rosie: Okay, what’s plan B?

…

Tommy [to Rosie]: Honey, listen, they’re criminals. They’re not going to call the cops. And the cops aren’t going to fucking care if we rip off some fucking wiseguys.

…

Rosie [opening the refrigerator door]: What the fuck is that?!
Tommy: Whoa, what?
Rosie: What is that? Oh, my God!!!
[she runs from the room, Tommy goes over to the refrigerator]
Tommy: What? It’s an eggplant.
Rosie: No, next to the eggplant!
Tommy [pulling out an Uzi machine gun]: Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I forgot I had this in there.
Rosie: What is that?
Tommy: It’s…listen…
Rosie: Oh, my God!
Tommy: Overwhelming force. If it works for the U.S. Army, it’s going to fucking work for us.

…

Tommy [after he robs the mob]: This is for Frank Uva.

…

Sal: Gotti broke every rule in the book doing what he did. Can you imagine? Wearing fancy suits, strutting around town like he was some kind of movie star. Taking out your own boss in the middle of the street. He brought this all on himself. Man, he’s going to ruin this life. I mean, if he didn’t make us look like a bunch of fucking idiots, those two kids wouldn’t be out there knocking over our clubs.
Big Al: Those two kids are still out there?

…

Rosie [with a newspaper]: Listen to this.
Tommy: What?
Rosie: Gotti said, “if I went in and robbed a church and came out with a Steeple sticking out of my ass, I’d never plea.” I just can’t get enough Gotti.
Tommy: It’s crazy! I know, it’s great.

…

Prosecutor: Now Mr. Gotti said that he was going to ask for permission?
Sammy the Bull: Yeah, he was going over to Waikiki Club to get it straightened out.
Prosecutor: That’s the social club at 103rd Avenue in Queens.
[cut to Tommy jotting down the address]
Sammy the Bull: Big Al’s joint, right.
Prosecutor: Now, did Mr. Gotti receive permission to kill Mr. Castellano?
Sammy the Bull: Nah. AI…
Prosecutor: That’s Alfonse Fiorello?
Sammy the Bull: Yeah, Big AI told John to fuck off. See, it ain’t easy getting permission to whack a boss. It violates the natural order. A mouse don’t attack a lion. And you don’t whack a boss.

…

Rosie [with a sheet of paper from Joey D’s wallet]: Did you see this? Little Anthony (C) Vinnie (C) Jimmy the Cheese (A)
Tommy: Wait a minute, let me see. Let me see this. You know what this is? It’s the family tree. This is the entire Vazallo family.
Rosie: What do these initials mean?
Tommy: A associate. C capo. U underboss. Do you know what the fucking feds would do for this?
Rosie: What?
Tommy: Get on their knees and start sucking.
Rosie: Why?
Tommy: Well you see, the Mafia’s defense, their entire defense, is that they just deny that they exist. They deny that they’re organized. This is all mapped out for them. This proves they’re organized. Look, it’s got the ranking, everything.

…

Vinnie: How did you get this number?
Tommy: Vinnie, I don’t just got your number. I got your number, I got your fucking rank. I got your nickname. By the way, you’re pretty low on the list.
Vinnie: What’s the list? What the fuck are you talking about?
Tommy: I have everyone. The entire fucking family, all the way up to Big Al. That’s right.
Vinnie: What are you telling me for?
Tommy: Vinnie, I want you to tell everyone. I mean all your fucking grease ball friends. Fuck with us, and every single Fed is going to have this list.
Vinnie: How about you fucking hang up the phone and you go fuck your mother. Right now.
Tommy: Let me reiterate, motherfucker. All right? I got a will. In that fucking will, I got a P.O. box. In that P.O. box, I got a list. Anything happens to us…I mean, man, anything happens to me or fucking Bonnie…we’re going to take the whole fucking family down, asshole.

…

Vinnie: I just got off the phone with Clyde.
Sal: Clyde who?
Vinnie: Bonnie and fucking Clyde, Sal.
Sal: This Clyde? How the fuck did he get the number?
Vinnie: That’s what I asked him, but he’s talking about he’s got “the list”.
Sal: A list? Vinnie, he said a list?
Vinnie: Talking about he’s got names and ranks. Goes all the way up to Big AI. What the fuck is the list, Sal?
Anthony: It’s a pact. A guy gets picked up for something, whatever, he calls the guy with the list who lets them all know the other guy’s in trouble before the Feds can get to them. That way the Feds can’I get everyone to rat each other out.
Sal: And this guy carries the list with him?
Anthony: Yeah. Joey D.

…

Tommy: Sometimes you do everything right. You run the shop, you pay your bills, and you’re the guy that gets fucked! I mean, look at Pop. Look, he broke his fucking back on this place. Look what it got him. It’s no one’s fault. Bobby, I…just take the money.
Mother: Your father did everything right. Up every morning, early. No man worked harder than him.
Tommy: I know that. That’s not what…
Mother: You want to know why? So that you can have a better life.
Tommy: Look, me and Pops, we were okay, all right? We reconciled our shit.
Mother: You broke his heart, Tommy! You killed him. He died of a broken heart.
Tommy: I killed him? I killed him now? How can you say that to me? I didn’t kill him. I didn’t fucking kill him, and he didn’t kill himself. The fucking mob killed him, and you know it. Oh, we don’t want to talk about that, right?
Mother: He had to keep this store going, and those people were the only way he knew how. You know, he wanted to help you. He did. He wanted to help you. He wanted so much for you. And for what?
Tommy: Come on, don’t say that, Ma.
Mother: What did you do with your life, Tommy, huh? What did you do with your life?
Tommy: I did the best I could, all right? I did something. I did something with my life.
[she shoves the envelop filled with cash at him]
Mother: This? This is what you did with your life? I don’t want it.
Tommy: Listen Ma, I’m sorry, all right? I just…I just want you to have the money, Mom. Please take the money.
Mother: I don’t want this money.
Tommy: Just take the fucking money!
Mother: I don’t want the fucking money!
Tommy: Bobby, take the money!
Mother: Don’t touch that money!
Tommy: Fine, fine! All right, you know what? I’m out of here. I’m out of here, all right? This piece of shit Is leaving the fucking building, all right? I’m out of here. I tried to do something nice. You know what? Fuck it! I tried to do something nice!

…

Agent Hurd: You ended up getting awfully friendly with those two. All her words.
Cardozo: I just took notes. I liked them. He’s a little out there. He’s on his own little planet. She could make a fortune running a P.R. firm.
Agent Hurd: They’re a couple of small-time scumbags as far as I’m concerned.
Cardozo: With a couple of brass ones though.

…

Agent Hurd: It doesn’t matter, because the mob has already got a contract out on them.
Cardozo: And what are you going to do? Are you going to let that happen?
Agent Hurd: Me? You want to take down the king, you got to sacrifice a couple of pawns.
Cardozo: Bullshit! Fuck that! I wrote this because of you. You got to do something for these kids. What did they do? They robbed from the goddamn mob! It’s a public service, what they did.
Agent Hurd: What do you expect me to do? Put them in the witness protection program or something? That’s not up to me. Do you know how much money that’s going to cost? They’re not going to do it for these two fucking idiots.
Cardozo: You guys are worse than them. Yeah, you are. At least with the mob, you know where you stand.

…

Sal: You know I’m running around this neighborhood and I run into it. I practically crash into their goddamn fucking car! They live three fucking blocks from here! And you fucking idiots are sitting in here with your heads up your asses! Get out there, find these fucking cocksuckers and bring them in! They’re done!

…

Title card: Thomas Uva and Rose Marie de Toma were murdered on Christman Eve, 1992. “The List” helped convict over 20 members of various crime families.[/b]

[iambiguous]

How good is this movie? This good: rottentomatoes.com/m/short_term_12_2013/

Including 40 for 40 of the top crtitics.

Short term 12?

Short term is how they designate this particular home for “troubled teens”. They are only supposed to stay for 12 months or less but some seem to linger on longer. In other words, “until the County can figure out what to do with them next”.

And since we basically live in a dog-eat-dog “postmodern” culture…a culture that seems to mass produce all manner of emotional and psychological maladies [in everyone], there is always going to be a need for places like this.

Now, how this works [sometimes] is that the parents will often take out on their kids all of the shit they have to deal with from the “authority figures” in their own lives. So, the kids are at risk and they end up here.

And since the shit the adults have to endure is not going away anytime soon in this political economy, it’s always just a matter of welcoming in the next generation of misfits. If the state even has the funding for programs like this. Well, that’s my spin on it anyway. Unless the shit we exchange is grappled with in the context of a culture that systemically creates the conditions where emotional and psychological stress is the rule, nothing these well-intentioned counselors do is going to put much of a dent in it. They help particular individuals. But that’s as far as it ever goes. The rest is political.

And that’s before we get to part about the “pop” in the culture. The pop culture segueing into Youth Culture. What an appalling waste of youth that often is.

Ah, but there are always going to be the sexual predators here as well. The sharks.

IMDb

While most of the children were cast through open casting calls, Keith Stanfield was the only actor to return from the original short film Short Term 12 (2008). Director Destin Daniel Cretton had to struggle to reach him during the casting as he had quit acting and did not have a cell phone.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Term_12
trailer: youtu.be/qhS6tvSb0UQ

SHORT TERM 12 [2013]
Written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton

[b]Mason: So this kid, 16 years old, this big fuckin’ intimidating dude, he’s like a foot taller than me. He walks up and he just cruises out the gate. It’s my second day, so I don’t know what the hell is going on. But Grace, she’s standing right there, and she just lets it happen.
Grace: Whatever. What I saw was Mason just sitting there and Wesley smiling at me from the opposite side of the gate because he knows that we can’t touch him.
Nate: Why not?
Grace: Once they’re a foot outside the gate, we can’t touch them.

…

Grace [to Nate]: Remember, you are not their parent. You are not their therapist. You are here to create a safe environment, and that’s it. And since you’re new, they’re going to try and test you, see what they can get away with. So just say no for a while. You’ve kind of got to be an asshole before you can be their friend.

…

Nate [introducing himself to the kids]: I took a year off of school because, you know, I just wanted to get some life experience. And I always wanted to work with underprivileged kids.
Marcus: Hey, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Grace: Marcus, settle down.
Marcus: No, I want to know what you mean by that, “underprivileged.”
Nate: That’s not what I meant.
Marcus: Then think about your fucking words before you speak!

…

Jack: This is Jayden. She just got appointed to us this morning. Her father’s a friend of a friend, real nice guy, very cultured.
Grace: Why isn’t she with him?
Jack: Oh, he lost his wife a few years back. Jayden hasn’t made life very easy on him. For the past couple of years, she’s been in and out of group homes for dangerous behavior. Last week she nearly bit off her therapist’s nose.

…

Grace: I like your name, Jayden.
Jayden: It’s a boy’s name.
Grace: Really? I don’t think so.
Jayden: Will Smith did.

…

Jayden: Yep, I know the rules: no belts, no razors, no scissors, no fucking freedom.
Grace: No cussing.
Jayden: Shit, I forgot about that one.
Grace: I’m gonna let that one slip because it was clever.

…

Grace: Why are you so nice to me?
Mason: You being serious now? Well, it’s easy. It’s because you are the weirdest, most beautiful person that I’ve ever met in my whole entire life.
[she kisses him]
Mason: Whoa.
Grace: Hmm?
Mason: Um. Nothing. It’s just been a long time since you kissed me like that.
Grace: That’s not true.
Mason: Well, we haven’t had sex in 9 days and 13 hours.
Grace: Down to the hour, huh?

…

Sammy: Can we play Big and Small?
Grace: Is that a real game, or is that a game you just made up?
Sammy: It’s a real game that I just made up.

…

Grace: You need to tell me what the hell is going on. Assault and drug possession. You realize that’s enough to get your ass thrown in juvie.
Marcus: Do you think I give a fuck?
Grace: You’re out of here in less than a week. You’re so much smarter than this. I know it’s scary out there.
Marcus: I ain’t scared of shit.
Grace: All I’m saying is, getting thrown in jail is not what you want to do. My dad has been in there for 10 years. I don’t want that for you.

…

Mason: You got some new lyrics you want to try out on me?
Marcus: There’s a lot of fucks in it.
Mason: I won’t tell.
[Marcus raps his song]
Marcus: It don’t matter now, damn near 18/All the pretty pictures in my fuckin’ head is faded/And when I think about that trick that raised me/I think about sick, because the bitch is crazy/Fuck that bitch, nigga, fuck that pain/Your body’s in a ditch inside this fucked up brain/I mean, I can’t see how you claim it, you being ma?/Doctors snatched me out the snatch of pure evil with eagle claws/Ho, ho, ho, slut, fuck the way you want it/Got your young, dumb son pitching pigeons for money/I mean, it’s colder than the bitch when it’s sunny/Blows raining down on the glow/Got the nerve to tell me you love me?/ I said, again? Again? Sell it again?/Bitch, I’m 10. Let me go outside and play with friends/You say you ma? You mother? You the father-fucking queen?/I say, all right, I love her so I flip it again/No, not this time, bitch, because I’m stronger than you/Not this time, bitch, swinging harder than you/No, not this time, bitch, you ain’t leave me a choice/You just a body in a ditch in the brain of a boy/All fucked up now, damn near 18/All the pictures in my past ain’t never fading/I’m always wishing for something amazing/but when your life is shit then it ain’t no trading/So put me in your book so you know what it’s like/to live a life not knowing what a normal life’s like/Put a label on my head so you know what it’s like/to live a life not knowing what a normal life’s like/Look into my eyes so you know what it’s like/Look into my eyes so you know what it’s like/to live a life not knowing what a normal life’s like.

…

Grace [after shaving Marcus’s head]: Finished. You want to take a look?
Mason: Looks great, Marcus. Check it out.
Marcus: Is it lumpy?
Mason: What do you mean?
Marcus: I usually keep my hair long. It’s where she used to hit me at. Is it still lumpy?
Mason: No way, man.
Grace: Not at all.
Mason: See for yourself. Pretty smooth.
Marcus: What about the back? No scars?

…

Grace: You want to see mine?
[she shows Jayden the scars on her leg]
Jayden: Shit.
Grace: That one’s from a sneeze. Slipped and cut too deep. Almost cut my achilles.
Jayden: Why?
Grace: Hmm. My mom died. I went to live with my dad. It’s impossible to worry about anything else when there’s blood coming out of you.[/b]

Grace is successful where others are not. Why? Because in her own way she is just as fucked up as the kids.

[b]Grace: Did you read my report?
Jack: Of course I did, and I was very concerned. But when Jayden’s social worker asked her about it, she said her father had never been abusive in any way.
Grace: Of course she said that! She’s fucking scared! What the fuck did they teach you guys in grad school? Jack, in her mind he is always right behind her, watching her. When she is sleeping. When she is taking a shit. When she is alone with her therapist, he is right there watching her, ready to pounce. And you just expect her to just come out and say it? Are you guys fucking stupid? Because she was here asking for help, and you just send her back to the fucking shark!
Jack: I realize you’re upset, Grace. But yelling at me isn’t an effective form of communication.
Grace: OK. OK, Jack. Jack, I’m sorry. Please cancel the pass until we figure this out, because I know her and I know that things are not good at home.
Jack: And how do you know that? Because she read you a children’s story?
Grace: Don’t fuck with me, Jack. I am on the floor every day with those kids. And last night, that girl sat next to me and she cried, and she tried to tell me the only way that she knew how.
Jack: Grace, you are a line staff. It’s not your job to interpret tears. That’s what our trained therapists are here for.
Grace: Then your trained therapists don’t know shit!!
Jack: Did she tell you that she was being abused by her father?
Grace: She didn’t have to.
Jack: If I’m going to take that child away from her biological parent, yes, she does.
Grace: This is bullshit.
Jack: Grace, I have been working with these kids longer than you’ve been alive. And there’s not one of them that I wouldn’t die for. I look into those broken eyes. I want to go out and find the asshole who did that to them and beat the shit out of them. But although I feel that way every single day, I know I can’t track down everyone who’s hurt them. I know I can’t heal all their
wounds, and I can’t start accusing all their parents of being sexual offenders.
Grace: Especially when they’re friends of friends, right, Jack?

…

Mason: Grace. Where are you going?
Grace: I can’t do that.
Mason: Ok. Let’s go. Let’s go. I’ll drive us home.
Grace: I don’t wanna go home. It’s not what I’m talking about.
Mason: I know it’s been a really fucked up day, okay?
Grace: Mason, you have no idea what I’m going through right now.
Mason: Then tell me. That’s how this works. You talk to me about it so that I can take your hand and fucking walk through this shit with you. That is what I signed up for, okay? But I cannot do that if you won’t let me in.
Grace: I can’t. I’m sorry.
Mason: You’re sorry? Grace, are you serious? I’ve been waiting for you for a really long time and I wouldn’t take a second of it back because I love you so goddamn much, okay? But I’ve been waiting for three years to as why is that you don’t trust me. I’ve been waiting for three years for you to, just once, take the advice you give your kids every fucking five minutes and learn to talk about what’s going on inside your head. You can’t do that for me? Whatever it is, okay, just talk to me.
Grace: I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t marry you. I can’t have your baby. I can’t any of that. I can’t do it.
Mason: So what do you wanna do? Huh? You wanna get an abortion?
Grace: I already made the appointment.
[long pause]
Mason: Do whatever you want, okay? Cause I’m done.

…

Grace: They’re going to ask you a lot of questions. It’s going to be hard.
Jayden: I’ll try to leave out the part about you breaking into the house with a baseball bat.
Grace: Thanks.[/b]

[iambiguous]

This film is a “reimagining” of the Henry James novel of the same name.

What did Maisie know? Well, in this regard, I might ask my own daughter what she knew while enduring the collapse of the marriage between her Mom and I. And I did ask. And yet to this day I still do not really know. She just skims the surface. I only know that it changed her in ways that reprecuss to this day.

Well, you know what they say in the song:

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all

So, did your bough break?

But then, what’s worse, divorce or “staying together for the sake of the child”? Trust me: That’s not a trivial question. Not pertaining to marriage in “the modern world”.

It’s always the same tug of war. The love that you feel toward your child and the hatred that you feel toward your spouse. Sometimes the love prevails, sometimes the hate. And sometimes the parents are basically narcissists – more likely to be as much in love with themselves as the child. And that’s what the child becomes entangled in day after day after day. Here the idea is to view all of this from the perspective of the child. She is both in the background and front and center to the unraveling.

Then the question becomes the extent to which this brings about her own unravelling. Here of course every child in every context is different.

What a strange ending. It’s the one that you are hoping for, sure, but, really, how long before that starts to unravel as well?

IMDb

In an interview on the NPR program “Fresh Air”, Julianne Moore said that she drew on Courtney Love and Patti Smith for inspiration for her character in this movie, who is (like Love and Smith) a rock star who is also a mother.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Maisie_Knew_(film
trailer: youtu.be/UrGzb1nBBl4

WHAT MAISIE KNEW [2012]
Directed by Scott McGehee, David Siegel

[b]Beale [to Susanna]: I’ve…I’ve done my mid-life crisis. You should get on with yours.

…

[while Maisie looks on]
Beale [pounding on the door]: Open the door. Open the damn door!
Susanna: Stop making that fucking noise. They hate me in this building.
Beale: Open the door, Susanna.
Susanna: Go away.
Beale: Open the door.
Susanna: No.
Beale: Open the fucking door!!
Susanna: Not this time. I told you it would happen if you left. It’s my apartment.
Beale: Open the goddamn door.
Susanna: No.
Beale: You’re a fucking headcase!!
Susanna: FUCK YOU!!![/b]

Now imagine facsimiles of this unfolding day after day after day after day. From the child’s point of view. Next up:

[b]Beale: You’re not capable of taking care of a child.
Susanna: You know better.
Beale: No, I know you.
Susanna: Really? I know you.
Beale: Susanna, you don’t know anyone except yourself. You breathe pain wherever you go.
Susanna: Shut up, shut up.
Beale: That’s why the judge and the experts, they saw that. They saw you.
Susanna: No. No.
Beale: Then why are they not giving you sole custody?
Susanna: Because you got a female judge, that’s why.
Beale: If that’s what you want to tell yourself, then fine.
Susanna [now pleading]: Don’t take her.
Beale: I’m not taking her.
Susanna: Don’t take her.
Beale: I’m not taking her. They gave her to me.
[enter Maisie who has been listening to them]
Beale: Hey.
Susanna: Hey, baby.
Beale: Just the person we want to see. Honey, why don’t you get some clothes and things and stuff to take with us?
Susanna: Just do it.
Beale: It’s okay. It’s okay.
Susanna [exploding]: SHE DOESN’T NEED YOU TELLING HER WHAT I SAY IS OKAY, ASSHOLE!!!

…

Susanna [noticing a burn on Maisie’s arm]: Jesus, how did that happen?
Maisie: I touched my arm on the stove and I got burned and I cried.
Susanna: How did it happen? Did Daddy let you cook by yourself or something? Oh, God. Okay. The court says that I’m not supposed to say anything, but I would be, like, totally negligent if I didn’t tell you that you really have to watch yourself when you’re alone with Daddy, okay?

…

Lincoln: Susanna Nun. She sent me to get her daughter.
Margo: Who are you?
Lincoln: I’m her… sorta…like…Maisie’s stepfather.

…

Susanna [on the phone with her lawyer]: No, no, he didn’t forget. He knows it’s his pick up day. Honeymoon my ass. He’s messing with me. Look, it’s a violation of the court order, and he agreed to those dates before he left. You got to be kidding me. Great, okay.
[she hangs up and turns to Lincoln]
Susanna: So, he says it’s a violation of the court order for them to not let us pick her up. But if they don’t pick her up, it’s not a violation, okay?

…

Beale [upon meeting Lincoln]: I’d give you a couple of pointers, but I doubt that the Jacobean Tragedy that was our relationship would apply to the farce that you two guys are playing out.

…

Lincoln: You know, I was just thinking like we’re both in…
Margo: You thought what? That I feel sorry for you? That I’ve got nothing else to do? That I’m just that sort of person? Well, I’m not, so you deal with it. It’s your problem, not mine.
Lincoln: I didn’t–I didn’t say that.
Margo: I am locked out of my own apartment because my husband didn’t bother putting me on the lease. Like I don’t exist. I have done everything I was supposed to. He can’t just use people like this.

…

Margo: I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean you, don’t you?
[maisie nods her head]
Margo: Thank you. None of this is your fault. It’s not Lincoln’s fault, either. He’s just mixed up, too. You really like him, don’t you?
Maisie: I love him.
Margo: I’m sorry I got mad at him. He must think I’m awful.
Maisie: Mommy gets mad at him all the time.

…

Lincoln: Well, I can’t really watch you now. I’ve got to be in Chinatown in half an hour, and I’m sort of late already. Isn’t it still Margo’s week?
Maisie: She and daddy had a fight, and this morning she was gone.
Lincoln: Gone? Where did she go?
Maisie: I don’t know. But Daddy’s going to England, and he said that I could go with him and then he said that I couldn’t. And then we came in a taxi and he just left me here.

…

Susanna: What the fuck? What are you doing? Really, what are you doing?
Lincohn: What are you doing?
Susanna: I’m taking my daughter, that’s what. Get out. Get out of my face.
Lincohn: I’d love to get out of your face. You don’t deserve her. I’m done.[/b]

[iambiguous]

What is fact and what is fiction?

For a teacher of literature, this is often at the forefront when engaging in the task of reading what his students write.

And in today’s world much of what our youth choose to write about is little more than tripe. The teacher then longs for the occasional student to come along whose writing actually intrigues him.

On the other hand, be careful what you wish for. To be intriguing one must be complex. But in being complex one isn’t readily pinned down. There are any number of directions that complexity can go. Meaning there are any number of directions that it can take you.

And making a distinction between fact and fiction might well turn out to be the least of those complications.

And then there’s the part about the relationship between “literature” and “real life”. How are they intertwined? How ought they to be instead?

But that’s the trick here. He teaches his student the art of writing fiction and the student takes his tricks and a creates a story such that it becomes almost impossible to tell what is real and what is just imagined to be real. They discuss his story so as to improve it but that means manipulating the characters in order that they comply more with what is imagined and less with what is real. The next thing you know the teacher is in the story.

But let’s not get too carried away with it. This is, after all, a comedy. Or, perhaps, a fantasy. Imagining what it means to live the lives of those all around us. And imagining how we can never really come to understand them other than on our own terms.

To be continued.

IMDb

Ernst Umhauer said this about the character he plays in the movie: “He confuses his writing with reality and turns everything in his path upside-down. He has no distance, it takes him a long time to realize his words are stinging and can do damage. He’s smart, but not very conscious of his responsibility”.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_House_(film
trailer: youtu.be/eegoZpxQCzc

IN THE HOUSE [Dans la Maison] 2012
Written and directed by François Ozon

[b]Anouck: You read the memo?
Germain: Yes. “The triumph of republican equality”. What a demagogue!
Anouk: It’s too early to be so pessimist!
Germain: I read Schopenhauer all summer.

…

Jeanne: Are your students so bad this year?
Germain: The worst I’ve seen in my life. It’s creepy!
Jeanne: You say the same thing every year.
Germain: Listen to this: “Saturday ate pizza and watched TV, Sunday I did nothing, I was tired.” He was given 30min. Two sentences!

…

Germain: I wanted to convey a taste for literature…And I find…what? Cell phones and pizzas! The worst isnt ignorance. It’s the future. They’re the future! Reactionary philosophers say the barbarians are coming. But they are already here in our classrooms! [/b]

Yes, it seems to becoming a worldwide phenomenon

[b]Jeanne: And you, how was your day?
Germain: My day? Nothing in particular. Yes, I talked to the boy.
Jeanne: And?
Germain: He gave me Chapter 2…

…

Germain: It seems no more strange than your Inflatable dolls sex shop.
Jeanne: Its not a sex shop, Germain, its an art gallery!
Germain: I know. They’re deviant dolls: Sex and dictatorship.
Jeanne: Sure, it makes sense: The dictatorship of sex![/b]

I think the art displayed here is rather fascinating.

[b]Jeanne [of Claude]: He needs a shrink. He could be dangerous.
Germain: He’s just a rebel. Angry at reality. Who can blame him? Better to vent with words than set fire to cars.

…

Germain [to Claude]: For whom do you write, yourself? It’s very easy to show the worst of someone, so that the mediocre can feel superior and make fun of it and find it ridiculous. What is rare, is approaching the characters, without an opinion…without condemning. Think of Flaubert, he’s the perfect example…he doesn’t condemn his characters.

…

Jeanne: I dont understand what you want with him.
Germain: This boy has a knack for writing. It might sound pompous but I’m just trying to teach him literature. And through that, life.
Jeanne: Literature teaches us nothing about life.
Germain: Oh, is that so?
Jeanne: You know what was in the pocket of the nutcase who killed John Lennon? “Catcher in the Rye.”. What did literature teach him? Nothing.
Germain: Obvioulsy your art exhibits teach us much more.
Jeanne: Art exhibits are the same. Art in general teaches us nothing.

…

Claude [from his literature class paper]: 10th minute, Esther begins a sketch for a home renovation. She’s at home all day. But doesn’t like the decor. 12th minute. She stares out into space, haunted by the existential question, “Where to install the second bathroom?”

…

Jeanne: You’re right, he has a gift for writing. But this version is even more ironic and contemptuous.
Germain: You think?
Jeanne: Yes. Youre being manipulated. You want to teach him literature, but he’ the one giving you the lesson.

…

[from within Claude’s story]
Claude: Germain, the lit teacher, loaned me Kafka’s Great Wall of China.
Esther: Rapha says he’s weird. Kind of bitter.
Claude: I think he’d rather write than teach.
Esther: He could do both.
Claude: I think he lacks talent, so he’s bitter.
[Jeanne reacts]
Jeanne: Bitter! Aren’t you upset about that?
Gemain: He’s not wrong.
Jeanne: Masochist…

…

Jeanne: It was I who invited them.
Germain: The Raphas?
Jeanne: Yes, I sent an invitation. I didn’t think that they would come. I wanted to see them and I thought that it would please you…I failed…as always.
Germain: But they’re fictional characters, Jeanne. I dont want them in your gallery.
Jeanne: And am I a fictional character too?
Germain: No, of course not, darling.

…

[in the story]
Germain: You clever bastard. You gave her a poem.
Claude: Yes, I wrote her a poem.
Germain: Nice. No one ever wrote her a poem. She’s practically illiterate. There’s no poetry in this house. Toss her some verse and metaphor. It’s like dropping an atomic bomb.
Claude: I see her differently now.
Germain: I see. Our young iconclast has fallen for the middle class.
Claude: You said look close without judging. I did. I’ll get Esther out of this house.
Germain: You longer mind the way she talks, her scent, her love of remodelling? You’ll get a job, a loan, buy her a prefab home?

…

Gemain: I knew that you werent going to like the suicide and Ive already changed it.
Claude: You’ve gone too far. You came to the house, you cast out the child, seduced the mother.
Germain: Youre confusing your desires with your story and…
Claude: And what? It’s what you taught me.

…

Claude: I stopped writing.
Germain: You’re not going to the Raphas house any more?
Claude: You said there’d be trouble. I work alone now. I do math. Math never disappoints.
[pause]
Claude: Option A, the Rpaha males kill Claude. Option B, Cluade kills them and moves in with Esther. Option C, Esther burns down the house with all 3 males inside. Pick one and write it yourself.
Germain: That’s your job. It’s not my story. It’s not up to me. You know the secret to a good ending? The reader says, “I didn’t expect that, but it couldn’t end any other way.”
Claude: Option D, Esther keeps repeating, “Even barefoot, the rain won’t dance.” Life is unbearable in that awful house with her awful husband and her awful son. It’s meaningless, she’s suffocating. So she goes outside. He’s there on the park bench, waiting. She runs to him. Joins him. And they kiss.
Germain [scornfully]: That’s Barbara Cartland.

…

Jeanne [to Claude]: Tolstoy? I hate the Russians. I have only read the first and the last pages of Anna Karenina.

…

Claude [in his new story]: The moment I met Mr. Germain, I wanted to know how he lived, what his house was like, who his wife was, what she did. Did they have any children? Were they still in love? Jeanne. Jeanne. Mr. Germain’s wife lies before me on the sofa. Sleeping. I listen to her breathing. Her skirt is open. I see her alabaster skin. She has very beautiful feet. Like Esther.
[cut to Germain reading what he wrote]
Claude: What am I doing here? As my teacher’s wife sleeps, awakening the desires of this back-row student, I’m looking for an ending. My ending. Perhaps I’ll find it here in his house.

…

Germain: You slept with that kid?!
Jeanne: To be continued.

…

Claude [voiceover]: Mr. Germain had lost everything: His wife, his job. But here I was sitting next to him. Ready to tell him a new story. To be continued…[/b]

[iambiguous]

The abyss. Only this time it’s the one down there. Down in the depths of the ocean. After all, who really knows what the hell is down there.

Consider this from NOAA:

To date, we have explored less than five percent of the ocean. Much remains to be learned from exploring the mysteries of the deep.

But this film also explores an abyss that is not really up there or down there. It’s the one that can form in relationships that have fallen apart. The love is gone and all that is left is this gigantic hole. And it is now filled as much with anger and contempt as anything else.

And then the abyss between the Deep Core crew and the military personel. The crew are about as haplessly iconclastic as one would expect of folks who do this kind of work. But since they are oil workers, there is always going to be what The Company wants too. As for the military, well, let’s just say they are more by the book. A SEAL team naturally. Only the guy in charge is tumbling down into the abyss that is High Pressure Nervous Syndrome.

And then finally there is the abyss that revolves around the possibility of that that nuclear warhead detonating.

Lindsey Brigman. She’s one of those female characters that all the men call “a bitch”. And the reason they call her a bitch is becasue she behaves exactly as a man would behave doing the same thing. So, somehow by the end of the film she has to come around to a softer, more feminine persona.

As for the aliens, let’s just say they are the product of some truly cutting edge special effects technology.

IMDb

‘Ed Harris’ has publicly refused to speak about his experiences working on the film, saying “I’m not talking about The Abyss and I never will”. The only register with Harris speaking about his experiences doing the movie is in the documentary Under Pressure: Making ‘The Abyss’ (1993). Similarly, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio said “The Abyss was a lot of things. Fun to make was not one of them.”

To wit:

[b]During the rigorous and problematic shoot, the cast and crew began calling the film by various derogatory names such as “Son Of Abyss”, “The Abuse” and “Life’s Abyss And Then You Dive”. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio reportedly suffered a physical and emotional breakdown because she was pushed so hard on the set, and Ed Harris had to pull over his car at one time while driving home, because he burst into spontaneous crying.

During underwater filming, Ed Harris almost drowned. While filming a scene where he had to hold his own breath at the bottom of the submerged set, Harris ran out of air and gave the signal for oxygen. Harris’ safety diver got hung up on a cable and could not get to him. Another crew member gave Harris a regulator, but it was upside down and caused him to suck in water. A camera man came over, ripped the upside down regulator, and gave him one in the correct orientation. Later that evening, Ed broke down and cried.

Very few scenes involved stunt people. When Bud drags Lindsey back to the rig, that’s really Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio holding her breath. When the rig is being flooded and characters are running from water, drowning behind closed doors, and dodging exploding parts of the rig, those are all actors, not stunt people.

Cast members had to become certified divers before filming began.

Fluid breathing is a reality. Five rats were used for five different takes, all of whom survived and were given antibiotic shots by a vet. The rat that actually appeared in the film died of natural causes a few weeks before the film opened. According to James Cameron, the scene with the rat had to be edited out of the UK movie version because “the Royal Veterinarian felt that it was painful for the rat”. James Cameron repeatedly assures that the rats used for this take didn’t suffer any harm.

The original theatrical version was forced to cut the pre-credits quote “…when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you” by Friedrich Nietzsche because Criminal Law (1988) used it, and they didn’t want to seem like imitators. The quote was restored in the director’s cut.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abyss
trailer: youtu.be/4zbpL3LeW7k

THE ABYSS [1989]
Written and directed by James Cameron

[b]Bendix: Oh no, look who’s with them. Queen Bitch of the Universe.

…

Lindsey: So that’s it? You just cheerfully turn the whole thing over to the goon squad?
Kirkhill: Look, I was told to cooperate. I’m cooperating.

…

Virgil: Look, I don’t know what kind of deal you made with the company, but my people are not qualified for this. We’re oil workers.
Kirkhill [on a video link]: This is Lieutenant Coffey. He’ll transfer down to you with a SEAL team and supervise the operation.
Virgil: You can send down whoever you like, but I’m the tool pusher on this rig and when it comes to the safety of these people, there’s me and then there’s God, understand? If things get dicey, I’m pulling the plug.

…

Lindsey: I can’t believe you let them grab my rig!
Virgio: Your rig?
Lindsey: I designed the damn thing.
Virgil: And Benthic Petroleum paid for it, so as long as they’re holding the pink slip, I go where they tell me.
Lindsey: I had a lot riding on this, and they bought you, didn’t they ? More like rented you cheap! I’m switchin’ off now. Bye-bye.

…

Virgil [referring to Lindsey]: God, I hate that bitch.
Hippy: Probably shouldn’t have married her then, huh?

…

Lindsey: Let’s watch each other closely for signs of H.P.N.S.
SEAL team member: High Pressure Nervous Syndrome—muscle tremors, usually in the hands first, nausea, increased excitability, disorientation…
Lindsey: About one person in 20 can’t handle it. They just go “buggo.”
Coffey: Look, they’ve all made runs to this depth. They’re checked out.
Lindsey: I understand that. What I’m saying is that it’s impossible to predict just who’s susceptible…
Coffey: They’re checked out. [/b]

Guess who gets it?

[b]Lindsey [about the rig]: I got over four years invested in this project.
Virgil: Yeah, you only had three years invested in me.
Lindsey: Well you have to have priorities.

…

One Night: This thing tells us how much radiation we’re getting?
Hippy: Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I’m not going near no radiation. No way.
Catfish: Aw Hippy, you pussy.
Hippy: Yeah, what good is the money when six months later your dick drops off?

…

Hippy: What is all this stuff?
Monk: Fluid breathing system, we just got it. You use it when you go really deep.
Hippy: How deep?
Monk: Deep.
Hippy: HOW deep?
Monk: It’s classified. Anyway, you breathe liquid so you can’t get compressed. The pressure doesn’t get you.
Catfish: You mean you got liquid in your lungs?
Monk: Oxygenated fluorocarbon emulsion.
Catfish: Bullshit.

…

Monk: Can I borrow your rat?
[he takes Hippy’s rat and puts it in the emulsion]
Hippy: What are you doin’? Hey, no, no, no. You’re gonna kill her!
Monk: It’s okay. I’ve done this myself. She’s gonna be fine. I’ve breathed this myself. It’s gonna be fine.
Hippy: No, man. She’s gonna drown! Look! She’s freakin’ out!
Monk: Just going through a normal adjustment period.
Hippy: Does this look normal to you? She’s gonna drown!
Monk: He’s taking the fluid into his lungs. There he goes. There’s a bit of anxiety here. Now he’s starting to relax. He’s breathing fine. See his chest moving? He’s getting plenty of oxygen.
Catfish: The damn rat’s breathin’ that shit. That is no bullshit, hands down, the goddamnedest thing I ever saw.
Monk: See, the fluid’s harder to push in and out than air. It’s a little more work to breathe, But he’s doing fine. He’s diggin’ it.
Hippy: She’s doin’ it. She ain’t diggin’ it. Let her out now. Now!

…

Lindsey: Coffey, these are the missile hatches, is that right?
Coffey: That’s right. It looks like a couple of hatches have sprung. Radiation’s nominal. Warheads must still be intact.
Lindsey: How many are there?
Coffey: Twenty-four Trident missiles, eight M.I.R.V.s per missile.
Lindsey [after a pause]: That’s a hundred and ninety-two warheads, Coffey. How powerful are they?
Coffey: The M.I.R.V. is a tactical nuke. Uh, fifty kilotons, nominal yield, say… five times Hiroshima.
Lindsey: Jesus Christ. It’s World War Three in a can.

…

Virgil [in the sub after encountering dead bodies]: How you guys doin’?
Catfish: Triple time sounded like a lot of money, Bud. It ain’t.

…

Hippy: You know, those SEALs ain’t telling us diddly. Somethin’ is going on!
Virgil: Come on, come on. Hippy, you think everything’s a conspiracy.
Hippy: Everything is.

…

Lindsey: There is something down there. Something not us. Not us. Not human. Get it Something nonhuman, but intelligent. A nonterrestrial intelligence.
Hippy: A non terrestrial intelligence. Yes. N.T.I.s. Oh, man, that’s better than U.F.O.s. But that works too, huh ? Underwater flying objects.

…

[Lindsey sees the nuclear warhead]
Lindsey: You know, you’ve got some huevos bringin’ that thing into my rig. With all that’s going on up in the world you bring a nuclear weapon in here?!
Coffey: Mrs. Brigman…
Lindsey: Does this strike anyone as particularly psychotic, or is it just me?
Coffey: Mrs. Brigman, you don’t need to know the details of our operation, it’s better if you don’t.
Lindsey: You’re right, I don’t need to know, what I need to know is that thing is off this rig, do you hear me Roger Ramjet!!!

…

Hippy: Coffey is gone. Did you see his hands?
Lindsey: What? He’s got the shakes?
Virgil: Look, he’s operating on his own, he’s cut off from his chain of command, he’s showing signs of pressure-induced psychosis…and he’s got a nuclear weapon.
Hippy: I gotta tell you, I give this whole thing a sphincter factor of about 9.5.

…

Lindsey: So raise your hand if you think that was a Russian water-tentacle.

…

Coffey [to Hippy]: Sniff something? Did you Rat Boy?

…

Lindsey: Put this thing on. Just be logical.
Virgil: Fuck logic!
Lindsey: Please listen! Just listen to me for one second. You’ve got the suit on, and you’re a much better swimmer than I am. Right?
Virgil: Yeah, maybe…
Lindsey: Yes. So I’ve got a plan.
Virgil: What’s the plan?
Lindsey: I drown, and you tow me back to the rig. This water is only a couple of degrees above freezing. I’d go into deep hypothermia. My blood’ll go like ice water. Right? My body systems will slow down. They won’t stop. You tow me back and I can…I can be revived after maybe 10 or 15 minutes.

…

Virgil: So, I…I can hear you, but I can’t talk, right?
Monk: The fluid prevents the larynx from making sound. It’ll feel a little strange.
Virgil: Yeah, no shit.

…

Monk [after the emulsion has filled the helmet]: Relax now, Bud. Just relax. Relax. It’s okay. Don’t hold your breath. Take it in. Just let yourself take it in. Take it in. That’s it. Don’t hold your breath. Take it in. There you go. Don’t hold your breath. Take it in. That’s it. There you go…
[Bud begins to panic]
Lindsey: This is not normal!
Monk: This is normal. It’ll pass in a second. It’s perfectly normal. It’s perfectly normal. We all breathed liquid for nine months, Bud. Your body will remember. That’s it. That’s it. Perfectly normal.
Cat: Christ, he’s breathin’ it!

…

Bendix: Fellas, I’m getting some awful big reading gown there.

…

Lindsey: We should be dead. We didn’t decompress.
Hippy: They must have done something to us.
Lindsey: Oh, yeah. I think you could say that. [/b]

[iambiguous]

How to explain kids like this?

Well, there are two sides of the political spectrum here that most of us will subscribe to. The liberal side and the conservative side.

The liberals will generally argue it is “society” that creates the conditions that create the children like this. They are the victims of society. So, if you want to make their plight go away you have to change the society.

The conservatives will argue that, on the contrary, we are all responsible as individuals for creating the conditions in society that create the choices [options] afforded us. We have no one to blame but ourselves if we fail to.

And it can only ever be either one or the other. That way we can reduce the complexities of human interaction down to either one or the other.

I’m more inclined to go the way of the liberals myself. Ater all, it’s not just a coincidence that children wholly submerged in poverty or in working class families that are barely able to hang on from week to week come out like this. Especially those of the male gender. And I know this because I grow up around them myself. Even became one of them for a brief period of time.

And where in the industrial West is this not part and parcel of the capitalist political economy?

It’s the same shit: the parents get fucked over on the job. If they have a job. They have shit lives. They take it out on their kids. The kids then go to school and take their abuse out on other kids. The weaker ones. It just goes around and around in circles…and for generations. And no doubt for generations to come.

You wonder then why films like this ever get made. They succeed in exposing the conditions that entire communities must endure day in and day out. That’s for sure. But the political positions embraced on both the left and the right will hardly ever budge at all.

And what does that tell us about the “human condition”? And who in positions of power – those able to change the conditions – really give a shit about them? On the contrary, they are just more fodder to feed into “the system” itself.

Please note: The folks do speak English in this film. But don’t even think of watching it without English subtitles.

IMDb

Clio Barnard based Arbor and Swifty on two children she met while filming The Arbor (2010) who worked as scrappers.

I fugured it was probably more or less based on actual events.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfis … (2013_film
trailer: youtu.be/qPLRZrMflG4

THE SELFISH GIANT [2013]
Written and directed by Clio Barnard

[b]Arbor [after being expelled from school]: Brilliant, eh? I don’t have to go back to school. I can go out scrapping and make some money.

…

Kitten: You should be in school.
Arbor: I hate school. I’m a fucking scrapper now.
[all the men laugh]

…

Swifty’s Mother: I ain’t got no money.
Repossesser: Well, if you haven’t got the money, we have to take the setee, love.
Mother: Ain’t got the settee neither.
Repossesser: Well, where the fuck is it, love?
[Swifty gives her the money he got from scrapping]
Mother: Where’s this come from? You’ve been grafting, ain’t you? I want better for you. You’ve got to get on, you’ve got to go to school.
Swify: I’m excluded. I’m not allowed to go to school.
Mother: You’re breaking my heart, love.[/b]

It is almost always the mothers here you feel the most sympathy for. They want better for their kids but more often then not they are all just overwhelmed by the circumstances in which thry struggle just to subsist from day to day.

[b]Kitten [to Arbor]: Alright Cheech, where’s Chong.

…

Kitten: Lad told me cable chamber is still isolated. At least 4 grand of copper down there. Risk to reward ratio’s in our favor then.
Employee: Not on that job it ain’t. What? 132,000 volts?! You’re either desparate or stupid to risk that.

…

Policeman: This is a formal interview under caution. Do you understand that, Fenton? Hey, do you understand?
Arbor: Yeah.
Policeman: A witness saw two youths burning railway or communications cable.
Mother: That’s nowt to do with him.
Policeman: Cable theft is a very serious crime, Mrs. Fenton. Trespass on the railway is £1,000 fine.
Arbor: I ain’t been on the railway.
Policeman: Vandalism, endangering lives, maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Mother: He’s just a kid. He ain’t nicked no cable. You’re looking at wrong place.
Policeman: He is, as you say, Mrs. Fenton, a minor. There’s unscrupulous people out there getting kids to do their dirty work so they don’t get into trouble with the police themselves.[/b]

Kitten, of course, is hardly twisting his arm to “scrap”. On the other hand…

Arbor: He’ll just keep the money from the race, you know. How’s that gonna get your mum out of debt? You’re just lining his pockets, you know, Swifty. He’s using you.

But that’s not scrapping, that’s gambling.

[b]Kitten: You owe me a grand.
Arbor: Mick took the money.
Kitten: Too fucking bad. Those bales were marked, you stupid little twat!
[to Swifty]
Ktten: Put the cable shredder to the highest setting, Swifty.
[he graps Arbor and starts to put his hand into the machine]
Kitten: I’m gonna tear your hand off, you thievin’ little bastard!
Arbor: Swifty!!
Kitten: Don’t fuck me about!!!
[he lets Arbor go]
Kitten: You’re gonna replace that copper you stole off me.

…

Swifty: You killed that foal.
Arbor: I don’t even know what you’re on about, Swifty.
Swifty: You’re a fucking mental case! Of course you did. You’re out of control. You fucked it all up, Arbor.
Arbor: Well, if you hate me so much, then how come you come back, huh?
Swifty: 'Cause I’m thick like everyone says. I’m soft, aren’t I?

…

Kitten [to the policeman]: I made him do it. It’s my fault the lad died.[/b]

[iambiguous]

I don’t much like “the fight game”. Detest it actually. The brutality. The sub-mental machismo. The way it is becoming increasingly hard wired into an increasingly crude and dehumanized culture.

Or the way in which two meathead men beating each other’s brains out is now enough to constitute being a “warrior”.

But not all fighters are meatheads. And not all the perspectives on what they do start from my own assumptions. My own political prejudices.

And, let’s face it, fight films can come to reflect some truly fascinating character studies. Here there are three of them. A father and his two sons. Groping about in the present while still being sucked down into into the past.

And, as in most cases with films like this, we get to explore the dynamic of a working class family. In other words, in a world where one or another professional sport might be just the ticket out of the shitstorm their lives have become. Or maybe it’s just to pay the fucking mortgage. Or, sure, it might even be what they need to exorcise the demons that their lives have now become awash in.

Here the fighters embrace the “mixed martial arts” genre. And, if anything, MMA is an even more brutalizing spectacle. Fighters in a cage. It takes brutality to a whole other level. But the fact that the film is rated PG-13 speaks volumes regarding just where this culture is headed. If this isn’t a classic snaphot of the modern world – the modern mentality – you’ll be hard pressed to find many more fitting.

Brother against brother for the five million bucks. And, by the end of the film, the characters themselves have become little more than cartoons. As have all the characters in the background. I’m thinking: if only it were all meant to be ironic.

Also, as with any sporting event in the world today, there is always going to be the part that revolves around money. There’s the part where it’s a sport, and the part where it’s a business.

Gladiators. But just short of death. Now that’s entertainment!

Let’s go to war!

IMDb

[b]Joel Edgerton tore his MCL in the cage during production, halting fight scenes for six weeks. Tom Hardy suffered a broken toe, broken ribs, and a broken finger.

On the first day of shooting, the crew gave Nick Nolte a standing ovation after the first take of a scene shot at a local diner. The scene was later cut but appears as a DVD extra.

The role of Paddy was written for Nick Nolte by Anthony Tambakis and Gavin O’Connor, who are neighbors with the actor in Malibu. The studio was resistant to casting Nolte, but the writers held firm and Nolte’s portrayal has won him universal critical praise.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrior_(2011_film
trailer: youtu.be/ZwPgyKc9qMY

WARRIOR [2011]
Written in part and directed by Gavin O’Connor

[b]Paddy: What are you doing here?
Tommy: Well, I was just passing through and I figured why not have a belt with the old man.
[Tom pulls out a bottle of booze]
Tommy: I got a little something for you. Mom always said, “Never go anywhere empty-handed.”
Paddy: She did. But that’s not for me anymore, Tommy.
Tommy: What? You changed brands?

…

Tommy: There’s not much of a woman’s touch around here.
Paddy: Yeah, well…there’s no more women for me, Tommy.
Tommy: Yeah. It must be hard to find a girl who can take a punch nowadays.

…

Tommy [to Paddy]: So you found God, huh? That’s awesome. See, Mom kept calling out for him but he wasn’t around. I guess Jesus was down at the mill forgiving all the drunks. Who knew?

…

Tommy: So, you gonna ask about her, or you just gonna sit there all sober? Do you know it wasn’t enough to drive west to get away from you, that once we hit the water, we drove north, too?
Paddy: When I got sober, I hired a man to find you.
Tommy: And is that one of the 12 steps? Or does a guy like you get 24?
Paddy: Just 12.

…

Tommy: Did your guy tell you what you needed to know?
Paddy: Just that your mother died in Tacoma. But you were in the Marines. That was all. That was enough.
Tommy: Well, that’s too bad, 'cause you could’ve gotten some good details. You could’ve heard about her coughing up blood on her knees in a shit box with no heat. Having me rub her down with holy water, because, well, she didn’t have no insurance. All the time waiting for your pal, Jesus, to save her. Did your man tell you that?

…

Tess [seeing his banged up face]: Oh, my God! What happened? You said it was gonna be a slow night.
Brendan: I’m not bouncing at a club.
Tess: What do you mean you’re not bouncing? You’ve been lying to me?
Brendan: I went in to apply for the job and they were paying nine bucks an hour. Then I saw a sign for this other thing. They’re putting us out of the house in three months. We’re running out of options.
Tess: Then they put us out of the house in three months. I’d rather go back to the old apartment than see you in the back of an ambulance again. I thought we agreed that we weren’t gonna raise our children in a family where their father gets beat up for a living.

…

Tommy [to Paddy]: I’m serious. We train. That’s it. I don’t wanna hear a word about anything but training, you understand? You wanna tell your war stories, you can take 'em down to the VFW. You can take 'em to a meeting, or church, or wherever the hell it is you go nowadays.

…

Paddy [to Tom]: But you get something through your skull, too. You called me, so don’t go threatening to walk every five minutes. And since this is about training, you dump whatever it is you need to dump as far as those pills are concerned. I don’t wanna see them. In fact, hand them over right now. I know they’re on you, Tommy. You sounded like a goddamn maraca coming through the door.

…

Brendan: C’mon, it’s not as bad as it looks.
Zito [the school principal]: Are you being literal or figurative? Because literally it looks bad. And figuratively it looks even worse. The superintendent’s coming by in a few minutes. So gimme a little help here, Brendan. Can you explain to me what the hell you were doing?
Brendan: I need the money, Joe.
Zito: Yeah, but we can’t have this. This isn’t moonlighting at Applebee’s for Christ’s sake!

…

Zito: Shit, Brendan. Leaving everything else aside, which we can’t, are you out of your mind? You’re gonna get yourself killed. I mean, you’re a goddamn teacher. You got no business in the ring with those animals.
Brandan: Actually, I used to be one of those animals. I fought for a living. Guess I forgot to put that down on my application.

…

Brendan: I didn’t come here for a loan, Frank. I mean, I was hoping that you would train me.
Frank: Train you for what?
Brandan: I wanna get back in the cage.
Frank: Are you serious? Come on, Brendan.
Brendan: I won an event the other night.
Frank: You won an event. That’s what this is? Let me guess. It was in a parking lot? DJ from a local radio station, a couple of ring card girls you wouldn’t bang on a dare? Am I right?
Brendan: Ish.
Frank: Ish.

…

Paddy: Listen to me. I thought maybe we could break bread. You know, just open some lines of communication.
Brendan: You got two lines of communication. You got the telephone and the post office.

…

Brendan: You never had any interest in underdogs. But I was your son.
Paddy: You are my son, Brendan.
Brendan: Am I?
Paddy: Yeah, you are. I’m just asking you if can find… find a little bit of space in your heart to forgive me a little bit.
Brendan: Yeah? All right, I forgive you.
Paddy: Okay.
Brendan: But I do not trust you.

…

Brendan: I know this isn’t a great time. And it’s too bad about Marco. But what about me?
Frank: You talking about Sparta? Brendan, please. You got a better chance of starting a boy band.

…

Brendan: I’m in. I’m going.
Tess: Really? That’s your decision? You decided? 'Cause I really enjoyed the conversation we just had about making that decision together. You told me you were gonna fight guys that watched too much UFC. I saw the Koba dude on the television, and he’s the guy they’re watching.
Brendan: It’s a lot of money, Tess.
Tess: I don’t give a shit about the money, Brendan. I told you that. We’re gonna end up cashing in your life insurance policy before we pick up that prize money.
Brendan: You don’t think I can do it, right?
Tess: I think you could get killed.
Brendan: I’m not gonna get killed.
Tess: You’re not gonna get killed, but you promised me you’re not gonna get hurt. You’re not gonna end up in the You’re not gonna end up in the hospital. You’re not gonna end up paralyzed. We have no prize money, we have no house. We have payments for hospital bills.
Brendan: Tess! Listen, I’ll promise you this. If I don’t try in three weeks, they’re gonna take the house. How’s that for a promise?

…

Brendan: God, man, I don’t understand this. You won’t forgive me, but you’ll forgive Pop?
Tommy: Shit. He’s just some old vet I train with. He means nothing to me. From what I hear he means nothing to you, either, so you got balls talking about forgiveness.

…

Zito [to Brendan’s former students]: So let me get this straight. You want to use the auditorium to watch a suspended teacher engage in the activity he was suspended for? Am I hearing this correctly?

…

Paddy: Come on, kiddo. I’ve been there. I’ve done it. I’ve seen it. You can trust me. I’ll understand.
Tommy: Spare me the compassionate father routine, Pop. The suit don’t fit.
Paddy: I’m really trying here, Tommy.
Tommy: You’re trying? Now? Where were you when it mattered? I needed this guy back when I was a kid. I don’t need you now. It’s too late now. Everything’s already happened. You and Brendan don’t seem to understand that. Let me explain something to you: the only thing I have in common with Brendan Conlon is that we have absolutely no use for you.

…

Bryan Callen [announcer]: I’ll tell you what: you do that to someone on the street and they’d lock you up and throw away the key! Break out the yellow tape, Sam. Tommy’s walking away from the cage like he’s leaving a crime scene.

…

Frank [to Brendan]: Look at me! Look at me! Why are we here, Brendan? Why are we here? Are we here to win this fight? You tell me, 'cause if we’re not, I’ll throw in the towel right now. We’ll get Tess and we will go home. You don’t knock him out, you lose the fight. Understand me? You don’t knock him out, you don’t have a home.

…

Brendan [of Tommy]: I popped his shoulder.
Frank: Relax. Breathe.
Brendan: I heard it tear.
Frank: You popped his shoulder? Good. I want you to pop his other shoulder.

…

Brendan: Tommy, what are you doing?
Tommy: Shut Up! Come on
Brendan: Come on? What are you that crazy?
Referee: Lets Go To War!
Brendan: What are you doing? It’s over Tommy! Tommy You don’t have to do this! Don’t make me do this Tommy! I don’t want to do this!

…

Brendan [pinning him]: I’m sorry Tommy! I’m sorry…Tap out Tom! It’s OK! It’s OK! I Love You! I Love You Tommy![/b]

It doesn’t get much more surreal than this.

[iambiguous]

The King. He has no actual political power and yet when he speaks he is thought to speak for the nation.

In America of course we have no king…so this may well be somewhat difficult to grasp. But some will still cling even to a toothless king because it allows them to zero in on an actual flesh and blood human being. Someone thought to represent the country. Politicians come and go from one election to the next, but the king [or the queen] is there until the very end. And there is always someone next in line to carry on.

Here though things get tricky because while the king is supposed to speak for the nation sometimes the king is barely able to speak at all. He stammers. He stutters. He sounds like anything but a king. So he has to be fixed. Especially in these dire times. Hitler is on the march. He threatens litereally to vanquish the nation. People look to the King to rally around, to pull the nation through.

So, you will either allow for this or you won’t.

And it seems that this particular King, while just a political figurehead, takes being King quite seriously. Unlike his brother. Thus if you are not a member of the Royal Family you are expected to act accordingly. But Lionel Logue will have none of that. In his office everyone is equal to everyone else.

And what makes being a stutterer all the more problematic here is that the stutterer is expected time and again to speak in public. Or to the public. And the anxiety of that alone can reinforce all the more the tendency to stutter.

And this is all tangled up in the Wallis Simpson “scandal”. After all, had it not occured, his stuttering would be considerably more moot because he never would have become the king. That’s the part about contingency, chance and change. The part about dasein. And, royalty or not, no one is exempt from that.

IMDb

[b]David Seidler stammered as a child, and heard King George VI’s wartime speech as a child. As an adult, he wrote Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (widow of George VI) and asked for permission to use the King’s story to create a film. The Queen Mother asked him not to during her lifetime, saying the memories were too painful. Seidler respected her request.

After the abdication, Edward and Wallis (alias Duke of Windsor and Duchess of Windsor) were genuinely surprised to learn that they were banned from the United Kingdom, never to return. It’s generally believed the ban was primarily due to the new Queen Consort (alias Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother). She hated Wallis, blaming her for throwing King George VI into a job he wasn’t prepared for and, later, contributing to his premature death due to the stress of being king. Queen Mary, Edward’s mother, never reconciled with her son, and refused to attend his marriage to Wallis in France. Edward was allowed to return to England for the funerals of his brother “Bertie” and his mother. Both he and Wallis were allowed to be buried on a Royal Estate by special permission of Queen Elizabeth II.[/b]

Ah, royalty.

The MPAA gave the film an R rating, due entirely to the scenes where Bertie curses as part of his speech therapy or preparation for the climactic address. Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein appealed, but were denied. They later submitted a cut without some of the profanity, and got a PG-13 rating. However, the R-rated version is considered the Oscar-winning one, extending a string of R-rated Best Pictures from 2005 to 2010.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King’s_Speech
trailer: youtu.be/pzI4D6dyp_o

THE KING’S SPEECH [2010]
Directed by Tom Hooper

[b]Title Card: 1925 / King George V reigns over a quarter of the world’s people. He asks his second son, the Duke of York, to give the closing speech at the Empire Exhibition in Wembley, London.

…

Doctor: Inhale the smoke deep into your lngs your Royal Highness. Relaxes your larynx does it not? Cigarette smoking calms the nerves, and gives you confidence. Now if Your Royal Highness would be so kind as to open your hand…
[he drops seven glass marbles into his hand.
Doctor: Sterilized. Now, if I may take the liberty, insert them into your mouth.
Elizabeth: Excuse me Doctor. What is the purpose of this?
Doctor: It’s a classic approach. It cured Demosthenes.
Elizabeth: That was in Ancient Greece. Has it worked since?

…

Elizabeth [using the name “Mrs. Johnson”]: My husband is, um…well, he’s required to speak publicly.
Lionel: Perhaps he should change jobs.
Elizabeth: He can’t.
Lionel: Indentured servitude?
Elizabeth: Something of that nature, yes.

…

Lionel: Well, have your hubby pop by and give his personal history. I’ll make a frank appraisal.
Elizabeth: Doctor, I do not have a “hubby”. Nor do we “pop”. We never talk about our private lives. You must come to us.
Lionel: Sorry, this is my game, played on my turf, by my rules. You’ll have to talk this over with your husband and then you can speak to me on the telephone. Thank you very much for dropping by. Good afternoon.
[he turns and walks into another toom]
Elizabeth: And what if my husband were the Duke of York?
Lionel [from the other room]: The Duke of York?
Elizabeth: Yes, the Duke of York.[/b]

In other words, in this day and age [before televison and mass communication] he doesn’t know that he is speaking to the future Queen of England and that his patient will soon be the King.

[b]Lionel [as Albert prepares to light a cigarette]: Well, please, don’t do that.
Bertie: I’m sorry?
Lionel: I believe sucking smoke into your lungs will… will kill you.
Bertie: My physicians say it relaxes the… the… the throat.
Lionel: They’re idiots.
Bertie: They’ve all been knighted.
Lionel [sarcastic]: Makes it official, then.

…

Lionel: So, when you talk to yourself, do you stammer?
Bertie: No…of course not.
Lionel: Well, that proves that your impediment isn’t a permanent part of you.
Bertie: I don’t…I don’t know. I…I don’t care. I…I stammer. No one can fix it.
Lionel: I bet you that you can read flawlessly right here, right now. And if I win the bet, I get to ask more questions.
Bertie: And if I win?
Lionel: You don’t have to answer them. [/b]

So he tricks him. He tricks him with the truth.

[b]King George V [to his son]: In the past, all a King had to do was look respectable in uniform and not fall off his horse. Now we must invade people’s homes and ingratiate ourselves with them. This family’s been reduced to those lowest, basest of all creatures. We’ve become actors!

…

King George V [to his son]: Who will pick up the pieces? Herr Hitler intimidating half of Europe. Marshall Stalin the other half. Who will stand between us and the jackboots and the proletarian abyss? You?

…

Lionel: All right. You want mechanics? We’ll need to relax your jaw muscles, strenghten your tongue, by repeating tingue twisters. For example, “I’m a thistle-sifter. I have a sieve of sifted thistles and a sieve of unsifted thistles. Because I am a thistle-sifter.”

…

Lionel: Did David tease you?
Bertie: They all did. “Buh-buh-buh-Bertie”. Father encouraged it. “Get it out, boy!” Said it would make me stop. Said…"I was afraid of my father, and my children are damn well going to be afraid of me”.
Lionel: Naturally right handed?
Bertie: Left. I was punished. Now I use the right.
Lionel: Yes, that’s very common with stammerers. Any other corrections?
Bertie: Knock knees. Metal splints were made…worn night and day.
Lionel: That must have been painful.
Bertie: Bloody agony. Straight legs now though.

…

Bertie: Sometimes, when I ride through the streets and see, you know, the Common Man staring at me, I’m struck by how little I know of his life, and how little he knows of mine.
Lionel: What are friends for?
Bertie: I wouldn’t know.

…

Churchill: What is her hold on him?
Elizabeth: Apparently she has certain…skills, which she learnt in an establishment in Shanghai.

…

Bertie: David, I’ve been trying to see you.
David: I’ve been terribly busy.
Bertie: Doing what?
David: Kinging.
Bertie: Really? Kinging? Kinging is a precarious business! Where is the Tsar of Russia? Where is Cousin Wilhelm?
David: You’re being dreary.
Bertie: Is Kinging laying off eighty staff at Sandringham and buying yet more pearls for Wallis while there are people marching across Europe singing “The Red Flag”?
David: Stop your worrying. Herr Hitler will sort that lot out.
Bertie: Who’ll sort out Herr Hitler?

…

Bertie [hearing that David intends to marry Wallis]: David, the Church does not recognise divorce and you are the head of the Church.
David: Haven’t I any rights?
Bertie: Many privileges…
David: Not the same thing. Your beloved Common Man may marry for love, why not me?
Bertie: If you were the Common Man, on what basis could you possibly claim to be King?!
David: Sounds like you’ve studied our wretched constitution.
Bertie: Sounds like you haven’t.

…

Bertie: All that…work…down the drain. My own…b…brother, I couldn’t say a single w-word to him in reply.
Lionel: Why do you stammer so much more with David than you ever do with me?
Bertie: 'Cos you’re b… bloody well paid to listen.
Lionel: Bertie, I’m not a geisha girl.
Bertie: Stop trying to be so bloody clever.
Lionel: What is it about David that stops you speaking?
Bertie: What is it about you that bloody well makes you want to go on about it the whole bloody time?
Lionel: Vulgar, but fluent; you don’t stammer when you swear.
Bertie: Oh, bugger off!
Lionel: Is that the best you can do?
Bertie [like in an elocution lesson]: Well… bloody bugger to you, you beastly bastard.
Lionel: Oh, a public school prig could do better than that.
Bertie: Shit…Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!
Lionel: Yes!
Bertie: Shit!
Lionel: Defecation flows trippingly from the tongue!
Bertie: Because I’m angry!
Lionel: Do you know the f-word?
Bertie: F… f… fornication?
Lionel: Oh, Bertie.
Bertie:: Fuck. Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck and fuck! Fuck, fuck and bugger! Bugger, bugger, buggerty buggerty buggerty, fuck, fuck, arse!
Lionel: Yes…
Bertie: Balls, balls…
Lionel …you see, not a hesitation!
Bertie: …fuckity, shit, shit, fuck and willy. Willy, shit and fuck and…tits.

…

Lionel: If you had to you could outshine David…
Bertie: Don’t take liberties! That’s bordering on treason.
Lionel: I’m just saying you could be King. You could do it!
Bertie: That is treason!
Lionel: I’m trying to get you to realize you need not be governed by fear.
Bertie: I’ve had enough of this!
Lionel: What’re you afraid of?
Bertie: Your poisonous words!
Lionel: Why’d you show up then? To take polite elocution lessons so you can chit-chat at posh tea parties?
Bertie: Don’t instruct me on my duties! I’m the brother of a King…the son of a King…we have a history that goes back untold centuries. You’re the disappointing son of a brewer! A jumped-up jackeroo from the outback! You’re nobody. These
sessions are over!

…

Myrtle [Lionel’s wife]: You look a bit blue.
Lionel: Just trouble with a client. Frightened of his own shadow.
Myrtle: Isn’t that why they come to you?
Lionel: But this chap…This chap truly could be somebody great, and he’s fighting me.
Myrtle: Perhaps he doesn’t want to be great.
[Lionel is silent]
Myrtle: Perhaps that’s what you want.

…

Chuchill: But there were other reasons for concern, Sir. He was careless with state papers. He lacked commitment and resolve. There were those that worried where he would stand when war with Germany comes.
Bertie: We’re coming to that?
Churchill: Indeed we are, Sir. Prime Minister Baldwin may deny this, but Hitler’s intent is crystal clear. War with Germany will come, and we will need a King behind whom we can all stand united.
Bertie: I’m afraid my brother is not of sound mind.
Churchill: Have you thought about what you will call yourself? Certainly not Albert, sir. Too Germanic. What about George? After your father? George the Sixth. It has rather a nice continuity to it, don’t you think.

…

Bertie [sees Logue is sitting on the coronation throne]: What are you doing? Get up! You can’t sit there! GET UP!
Lionel: Why not? It’s a chair.
Bertie: No, it… That is not a chair. That is…that is Saint Edward’s chair.
Lionel: People have carved their names on it.
Bertie: That… chair… is the seat on which every king and queen…
Lionel: It’s held in place by a large rock.
Bertie: That is the Stone of Scone. You ah-are trivializing everything. You trivialize…
Lionel: I don’t care about how many royal arseholes…
Bertie: Listen to me.
Lionel: …have sat in this chair.
Bertie: Listen to me. LISTEN TO ME!
Lionel: Listen to you? By what right?
Bertie: By divine right, if you must. I am your king.
Lionel: No, you’re not. You told me so yourself. You said you didn’t want it. Why should I waste my time listening…?
Bertie: Because I have a right to be heard! I have a voice!
Lionel [pauses]: Yes, you do.
[Longer pause]
Lionel: You have such perseverance, Bertie. You’re the bravest man I know. You’ll make a bloody good king.

…

[watching a clip of Hitler speaking]
Lilibet: Papa, what’s he saying?
Bertie: I don’t know but… he seems to be saying it rather well.

…

Bertie [to Lionel before his speech to the nation after Britain has declared war on Germany]: You know, if… if I’m a…a King, where’s my power? Can I…can I form a government? Can I… can I l-levy a tax, declare a…a war? No! And yet I am the seat of all authority. Why? Because…the nation believes that when I…I speak, I speak for them - but I can’t speak!

…

Bertie [as he prepares to broadcast his wartime speech]: Logue, however this turns out, I don’t know how to thank you…for what you’ve done.
Lionel [after a pause]: Knighthood?

…

Lionel: You still stammered on the ‘W’.
Bertie: Well, I had to throw in a few so they knew it was me.

…

Title card: King George VI made Lionel Logue a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1944. This high honour from a grateful King made Lionel part of the only order of chivalry that specifically rewards acts of personal service to the Monarch. Lionel was with the King for every wartime speech. Through his broadcasts, George VI became a symbol of national resistance. Lionel and Bertie remained friends for the rest of their lives.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Les Galantine.

Here’s a guy who spends his days stalking famous [or nearly famous] celebrities in the off chance that he can snap a photo of one of them doing something outrageous enough to turn the snapshot into a bundle of cash.

What we call a “paparazzi”. Only don’t call Les that. Instead, he’s a “licensed professional”. But small time. Still, he knows all it takes is “one shot heard around the world” to take him the top. Or at least some place that is not on the bottom.

So, he ends up hiring Toby, this bedraggled, homeless kid, to be his assistant. Now, Toby is about as far down on the pecking order as one can be in a culture where money and success are everything. So Les is more or less taking him under his wing. Besides, Toby works cheap. For free in other words.

Imagine waiting around hour after hour after hour staring at a door on the off chance the “star” might come out and do something that stars aren’t supposed to do – something you can snap and turn into the “money shot”. Something you can then sell to a magazine so that John or Jane Doe can pick it up on the checkout line in the local grocery store. A billion dollar industry built around an insidious “pop culture”.

And it’s all set up through the computer these days. The papparazzi take the shots digitally, email them to the tabloids, entertainment programs etc., and then just sit back and “wait for the offers to come in”.

But then Toby becomes a star…

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirious_(2006_film
trailer: youtu.be/fYxHfD77kTs

DELIRIOUS [2006]
Written and directed by Tom DiCillo

[b]Les: You’re in my spot, man!
Fellow paparazzi: Yeah? I don’t see douchebag written on it.

…

Les: You fuckin’ pig. I’m a licensed professional too!

…

Toby: I was wondering do you ever need anybody to like help out or…?
Les: Nope.
Toby: You wouldn’t have to pay me it would just be like free or whatever.
Les: Well, what is it?
Toby: What’s what?
Les: Is it for free or is it whatever?
Toby: Free. Totally for free, man.
Les: Okay, but this room is off limits unless I’m here. Alright?
Toby: Okay.
Les: Rule number one… no looky, no touchy. This is the nerve center of my business and I don’t want you screwing it up by playing solitaire or jerkin’ off on the internet.

…

Les: Grab a chair. Watch and learn. Ok, there’s the shots.
Toby: It’s so good!
Les: Watch this.
[he clicks to the shot of the star with an erection in his pants]
Toby: Oh, my god!
Les: There it is. The shot heard 'round the world. Right there!
Toby: That shot is awesome, Les!
Les: Isn’t it? You know why? I’ve got the laser eye.

…

Toby: Hey, why don’t we call De Niro?
Les: Are you out of your fucking mind?!
Toby: I’m sorry. I thought you had his number.
Les: I got his number. What am I going to say to him, “Hey, Bob, let’s get together, me, you and some homeless fag I got living with me.”

…

Toby: And then all of a sudden I’m in the Jacuzzi with her. And I fixed the Jacuzzi because it was broken. It was like broken for like weeks in this nice hotel. We just kind of hung out there. We were in our underwear. We didn’t have sex or anything but we really like… I don’t know. I really connected. We really connected.
Les: You connected? In your underwear?

…

Les [to Toby]: Toothpicks?! You sneak backstage without me! You hang out with sexy chicks and superstars all night and you come home with toothpicks!? Are you, retarded?!

…

Toby: Les, I don’t think we should take any pictures.
Les: Why not?
Toby: I’m just saying…
Les: I’m just going to take a few shots.
Toby: I’m just saying it’s her birthday party. Please don’t take any pictures.
Les: Alright. You know what? You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry. It’s not even going to leave my pocket.[/b]

Tell that to Elvis Costello.

[b]K’harma [to Toby about Les]: You brought a paparazzi to my birthday party?!

…

Les: That chick is not for you. Okay?
Toby: Why?
Les: Because every time she looks at you you know what she sees? A good-lookin’ nobody with his nose pressed up against the glass. I know that hurts. Okay? And I’m sorry. But Rule number one, man…know where you belong. I’m not saying they’re any better than us, 'cause they’re not. I am through following these people around. I’m sick of it. She threw us out of that party like we were peons.
Toby: It was her birthday party! It was a personal thing. She trusted me, man.

…

Les [out loud to himself]: Mr. Big TV Star. He doesn’t even want to me et you halfway. Fine. What goes around comes around, my friend. Rule number one… You don’t mess with Les. As simple as that. You reap what you sow and you are what you eat.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Delirious and then Interview. I always watch them back to back. They both star Steve Buscemi and they both came out about the same time. Only in the first film Buscemi plays a paparazzi hell bent on pursuing celebrities while in the second he plays a serious reporter assigned to interview a celebrity.

Why? That’s part of the plot.

Anyway, we can, once again, explore this dynamic between those who hold “pop culture” in contempt [more or less] and those “inside” of it who may in fact be more substantial than many detractors will ever be willing to concede.

Or, sure, maybe not. In other words, don’t jump to conclusions about either one of them.

Lets be honest, few things like this can ever be reduced down to some simplistic intellectual contraption that devides the world up into behaviors that are said to be laudable and behaviors that are said not to be.

Here [perhaps] the pop star might turn out to be more substantial than, say, a Paris Hilton. Assuming that Paris Hilton is not substantial. But what do I know?

Anyway, substantial or not, Katya is very beautiful. And that always counts for something in this culture. She’ll always have that going for her whether the men she bumps into are themselves substantial or not. And one thing that she definitely seems to be is off the beaten beat. And that always attracks me, beautiful or not.

Two very different worlds groping for a way to be a bit less dysfunctional around each other. Only it turns out that each of them, in their own way, may well be an asshole.

IMDb

[b]The woman who steps out of the limo at the end of the movie, almost walking into the distracted Pierre, is played by Katja Schuurman. She played Katya in the original 2003 Dutch version of the movie by Theo van Gogh.

When Pierre is looking around the apartment he stops briefly at a photo of a man and a woman. The man is Theo van Gogh - director of the original movie, and the woman is Katja Schuurman, the lead actress in the original.[/b]

This Theo Van Gogh: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_G … m_director

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview_(2007_film
trailer: youtu.be/vCHUibmnZi4

INTERVIEW [2007]
Directed by Steve Buscemi

[b]Pierre [to his brother in a mental institution]: I’m telling you Robert. These cowboys are going down. But do I get to cover Washington? No. I have the unique privilege of interviewing Katya. Do you know who she is? I mean she’s more famous for who she sleeps with than anything else. And for her fluctuating tit size. She’s a real maverick, this one. She’s had them reduced. Too bad for me, huh? Now I’ve got nothing to look forward to.

…

Katya: Do you know anything about me at all? It’s all right…
Pierre: I mean they sent me a brief, but…
Katya: You didn’t read it? I mean it’s fine. You just don’t seem to really…
Pierre: No, I’d rather get to know…
Katya: Yeah. Right.
Pierre: And I’m sorry but I have not seen any of your films. I guess I know you more by your reputation.
Kayta: You mean by who I’m fucking?

…

Pierre: You’re gonna have to forgive me. I don’t… I don’t usually do this.
Katya: You don’t normally do interviews?
Pierre: Not with actresses. Okay. I usually handle politics. Washington. International.
Katya: So that’s your excuse for being unprepared. Because I’m not a member of the Senate or a general? Did they mention to you that I actually happen to be Secretary for Sex Education?

…

Pierre: Maybe you don’t know this but there’s a shitstorm brewing in Washington. And my editor wanted to send me to Washington tonight. So I can be there for the press conference tomorrow. But… Here I am. For you.
Katya: You know if you’re this big-time political pundit then why would they send you to interview me?
Pierre: Look, I don’t know any more than you do why they sent me. Maybe they thought it was important. So like I said, here I am. All right? Why don’t we make the best of it?
Katya: Okay, but… If this is your best then…
Pierre: It’s not a joke.
Katya: Oh, and I am?

…

Katya [angry]: You know what… it’s been very nice wasting time with you, Peter Peders.
[she leaves restaurant table]
Pierre Peders [louder, so she could still hear him] You, too, Cunt-ya.
Katya [returning to the table]: And go fuck yourself.

…

Katya [to Pierre]: There’s a computer over there. You can Google me.

…

Katya: Pierre. Pierre. If I were a politician, would you ask me such uninteresting questions? Am I that boring to you?
Pierre: Okay, why do you choose only the most commercial crap that’s out there? Do you enjoy appearing in B movies? And horror films? Do you think you’re any good in them?
Katya: I like my movies. You know I may not be a great actress, but I will be one day. And yes, I enjoy entertaining millions upon millions of people. How large is your readership?
Pierre [sarcastically]: You know, I have dozens of readers. And I doubt that any of them were entertained by your performance in… What was it? ‘Life of the Party’. Now that was scary. But it was supposed to be a comedy, right?
Katya: Why would you lie?
Pierre: About what?
Katya: You said you’d never seen one of my movies. Why would you lie?
Pierre: I forgot that one. I saw it on a flight. Not very memorable. I watched most of it with the sound off. And still I was wishing the plane would go down.

…

Pierre: Do you want to be taken seriously as an actress? Is that why you had your breasts reduced?
Katya: You miss my tits, is that it?
Pierre: Well, don’t you?
Katya: They weren’t even mine to begin with.

…

Katya: If you’d rather have a sandwich, I think I have some baloney.
Pierre: That’s been working for us so far.

…

Katya: Do you like fishnet stockings, Pierre? Wait. Let me rephrase. Why do you think it is that men like fishnet stockings so much?
Pierre: They look good on women.
Katya: Fishnet stockings are a net, and the woman is imprisoned in this net like a fish. Do you get it?
Pierre: Yeah, and what about high heels?
Katya: Well, high heels make walking very, very difficult. So you see, nothing would be more attractive to a man than a woman wearing fishnet stockings and high heels because she has trouble walking and she’s imprisoned within this net and therefore he thinks she’s easy prey.

…

Katya: Do you realize how many men would kill to be standing as close to me as you are now?
Pierre: How many?
Katya: Most.
[pause]
Katya: I’m not gonna seduce you, Peter.
Pierre: Well, I don’t want you to, Kathy.
Katya: Really? You said I was beautiful. Twice.
Pierre: So?
Katya: What would be the point in telling me that I was beautiful… If you didn’t wanna fuck me?
Pierre: No, I don’t.
Katya: Wanna fuck me?
Pierre: You know what? I don’t fuck celebrities.
Katya: And I don’t fuck nobodies.[/b]

Let the games begin continue!

[b]Katya: If you’re gonna talk philosophy to me, I will really fall asleep.
Pierre: You know, I don’t find you funny at all, Ms. Katya. Why won’t you try becoming a person first? Instead of a rich spoiled brat who knows how to turn on the charm. That’s not the same as having talent. Which I don’t see you having much of. I tell you what you’re good at, though. You’re good at lying. But you lie mostly to yourself.
[he nudges her]
Pierre: Hey, are you even awake?
Katya: Hanging on every word, Pop.

…

Pierre: A whore in Sarajevo at the Hotel Gainsbourg fell in love with my brother.
Katya: Your brother?
Pierre: Yeah. My brother, Robert, fell in love with her, too. Then he goes and he gets her pregnant. And he was so happy. He’s a - or he was a - photographer. Photojournalist. He got this really nice shot of Marica once. That’s the whore. In front of a bombed out market with some little kids. In fact it made it into our magazine, and I wrote the accompanying story. We used to do that sometimes.
Katya: Just pretend I’m not here.
Pierre: Well, long story short…Marica was captured by some soldiers led by Olek Maholevec. And Olek raped her. Then he gives her to his men. And they rape her. Then do you know what they did? They ripped open her belly. And they tore out the fetus. And they put that in a pot. And sent it to my brother. After they healed her up…
Katya: I thought you said this was gonna be short.
Pierre: Olek said to her, ‘You can go kill your boyfriend.’ ‘And if you don’t, we will. But first we’ll kill your whole family.’ ‘And then you.’ So, they gave her a grenade. And one night she shows up at the hotel bar. And she pulls the pin. Six dead including two children. Well, there was nothing left of poor Marica. Except a piece of her thigh. But do you know what? I really don’t remember if she was wearing fishnets or not.[/b]

So, sure, Katya basically turns even that into a joke.

[b]Katya: I’m sorry that I hurt you. I was indeed acting like a spoiled brat. I should have poked out your eyes. Feel like dessert?
Pierre: No thanks.
Katya: I have fetus and syrup.

…

Katya: What happened to her family?
Pierre: Marica? I don’t know.
katya: And your brother?
Pierre: One suicide attempt after another.
Katya: Why does he keep failing?
Pierre: I think just to torture me.

…

Pierre [watching her snort coke]: Is life really this hard for you? What can you possibly be so depressed about?
Katya: I’m sorry, daddy. Did you say something?
Pierre: Just get over yourself already. You could have the world at your feet. But you prefer to piss and moan about it. And then you act like you’re crazy, on top of it. Let me tell you something. You’re not crazy. Okay? Do you know what your problem is? You’re too normal.

…

Katya [after discovering that Pierre went into her computer and read her diary entries]: Is there any point in saying that you’re sick?
Pierre: I’m not gonna use any of it. It’s just more for background.
Katya: He breaks into my computer. He reads my diary. And he’s proud of it?
Pierre: Have you noticed that I have about ten minutes on my tape? And it’s just us bickering. You talk on the phone all night. You leave me out here alone. You said I can use your computer. And now you’re surprised?
Katya: Why don’t you just rape me? And get it over with.
Pierre: I wanted to know about you. You don’t tell me anything.
Katya: You wanted to know me?
[she throws an armful of panties at him]
Katya: Why don’t you rifle through these, huh? See what you can find!

…

Pierre [reading from her diary entry that he had transferred to his Palm]: “Death is all around me. Around me and in me. In my chest. In my gut. In my eyes. Everything I look at seems black. Black sky. Black clouds. Black sun. Black. Black. Black.”
Katya: That is stealing! You prick! What? Are you gonna sell it to the tabloids?
Pierre: No. I would never do that. I swear. But I wanna know why you feel this way.

…

Pierre: Look. I wanna know what’s haunting you.
Katya: Why?
Pierre: Because I feel haunted, too. Maybe things aren’t as bad as you think.
Katya: And would you tell me your deepest, darkest secret? You have one, don’t you?
Pierre: Why do you wanna know?
Katya: I don’t. But it’s the only way I’ll tell you mine. [/b]

She tells him hers and he tells her his. Her’s is pretty much routine. But his is a bit more…existential. Well, to the extent that you can believe either one them. She is, after all, an actor. And he is. after all, a self-serving opportunist.

[iambiguous]

Everytime you turned on the news there would seem to be some new viral threat. AIDS, SARS, swine flu, avian flu, ebola. And always you are left wondering if, in our lifetimes, the Big One would strike. A viral infection so devastating it sweeps the entire globe. Millions upon millions die. A post apocalyptic world is now the norm. And you imagine yourself among the few survivors.

So: What would you do? What would you do?

Bottom line: everything now begins and ends with surviving from day to day to day. Thus anything resembling a deontological morality becomes a thing of the past. It truly becomes just an intellectual contraption. Sans God, it all comes down to survival of the fittest.

And films of this sort tend to grip us because, while not likely to unfold anytime soon, it is not something that we can entirely rule out. And since we become increasingly more familiar with the mini-renditions of these health scares they become all the more impactful.

Here we start with the best of intentions. And the ever dreaded law of unintended consequences. Animal activists break into a facility that performs experiments on animals. They “liberate” them. But in doing so to liberate in turn a virulent infectious disease: RAGE.

The rest [could be] history.

And here the tension revolves largely around a small group of survivors who are bent on forging a new path between the way things once were and the way things are now. The family and the friendships are still around. But they are forged and ever tested in an extraordinary set of circumstances. Only the script allows for something resembling a happy ending.

IMDb

[b]Another aspect of rendering the zombie movie more contemporary was the idea that the virus didn’t necessarily affect people physically (it doesn’t kill them as in traditional zombie movies), but psychologically. Both Alex Garland and Danny Boyle felt that the idea that the virus renders people zombie-like due to uncontrollable rage was a good metaphor for the contemporary phenomenon of social rage (such as road rage, air rage, hospital rage etc). They liked the idea that the virus simply amplifies something already in each and every man and woman, rather than turning them into something entirely Other, as is the traditional route in zombie movies.

Garland and Boyle concluded that one of the biggest fears in modern society is fear of disease, especially a viral apocalypse, such as Ebola or Marburg. Garland and Boyle were specifically inspired by such incidents as anthrax and bio-terrorism scares in London and the spread of mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease in the UK.

Alex Garland and Danny Boyle did a great deal of research into social unrest, drawing ideas from things that had happened in Rwanda and Sierra Leone (such as the piling of bodies inside churches), but drew the line at using any actual footage from such incidents in the opening montage. All footage featuring dead bodies/desecration of bodies was faked.

The ‘design’ for the symptoms of Rage was based on Ebola, which is communicable in all primates (including humans), and is transmitted through the blood.

The symbol used for this film is the international symbol for blood-borne biohazard.[/b]

FAQ IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0289043/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later
trailer: youtu.be/HEkJAaGhJhQ

28 DAYS LATER [2002]
Directed by Danny Boyle

[b]Animal Activist: Bingo!

…

Doctor: I know who you are. I know what you think…
Activist: If you don’t wanna get hurt, keep your mouth shut and don’t move.
Doctor: The chimps are infected. They’re highly contagious. They’ve been given an inhibitor.
Activist: Infected with what?
Doctor: Rage.
Activist: What is he talking about? Get the cages open.
Doctor: No! No! No!
Activist: Listen, you sick bastard, we’re going and we’re taking your torture victims with us.
Doctor: The animals are contagious. The infection is in their blood and saliva. One bite… Stop… Stop! You’ve no idea![/b]

28 days later…

[b]Writing on a church wall: REPENT THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH

…

Mark: A man walks into a bar with a giraffe. They both get pissed. The giraffe falls over. The man goes to leave and the bartender says, “Oy. You can’t leave that lyin’ there.” And the man says, “No. It’s not a lion. It’s a giraffe.”
[Jim doesn’t respond]
Mark: He’s completely humorless.

…

Mark: What’s your name?
Jim: Jim.
Mark: I’m Mark. This is Selena. OK, Jim. I’ve got some bad news.

…

Selena [to Jim]: It started as rioting. But right from the beginning you knew this was different. Because it was happening in small villages, market towns. And then it wasn’t on the TV any more. It was in the street outside. It was coming in through your windows. It was a virus. An infection. You didn’t need a doctor to tell you that. It was the blood. It was something in the blood. By the time they tried to evacuate the cities it was already too late. Army blockades were overrun. And that’s when the exodus started. Before the TV and radio stopped broadcasting there were reports of infection in Paris and New York. We didn’t hear anything more after that.

…

Jim: What’s the government doing?
Selena: There’s no government.
Jim: What do you mean there’s no government? There’s always a government, they’re in a bunker or a plane somewhere!
Mark: No, there’s no government, no police, no army. No TV, no radio, no electricity. You’re the first uninfected person we’ve seen in six days.

…

Jim’s Mother [in a note to Jim]: “With endless love, we left you sleeping. Now we’re sleeping with you. Don’t wake up.”

…

Selena: Your parents died peacefully. You should be grateful.
Jim: I’m not grateful.

…

Mark: My parents and my sister…we went to Paddington Station, hoping maybe we could get on a plane, maybe we could buy our way onto a plane. I remember my dad had all this cash, even though cash was completely useless. About 20,000 other people had the same idea. Crowd was surging. I lost my grip on my sister’s hand. I remember the ground was soft. I looked down and I was standing on all these people. Like a carpet. People who had fallen and… Somewhere in the crowd there were Infected. It spread fast. No one could run. All you could do was climb. Climb over more people. So I did that. I climbed. And I got up on top of this kiosk. Looking down, you couldn’t tell which faces were infected and which weren’t. Then I saw my dad. Not my mum or my sister. My dad. His face… Selena’s right. You should be grateful.

…

Selena [to Jim after she kills an infected Mark]: If someone gets infected, you’ve about 20 seconds to kill them. It might be your brother, your sister or your oldest friend. It makes no difference. Just so you know where you stand, if it happens to you, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.

…

Selena: Mark was full of plans. Have you got any plans, Jim? Do you want us to find a cure and save the world or just fall in love and fuck? Plans are pointless. Staying alive’s as good as it gets.

…

Jim [of Frank and Hannah]: So what do you make of them?
Selena: Well, they’re desperate. Probably need us more than we need them.
Jim: I think they’re good people.
Selena: Good people? You should be more concerned about whether they’re gonna slow you down.
Jim: Because if they slowed you down…
Selena: I’d leave them behind.
Jim: In a heartbeat.
Selena: Yeah.
Jim: I wouldn’t.
Selena: Then you’re gonna wind up getting yourself killed.[/b]

The new morality.

Jim [to Frank]: No. See, this is a really shit idea. You know why? Because it’s obviously a shit idea. So we’re gonna drive into the tunnel full of fucking smashed cars…It’s really fucking obviously a shit idea!

Indeed, this is a place where the rats run from the infected.

[b]Jim: Do you know I was thinking?
Selena: You were thinking that you’ll never hear another piece of original music ever again. You’ll never read a book that hasn’t already been written or see a film that hasn’t already been shot.
Jim: Um, that’s what you were thinking.
Selena: No. I was thinking I was wrong.
Jim: About what?
Selena: All the death. All the shit. It doesn’t really mean anything to Frank and Hannah because… Well, she’s got her Dad and he’s got his daughter. So, I was wrong when I said that staying alive is as good as it gets.
Jim: See, that’s what I was thinking.
Selena: Was it?
Jim: Hmm. You stole my thought.
Selena: Sorry.
Jim: It’s okay. You keep it.

…

Jim: How is she doing?
Selena: She’s lost her dad, Jim. That’s how she’s doing. It’s all fucked.
Jim: What do you mean? Hannah is what Frank says she is. Tough, strong, and she’ll cope just like I’ll cope. Just like you’ll cope.
Selena: I don’t want her to have to fucking cope. I want her to be OK. When Hannah had her dad it was OK. It was OK for them and it was OK for us. Now it’s all just fucked.[/b]

She doesn’t know the half of it. Yet.

[b]Farrell: If you look at the whole life of the planet, we… you know, man, has only been around for a few blinks of an eye. So if the infection wipes us all out, that is a return to normality.

…

Major West: This is what I’ve seen in the four weeks since infection. People killing people. Which is much what I saw in the four weeks before infection, and the four weeks before that, and before that, and as far back as I care to remember. People killing people. Which to my mind, puts us in a state of normality right now.

…

Major West [to Jim]: I promised them women.
Jim: What?
Major West: Eight days ago I found Jones with his gun in his mouth. He said he was going to kill himself because there was no future. What could I say to him? We fight off the Infected or we wait until they starve to death and then what? What do nine men do
except wait to die themselves? I moved us from the blockade, I set the radio broadcasting and I promised them women. Because women mean a future.

…

Farrell: Smithers says “Women and semen don’t mix.” And Mr Burns says “We all know what you think, Smithers.” And that was my favourite joke in The Simpsons. That’s what they’re doing a few hundred miles away, across the Channel, across the Atlantic. Eating dinner and watching the fucking Simpsons! They’re sleeping in their beds next to their wives. But we’re here chained to a fucking radiator becaue the OC has gone insane! Starting the world again when the rest of the world hasn’t even stopped. Just imagine, just think about it. How could Infection cross the oceans? How could it cross the mountains and the rivers? It can be stopped. Right now TVs are playing and planes are flying and the rest of the world is continuing as fucking normal. Think! Actually think about it. What would you do with a diseased little island? They quarantined us. “There is no Infection. It’s just people killing people.” He’s insane![/b]

[iambiguous]

Modern love? By and large it is narcissistic, superficial, neurotic. Kids, in other words. No political context. The sort of world that most of us live in now. We can go about the business of being self-obsessed and only rarely will the outside world [and its politics] intervene.

And here they all seem to have plenty of dough. Money never really enters into the narrative at all. Which frees them up all the more to be self-absorbed in their pursuit of the perfect romance.

But then occasionally films like this come along to explore the aberrations. In particular relationships that involve more than just the couple. And here three seems to be the perfect number. It always complicates the part about love and the part about lust. The part about friendship and the part about sex.

Only here the sexual tension is both hetero and homo. Which is to say that Nico, the beautiful blond adonis, is pursued by both the man and the woman. And that’s not even counting all of the other relationships they are involved in.

So: Three’s company? Three’s a crowd? It’s basically the same age-old connundrum. We want a more rather than less monogomous love emotionally, but we want a more rather than less promiscuous sexual menu too. And less and less does this revolve only around men.

Look for about a thousand cigarettes to be smoked.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbeats_(film
trailer: youtu.be/znpU_Aup-Bg

HEARTBEATS [Les Amours Imaginaires] 2010
Written and directed by Xavier Dolan

[b]Marie: Well? What do you think of Nicolas?
Francis: He’s nice.
Marie: He’s intelligent.
Francis: Personally he’s not my type.
Marie: Mine either.

…

Nicolas: Eating your cherry, Terry?
Francis: Cherries are too sweet.
Marie: Fudge is 17 times sweeter than cherries.

…

Marie: A high IQ is a vital counterpoint to brown eyes.

…

Nicolas: You have a big bed, right?
Francis: Yeah, I have a big bed. You can sleep here, we’ll just… We’ll just squeeze in.
Nicolas: Thanks, man.
Marie: Shotgun the side.
Francis: I hate the middle, too.
Nicolas: No sweat. I like the middle.

…

Nicolas [after watching a play entitled “Pains, Migraines and Sonatas”]: Pretty so-so, huh?
Marie: The dialogue was a mess. So pompous. I heard the author on the radio. She called it the work she least understood. Those pseudo boprderlines with their pain fetish as an escaspe from existential ennui. Fuck off. They just need to get laid.

…

Nicolas [reading from a book]: This is so beautiful. “In love when I ask for a look, what is always deeply unsatisfying and always futile, is that you never look at me from where I see you.”

…

Francis [watching Nicolas dance]: Who’s the android he is dancing with?
Marie: His mother. Her name is Desiree. He introduced her to me. She said I looked like a 50s housewife. Who is she anyway? Captain Spock’s wetnurse? Or perhaps a prostitute from Blade Runner.

…

Desiree [to Francis]: Nice place, huh? A friggin’ palace! Nick’s dad paid for it. That dick thinks he’s king of the world.

…

Marie: I love to smoke. Smoking a cigarette is like forgetting. When I hit rock bottom, it’s all I have. Light up, smoke up, shut the fuck up. It hides the shit. The smoke hides the shit. Cigarettes clearly keep me from going crazy. They keep me alive. They keep me alive until I die.

…

Francis: I don’t know why I am telling you this. It’s just the end of Fall. I’ll have to start heating my place. And it would be simpler if there were someone…if there were someone. And also, I haven’t told you about my marks. Christ! I put a mark to…you know, when someone tells me, “No, thanks.” “No thanks, but I’m not interested”. Whenever that happens, I add another mark. But now I’m just tired of it. They help me to make a clean break. Know what I mean? So…you? Talk to me.
[long pause]
Nicolas: How could you think I was gay?
[cut to Francis walking slowly down the stairs to the door][/b]

Another mark on the bathroom wall.

Marie: What would you say if…if I’d send the poem to you?
[pause]
Nicolas: I’d…still have something on the stove.

Time for another cigarette.

Marie: I know it was him. I’ll never love anyone else that much. Tough. I can handle it. I know it’s usually later in life that you meet your soul mate. Me, it happened now when I’m 25. It’s not even about sex. I don’t care about sex. That’s not the main thing. What’s important is to wake up with someone. To spoon with someone. That’s what matters, the spoon. You wake up with the wind, a warm belly, the one who loves you breathing against your shoulder. That’s it, the spoon.

[iambiguous]

When it comes to self-defense, different states have different laws. Both for in and out of the home. But some 23 states are now described as having a very “broad” interpretation of what it means to “stand your ground” in protection of either your person or your property.

And you can be sure that Texas is one of them: texastribune.org/2012/03/27/ … ce-self-d/

A man’s home is his castle there. So you fuck with it at your peril. This story takes place back in 1989. But it’s still Texas. Richard Dane puts a bullet in the head of the miscreant who dared to breach his family domain. And, sure enough, he is deemed a hero by the locals.

But not so much by the family of the man he killed.

Only all of this might well be just incidental to the actual plot. In fact, this is one of those films where not everything is as it seems. And that’s important because the things that we think and feel and do, we think and feel and do because of what we believe is true.

Ben: All I know is what I’m told.

Same with Richard. He did shoot and kill a man who broke into his home. But all the rest is scripted. By the cops among others

One thing for sure: one way or another something like this can turn your whole world upside down. And you can almost never expect that everyone is going to see things your way. It just depends then on what those who don’t aim to do about it. And you can count on your peace of mind to be flushed down the toilet.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_in_July_(film
trailer: youtu.be/UO63ccU6ce0

COLD IN JULY [2014]
Directed by Jim Mickle

[b]Ann [in the middle of the night]: Richard. Richard.
Richard: Yeah?
Ann: I think I heard something.

…

Sheriff: How you feeling, son?
Richard: Peachy, aside from almost shitting myself.
Sheriff: Yeah, must have been a scary thing for a man like you.
[Richard stares at him, not sure what he’s suggesting]
Sheriff: A civilian, I mean. His name was, uh, Freddy Russell.
Richard: You know him?
Sheriff: I know shit when I step in it.

…

Richard: Okay…Now what?
Sheriff: It’ll go to the grand jury. They’ll look over your statement, your wife’s, mine, and they’ll no bill you.
Richard: What about the courts?
Sheriff: It’ll never get that far. It was self-defense.
Richard: He was unarmed.
Sheriff: Well, you didn’t know that. It’s called “fear of life.” Uh, legally, he might as well have been pointing a gun at you. Look… He’s a wanted felon. You’re an upstanding citizen without a record. Sometimes the good guy wins.

…

Jack [the mailman]: I hear you got you one last night. Back at the paper, they told me. I couldn’t believe it was you at first. I didn’t think you had it in you.
Richard: Hey, take it easy, Jack. It’s not something I’m proud of.
Jack: Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Some son of a bitch breaks into my house, he better be ready to pick his teeth out of his ass. Shoot, man, if it was me…
Richard: It wasn’t you. It was me. Now, Jack, if you got mail, leave it. Otherwise, I’m busy.[/b]

Here’s the thing though: He never even meant to shoot him. His finger “slipped on the trigger”.

[b]Richard: So what happens now’?
Ray [sheriff]: We bury the son of a bitch.
Richard: When?
Ray: Tomorrow, noon, Greenley’s Cemetery, courtesy of the county.
Richard: He got any family?
Ray: He got a daddy in Huntsville Prison. He just got paroled. Shit don’t fall far from the tree.

…

Ben: You’re, uh. Dane, right? Come to watch the shit go in the hole? Very Christian of you.
Richard: I’m sure this doesn’t make it any better for you, Mr. Russell, but I’m sorry for what happened. He didn’t give me much choice.
Ben: Yeah. You’re right. Doesn’t make it any better.
[he starts to walk away from the car but then stops]
Ben: Oh, that was a nice picture of your family in the paper. Your boy…he looks a whole lot like you, doesn’t he? Now, you have a nice day now, you hear?[/b]

And then, just like that, everything changes. It seems that being on the right side of the law don’t mean shit to those on the other side of it. Or if you’re a vigilante.

[b]Ray: I was wrong. I thought he’d move on, but at least we have a reasonable suspicion now. That means I can give you official protection. Now, all you got to do is be normal…go to work, take Jordan to school, be seen. And everywhere you go, I’ll have someone watching. So when he makes his move, we make our move.
Richard: So we’re the bait.
Ray: For want of a better word, yeah.

…

Ann: How’d he get in? How’d he get in the house, Ray?!
Ray: He never left. Son of a bitch was in the crawl space the whole time.

…

Richard: What’s this?
Sheriff: It says “Freddy Russell.” So?
Richard: So that’s not the guy I shot.

…

Richard: I didn’t kill your son.
Ben: Fuck you.
Richard: Look, I think the cops have been lying to us both all along. The cops are up to something, right? Something to do with your son, with you. Why do they want you dead?
Ben: How should I know? Same reason you do.
Richard: Look. Something’s going on. They used my family as bait to find you. Now, I want to know why.

…

Ben [after they dig up the body of the man Richard killed]: That ain’t him. That’s not Freddy. God…
[they see that the teeth and the fingertips have been removed from the body]
Richard: Jesus, who would do that?
Ben: Somebody who didn’t want him identified…ever.

…

Jim Bob: Now, we know Freddy ain’t no saint, but if he’s messing around with these boys in the Dixie Mafia, they some bad dudes. How far do you want to take this, Ben?

…

Jim Bob: So over the last couple years, your son’s been running with the Dixie boys, doing whatever Mafia types do. And the shit gets way over Freddy’s head, and the law comes down on him hard. So to keep from going to the slammer, he starts to sing like a little bird against his old buddies, the Dixie boys. Now, you don’t want to fuck with the Dixie Mafia. And the feds know that, so they make Freddy a deal. They’ll hide him if he gives them what they need.
Ben: So they faked it.
Jim Bob: It’s beautiful. If the Dixie Mafia believes that Freddy is dead, well…What’s the use of gunning for a dead guy, right? Good plan, don’t you think?
Richard: Then who’s in that grave?
Ben: Yeah, and where’s my son?

…

Jim Bob [to Richard]: But we can’t tell Ben about any of it, not yet.
Ben [who walks into the room]: About what?
Jim Bob: It ain’t nothing we need to jump into right now.
Ben: What’s on the tape?
Jim Bob: Do yourself a favor, hoss.
Ben: What’s on the tape? Huh?

…

Richard: We could go to the cops and show them the tape.
Jim Bob: Well, it wouldn’t do any good. They know what their boy is doing. He is protected.
Richard: But he’s killing women.
Jim Bob: Prostitutes who cross the border illegally. Nobody cares.

…

Ben: What are you gonna do when a dog goes bad on you, bites somebody or hurts somebody? There’s only two things you can do, right? You either chain him up or put him down. But which do you think is more cruel? Huh?
Richard: You talking about killing your own son? That’s crazy.
Ben: Well, I can’t very well chain him up now… can I?

…

Jim Bob: All right, boys, it’s Howdy Doody time.

…

Ben: Freddy…I-I’m Ben Russell. I’m your father. I came here to kill you.
Freddy: Are you really my dad?
Ben: Far as I know.
[then he puts a bullet in his head][/b]