philosophy in film

This guy is so despicable he attends the funerals of complete strangers only in order to pass out his business card. And his business is being a sleazy lawyer.

But it’s not as bad as it looks. He was once a respectable [and respected] attorney. But then some sons of bitches shafted him. Now he gets by on crumbs and booze.

So what are the odds then that he can take on the medical establishment, the legal establishment and the Roman Catholic Church?

Well, what’s the script say?

Money and power. That’s always being exposed again and again in films like this. We know we’re being suckered into going along but we let them do it to us anyway. Vicarious truth and justice is better than nothing at all.

The world isn’t always like this of course. But it is often enough to propel cynics like me into the future.

And I’m always a sucker for a film where a cynical, corrupt scumbag gets drawn into a set of circumstances that completely turns him [or her] around. But there are consequences.

Look for Bruce Willis. He’s supposed to be in here [uncredited] but I never spot him. Same with Tobin Bell.

trailer: youtu.be/F3aJ3MGghXA

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

The Verdict [1982]
Directed by Sidney Lumet

[b]Mickey [to Frank]: Listen to me. Listen to me… listen to me, Frank, ‘cause I’m done fuckin’ with you. I can’t do it any more. Look around you: You think that you’re going to change? What’s going to change it? You think it’s going to be different next month? It’s going to be the same. And I have to stop. This is it. I got you a good case, it’s a moneymaker. You do it right and it will take care of you. But I’m through. I’m sorry, Frank, this is the end. Life is too fucking short, and I’m getting too fucking old.

…

Dr. Gruber: Her doctors murdered her. They gave her the wrong anesthetic and they put her in the hospital for life. Her doctors killed her. She ended up drowning in her own vomit.
Galvin: Do you know who her doctors were?
Dr. Gruber: I read the file. Yeah. Marx and Towler. I know who they were.
Galvin: The most respected…
Dr. Gruber: Whose side are you arguing…? I thought that you wanted to do something. I don’t have any interest in the woman’s estate. I have an interest in the Hospital; and I don’t want those bozos working in the same shop as me. They gave her the wrong anesthetic. They turned the girl into a vegetable. They killed her and they killed her kid. You caught 'em.

…

Galvin: Uh, why, why are you doing this?
Dr. Gruber: To do the right thing. Isn’t that why you’re doing it?[/b]

Uh, guess who gets bought off?

[b]Galvin: How did you settle on the amount?
Bishop Brophy: We thought it was just.
Galvin: You thought it was just?
Bishop Brophy: Yes.
Galvin: Because it struck me, um, how neatly ‘three’ went into this figure: 210,000. That means I would keep seventy.
Bishop Brophy: That was our insurance company’s recommendation.
Galvin: Yes, that would be.
Bishop Brophy: Nothing we can do can make that woman well.
Galvin: And no one will know the truth.
Bishop Brophy: What is the truth?
Galvin: That poor girl put her trust into the…into the hands of two men who took her life. She’s in a coma. Her life is gone. She has no home, no family. She’s tied to a machine. She has no friends. And the people who should care for her - her doctors… and you and me - have been bought off to look the other way. We’ve been paid to look the other way. I came here to take your money. I brought snapshots to show you so I could get your money. I can’t do it; I can’t take it. 'Cause if I take the money I’m lost. I’ll just be a…a rich ambulance chaser. I can’t do it. I can’t take it.

…

Galvin: I’m going to help her.
Mickey: To do what…? To do what, for chrissake…? To help her to do what? She’s dead…
Galvin: They killed her. And they’re trying to buy it…
Mickey: That’s the fucking point, dummy. Let them buy it. We let them buy the case. That’s what I took it for. You let this drop – we’ll go up to New Hampshire, kill some fuckin’ deer…
Galvin: I can win this case.
Mickey: You won, Frankie. You won. When they give you the money, that means you won.

…

Mickey: Do you know who the attorney for the Archdiocese is? Ed Concannon!
Galvin: He’s a good man…
Mickey: He’s a good man? Heh, heh, he’s the Prince of fucking Darkness! He’ll have people testifying they saw her waterskiing in Marblehead last summer. Now look, Frank, don’t fuck with this case!

…

Judge: Frank, what will you and your client take right now this very minute to walk out of here and let this damn thing drop?
Galvin: My client can’t walk, your Honor.

…

Judge: It seems to me, a fellow’s trying to come back, he’d take the settlement, get a record for himself. I, myself, would take it and run like a thief.
Galvin: I’m sure you would.

…

Galvin: I swear to you I wouldn’t have turned the offer down unless I thought that I could win the case…
Doneghy: What you thought!? What you thought…I’m a workingman, I’m trying to get my wife out of town, we hired you, we’re paying you, I got to find out from the other side they offered two hundred…
Galvin: I’m going to win this case Mr. Doneghy… I’m going to the Jury with a solid case, a famous doctor as an expert witness, and I’m going to win five or six times what they…
Doneghy: You guys… you guys are all the same! The doctors at the hospital, you…it’s always what I’m going to do for you. And then you screw up, and it’s, “Ah, we did the best that we could, I’m dreadfully sorry.” And people like us live with your mistakes the rest of our lives.

…

Mickey [to Laura]: Stearns thought Frankie needed some help, so they bribed a juror. So Frankie finds out. He comes to me in tears. He thinks that anybody who knows what a ‘spinnaker’ is got to be a saint. I told him ‘Frankie, wake up. These people are sharks. What do you think they got so rich from? Doing good?’ He can’t be comforted. He tells the boys at Stearns and Harrington they’ve disappointed him, he’s going to the Judge to rat them out. But they were way ahead of him. Before he can get there here comes this Federal Marshal, and Frankie’s indicted for Jury tampering, they throw him in jail, he’s gonna be disbarred, his life is over.

…

Mickey [to Laura]: Okay, so now he’s in jail. He, finally, he gets to see the light, he calls up Harrington, he says he thinks he made a mistake. As if by magic, just like that, charges against him are dropped, he’s released from jail. He’s fired from the firm, his wife divorces him, he turns to drink and mopes around three and a half years. You like that story, Laura?

…

Nurse Rooney: You know you guys are all the same. You don’t care who gets hurt. You’d do anything for a dollar. You’re a bunch of whores. You got no loyalty…No nothing…You’re a bunch of whores!

…

Young Lawyer: …and he’s black.
Concannon [sternly): I’m going to tell you how you handle the fact that he’s black. You don’t touch it. You don’t mention it. You treat him like anybody else. Neither better or worse. And, uh, let’s get a black lawyer to sit at our table. Okay…?

…

Mickey [to Frank]: All we have is the witch doctor, right?

…

Concannon [to Laura]: I know how you feel. You don’t believe me, but I do know. I’m going to tell you something that I learned when I was your age. I’d prepared a case and old man White said to me, “How did you do?” And, uh, I said, “Did my best.” And he said, “You’re not paid to do your best. You’re paid to win.” And that’s what pays for this office…pays for the pro bono work that we do for the poor…pays for the type of law that you want to practice…pays for my whiskey… pays for your clothes…pays for the leisure we have to sit back and discuss philosophy as we’re doing tonight. We’re paid to win the case. You finished your marriage. You wanted to come back and practice the law. You wanted to come back to the world. Welcome back.

…

Mickey: The ‘History’…?
Galvin: Yeah, how old are you, how many children do you have…
[he stops, handing Mickey the admitting form…then he leaves the office]
Mickey [reading from the form]: How old are you, how many children do you have…when did you last eat.

…

Laura [looking up at men holding Frank back after he punched her in the face]: Leave him alone.

…

Galvin: If she had eaten, say one hour prior to admission, the inducement of a general anesthetic…the type you gave her…would have been negligent?
Dr. Towler: Negligent. Yes…it would have been criminal. But that was not the case.
Galvin: Thank you.

…

Kaitlin [testifying why she kept a copy of the admittance form]: After the operation, when that poor girl she went into a coma, Dr. Towler called me in. He told me that he’d had five difficult deliveries in a row and he was tired…and he never looked at the admittance form. And he told me to change the form. He told me to change the ‘1’ to a ‘9’…or else…or else he said, he said he’d fire me. He said I’d never work again. Who were these men? Who were these men? I wanted to be a nurse!

…

Galvin: You know, so much of the time we’re just lost. We say, “Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true.” And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead. We think of ourselves as victims…and we become victims. We become…we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. But today you are the law. You are the law. Not some book…not the lawyers…not the, a marble statue…or the trappings of the court. See those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are…they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, “Act as if ye had faith… and faith will be given to you.” If…if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And act with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.

…

Judge: Have you reached a verdict?
Jury Foreman: We have, your Honor. Your Honor, we have agreed to hold for the Plaintiff. But your honor, are we limited on the size of the award? What I mean. sir, are we permitted to award an amount greater than the amount the plaintiff asked for?[/b]

I’ve always been drawn to films set in small towns. In part because I spent a good part of my own youth growing up in one. And in part because everywhere I went, one way or another, there was God. And all the things which made that inevitable.

The guy just got out of prison. And boy is he ever on his best behavior. But you know right from the start where this is going. To the part where you can’t help but wonder: If God does exist where does He fit in here? Especially as the guy found God in prison.

Of course some folks think: Why should we give a fuck about them anyway? They are all just hicks from the sticks trudging from day to day in the strait jacket of their own prattle and prejudice. Only aren’t we all in our own way. Give or take the part about God. And the particular narritive we cling to as “reality”.

Of course nothing changes. God goes on. People will just chalk it up to a misguided soul who didn’t get Him the way we are supposed to.

trailer: youtu.be/70vi19LiKR8

EYE OF GOD [1997]
Written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson

[b]Sheriff [voiceover]: Sunday evenings, my dad read to us from the Bible. The stories were beautiful, austere, terrifying. And one loomed over all the others–the story of Abraham. God sends a man to slaughter his own son, only to stop him perilously close to the act, to reveal it’s all been a ruse. To me that story was, and always will be, not Abraham’s story, but Isaac’s. This boy must grow with the image of his own father poised above him without it ever explained why he’s a victum. I always knew I would devote my life to clarity. I would save the world’s uncomprehending victums. What I never knew is, when dealing with matters of life and death, as policemen inevitably do, there’s no way around the question of God. In fact, there are moments when there’s nothing else that can be thought of but, why? And like Isaac found there’s only silence in response. Lonely, indeterminate silence.

…

Parole officer: So you found religion too?
Jack: Yes, sir.
Parole officer: That’s neither one way or the other with me, religion. If Christ died for my sins, I sure as hell ain’t seen any of the benefits. But if you get satisfaction in praying, so be it.

…

Jack: I need to know where the church is in town.
Parole officer: That should be easy enough. Just pick and choose. Unless you’re a Morman or a Jew.

…

Tom: Who’s that lady?

…

Ainsley: I don’t think I believe in God.
Jack: That’s all right.
Ainsley: It is?
Jack: You just ain’t found Him yet. He’s in your life, you just can’t see Him.
Ainsley: Don’t nobody see God.
Jack: But we see what He does. That’s what faith is.
Ainsley: How do I get faith?
Jack: You just got to let go.

…

Ainsley [to Tommy]: I think I might have left my husband tonight.

…

Parole Officer: The state feels that Jack is rehabilitated…but they always say the spouse has a right to know.
Ainsley: What did he do?
Parole Officer: He nearly beat a woman to death and, uh…
Ainsley: And what?
Parole Officer: And, uh, she was carrying their child at the time.

…

Sheriff: “Revelation.”
Jack: You’ve read the Bible. It’s more than most Christians.
Sheriff: Your parole officer is right. If this goes to trial, we’ll win. You’ll get the chair. I want that. I want your life to end. I used to think a man’s life was God’s domain. But you’ve changed that.

…

Sheriff: This got nothing to do with God.
Jack: Everything’s got to do with God. It’s that you and this whole world’s forgot.
Sheriff: Was God with you on Friday night?
Jack: You don’t believe that?
Seriff: I don’t see why he’d let that happen to one of His children.
Jack: God ain’t about asking why.
Seriff: You never ask why?
Jack: Even if I did, think I’d hear an answer?

…

Sheriff [voiceover]: Faith. God tells a man to sacrifice his own son. The man has faith, and he will do it. He doesn’t ask why. Maybe Abraham, as he binds his son, knows why they are there. I don’t anymore.

…

Ainsley [to Tom]: Children. That’s all we are, Lord, if you’re out there at all. Your children, boys and girls. Forgive us. [/b]

Another small town, another love story. And boy do I know a thing or two about falling in love there.

But you never forget the first time you bump into someone actually worth falling in love with. Someone who finally makes you understand there is more to the world than the town you had always mistaken for the world. And the last thing you come to care about then is that she’s your friend’s sister.

This brought back so many memories for me. The gap between a mind at that age and the complexity of the world as it really is. And it’s all the wider back then because you are so sure that it’s not. And while I’ve tried and tried to make contact with the two women this reminds me of most, I have never been successful.

And these particular folks are a hell of a lot more down to earth than lots of big city types I have known. Some of them anyway.

This is mostly about marbling love into the quotidian—the world you have to live in day to day to day to day. The miraculous and the mundane. The thrills side by side with the trials and the tribulations. It’s like watching a rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s The River: youtu.be/nAB4vOkL6cE

trailer: youtu.be/FTrjVYno6Xk

ALL THE REAL GIRLS [2003]
Written and directed by David Gordon Green

[b]Tip: Are you stupid or just blind?
Noel: Neither one. You clearly don’t know him.
Tip: What are you talking about? I’ve seen him fuck every girl in this town.
Noel: That’s not true.
Tip: It is true. Just ask him.

…

Bo: It’s different when it’s your family.
Paul: I wouldn’t know that.
Bo: What Tip sees in you is exactly what he hates in himself. You think he’s just gonna forgive you and forget about it? Grow up, tell you it’s all right? “Go ahead, date my sister, I’ve seen what you done to every other girl on town, but it’s okay.” What do you want him to do?
Paul: I want him to calm down.
Bo: That’s not going to happen. If you were not in the history of all as the hapless ex-boyfriend. But you are.

…

Girl [to Tip]: He’s gonna fuck your sister over like he fucked over every other girl in this town.

…

Noel: You’re the first person that I’ve wanted to tell that to, 'cause you’re the first person that I’ve wanted to talk to for more than five minutes…ever.

…

Paul [to Noel after her confession]: I’m looking at you right now and I hear you talking and all the words that are coming out of your mouth are like they’re coming out of a stranger. Why don’t you put your fucking hair back on and come back, just come on back.

…

Paul [drunkenly]: Listen, I want to talk…about when we were dating, I wanted to say to you that if I hurt your feelings…if I hurt your feelings, that I’m sorry…
Mary-Margaret [interrupting]: Shut up.
Paul: I’m sorry I hurt your feelings!
Mary-Margaret: Shut up!
Paul: I’m really sorry and I’m trying to apologize to you in a real way.
Mary-Margaret [seething with anger and pain]: You’re not sorry. You know how I know that? Because you’re not smart enough to be sorry. Guys like you…you never quit, and you never leave - you’re gonna be here forever. How does it make you feel knowing that?

…

Paul [to Mary-Margaret]: Do you wanna know a secret that I didn’t tell anybody ever?.. You know how ducks fly home in a V? It’s like a v-shape when they get home? I was walking my dog and I looked up and there’s this big V above me, there’s all these ducks flying back to their home. And right when they flew above me, I saw 'em and, they crashed into a big house! The whole V! And then, they hit the ground, and they just kinda curled up. You ever fucking see that? Have you ever seen a mistake in nature? Have you ever seen an animal make a mistake?

…

Noel: I don’t know what to say to you, anymore.
Paul: Then don’t say anything.
Noel: Okay, then don’t smoke in my room.

…

Elvira [Paul’s mother]: You sitting around crying, it ain’t gonna do you any good. I got news for you. Grow up and balance your personal life with your responsibilites.
Paul: What am I supposed to do, dress up as a clown and change bed pans? I don’t understand why I have to listen to this crap when you know I’m fucking standing here with a broken heart about ready to split my ribs.
Elvira: Oh that’s good. That’s a good one.
[She flaps the clown costume]
Elvira: Do you know what this is? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS?!
Paul: Clown clothes.
Elvira: That’s right. This is what I get for living through hard times. These are the clothes I wear. This is my face now. Do you want to look like me? Do you want to look like this? I was fucking beautiful!
[She slaps him across the face. Then again]
Elvira: Look at me. I got my own battles to attend to. It don’t mean that I don’t love you. It’s just that I can see the future and you got other opportunities. Opportunities that I don’t have.[/b]

A post modern family if there ever was one. At least here in America. The father is gone and the mother is struggling in order to pay all the bills necessary to raise two kids. There is nothing that really anchors them. So [one day at a time] they deal with the dysfunction as best they can. And one of them is losing her mind. She’s just a kid. About 6 years old and already a cutter. She thinks she’s an angel when she flies out the window.

Life pummels them and they pummel each other. That’s the American way.

And sex. The accursed male libido. It has to be reined in and most times most men [of this sort] are able to. But things can get complicated. We just pretend that they don’t.

On the other hand, he knows how vulnerable she is. And he is familiar enough about her precarious “situation” to know this: that sex with him can only make things a whole lot worse.

And the hints are broad: He’s done this before.

Good luck trying to put it all in perspective.

My own particular subtext: Where does the government fit into all this? What is the minimum each citizen should be able to expect from it? Especially children. Should Megan have to abandon the poetry contest because her family can’t afford to get her to it? Should she be reduced to stealing ties from her employer?

trailer: youtu.be/HGsFg8ESkP8

BLUE CAR [2002]
Written and directed by Karen Moncrieff

[b]Lily [reading from a book]: “A man in Mexico burst his own eardrums with a pencil and sewed his eyelids shut because he said the government is deaf and blind to people’s pain.”

…

Diane [Megan’s mother]: I expect you to take care of her when I’m gone.
Meg: Get a babysitter.
Diane: I can’t afford a babysitter. You do have a responsibility to this family.
Meg: You had her. You take care of her.
Diane [startled]: What did you say?

…

Meg [to Lily]: It’s gonna get infected. You gotta stop hurting yourself.

…

Auster: A world emerges from little details. For example, when we buried my son, I had forgotten to put in my contact lenses. I stood over him before they closed the coffin, trying to fix him in my memory. I could see the red from his sweater and his blue pants, and there was a scab on his forehead that hadn’t healed. It was from a bicycle accident. I could feel that scab when I kissed him, but when I looked at him…he was out of focus.

…

Auster [after reading her poem]: Okay…you tell me.
Meg: I don’t know.
Auster: Why not? Are you afraid I’m going to tell you your work stinks?
Meg: Does it?
Auster: What do you think?
Meg: Probably. I don’t know.
Auster: Come back when you do.
[rises, starts to leave]
Meg: It doesn’t stink. There’s a line that I like.
Auster: Which one?
Meg: “Lost leaves spin past the glass, but the trees don’t go. They stay by my window.”
Auster: What about the rest of it?
Meg: I could go deeper.
Auster: Good for you.

…

Meg [to Auster]: Why are you so nice to me?

…

Meg: I’ll go and live with Dad.
Diane: Oh, good. You do that. You think he is so wonderful? See how you like it.
Meg: At least he doesn’t control everything I do.
Diane: Your father doesn’t give a shit about you. How many times did he come last year? Three?
Meg: He doesn’t come because of you.
Diane: He can’t even manage to pay the $60 a week in child support he owes me. I am up to here in debt to give you a life I can’t afford. I go to work 12 hours a day and I go to school at night so that I can make life nice.

…

Meg [at poetry contest]: This poem – po-em – is for Mr. Auster. It’s called “Now That I’ve Read Your Book”.[/b]

She was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. And she’s bloody bored. And she is fully determined [and fully prepared] to make damn sure everybody knows it.

Besides she can get away with it [around some] because she’s so gorgeous.

It’s the 1950s. England. No Beatles yet. So there’s really not much here that isn’t viewed as an act of rebellion. But she’s no teddy boy.

Instead, she sees through much of the bullshit that is “normal society” and plays the innocent waif. Gosh, what’s all the fuss, she seems to says, all I did was…

But, really, how many options [for “girls”] were there back then?

In many ways she is not nearly as sophisticated as she likes others to think she is. And she plays her games around folks not so much intent on being dignified as in being seen that way by others. Every culture has its own rendition of saving face.

Look, if all you do is watch the scene with her and shrink going through the alphabet, you know you’re watching a gem.

Oh, and by the way, “Up yer bum!”

trailer: youtu.be/ncj0HB6TA_o

WISH YOU WERE HERE [1987]
Written and directed by David Leland

[b]Lynda: Have I got nice tits, or have I got nice tits?

…

Lynda: But I was only showing them my new knickers, Mr. Figgis, look.

…

Dave: Do you fancy me?
Lynda: Not half as much as you fancy yourself.

…

Lynda: Just trying to find a cat, Mrs. Fartly.

…

Lynda: Do you love me?
Eric: No, I don’t love anyone…not even myself.

…

Lynda [to Eric]: You don’t know how lucky you are. I’m practicaly a virgin.

…

Lynda: No plonker, no nooky.

…

Eric [unbuttoning her dress]: You’d better take this off and all. I can just fit you in before the novices handicap at Kempton.
Lynda: Just hold me please, just hold me.[/b]

Needless to say, he’s not the holding type.

Eric: I don’t believe you. How? How do you know you’re pregnant?
Lynda: You’re the one who should know. You put it up me, Mr. Bareback Rider. You knew when you were gonna spunk! How the hell was I supposed to know?! All you see are tits and arses.
Eric: Have you seen a doctor? How do you know it’s mine?
Lynda: If it walks with a limp and thinks with its prick, it’s yours.

Watching this is always a surreal and exasperating experience for me. It is basically two films in one. One is completely enthralling and the other is, well, rather tedious. To me. Judah, Ben, Jack and Dolores converge around the crime while Cliff, Lester, Halley and Wendy haggle over the misdemeanors. It’s actually reached the point now where, aside from the part where Professor Levy comes into play, I’m mostly fast fowarding on to the crime. Lester and Halley in particular set my teeth to grinding.

In my view, this might well have been as enthraling as Another Woman had he saved the comedy for his next film. Remember Alice? Me neither.

The Seder scene alone is a masterpiece.

I just think it would have been so much beter had it explored in more depth, say, the relationship between Judah and Jack…drawing in on some of the characters from the Seder perhaps.

May, for example.

Bottom line: The world with and without God. Because, without Him, morality can never be more than a shifting point of view cobbled together existentially out in a particular world. This film imagines an actual context in which one confronts the proposition that “in the absense of God all things are permitted”. And they are permitted because they are rationalized.

IMDb

Woody Allen felt that he had been too “nice” to the characters in the end of Hannah and Her Sisters, so he wrote this film as a response to those feelings.

at Philosophical Films: philfilms.utm.edu/1/crimes.htm
at Film Intuition: filmintuition.com/Crimes.html
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_and_Misdemeanors

trailer: youtu.be/5wXqwL3akhw

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS [1989]
Written and directed by Woody Allen

[b]Clifford [on Lester’s films]: Hey, I can’t watch his stuff. It’s sub-mental.

…

Judah [to Ben]: I’ve done a foolish thing. Senseless, vain, dumb. Another woman. Maybe I was flattered, vulnerable. Maybe because she was helpless and alone. Now my life’s about to go up in smoke.

…

Judah: You know what’s funny? Our entire adult lives, you and I have been having this same conversation in one form or another.
Ben: It’s a fundamental difference in the way we view the world. You see it as harsh and empty of values and pitiless, and I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t feel with all my heart a moral structure with real meaning and forgiveness, and some kind of higher power. Otherwise there’s no basis to know how to live. And I know you well enough to know that the spark of that notion is inside you, too.

…

Professor Levy [voiceover]: The unique thing that happened to the early Israelites was that they conceived a God that cares. He cares but, at the same time, he also demands that you behave morally. But here comes the paradox. What’s one of the first things that that God asks? That God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, his beloved son, to him. In other words, in spite of millennia of efforts, we have not succeeded to create a really and entirely loving image of God. This was beyond our capacity to imagine.

…

Clifford: A strange man defecated on my sister.
Wendy [matter of factly]: Why?
Clifford: I don’t know. Is there any reason I could give you that would answer that satisfactorily? Human sexuality is just…it’s so mysterious. Which I guess is…you know. I guess it’s good in a way.

…

Judah [to Jack]: Let me get something straight here…

…

Judah [to Jack]: She’s not an insect! You don’t just step on her![/b]

Instead, you hire someone else to.

[b][in an imagined conversation]
Ben: It’s a human life. You don’t think God sees?
Judah: God is a luxury I can’t afford.
Ben: Now you’re talking like your brother Jack.
Judah: Jack lives in the real world. You live in the kingdom of heaven. I’d managed to keep free of that real world but suddenly it’s found me.
Ben: You fool around with her for your pleasure and then when you think its enough you sweep her under the rug.
Judah: There’s no other solution but Jack’s, Ben. I push one button and I can sleep at nights.
Ben: But the law, Judah. Without the law, it’s all darkness.
Judah: You sound like my father. What good is the law if it prevents me from receiving justice? Is just justice? Is this what I deserve?

…

Judah: It’s pure evil, Jack! A man kills for money and he doesn’t even know his victims!

…

[in Judah’s imagination]
Man: What are you saying, May? There’s no morality anywhere in the whole world?
May: For those who want morality, there’s morality. Nothing’s handed down in stone.
Woman: Sol’s kind of faith is a gift. It’s like an ear for music, or the talent to draw. He believes. You can use logic on him and he still believes.
Man: Must everything be logical?
Judah: And if a man commits a crime, if he…if he kills…
Sol: One way or another he will be punished.
Man: If he’s caught, Sol.
Sol: If he’s not, that which originates from a black deed will blossom in a foul manner.
Man: You’re relying too heavily on the Bible.
Sol: No, no, no. Whether it’s the Old Testament or Shakespeare, murder will out.
Judah: Who said anything about murder?
Sol: You did.
Judah: Did I?
May: And I say, if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he’s home free. Remember, history is written by the winners.
Man: And if all your faith is wrong, Sol, I mean just what if?
Sol: Then I’ll still have a better life than all of those that doubt.
May: Wait a minute, are you telling me that you prefer God to the truth?
Sol: If necessary I will always choose God over truth.

…

Professor Levy [voiceover]: But we must always remember that we, when we are born, we need a great deal of love in order to persuade us to stay in life. Once we get that love it usually lasts us. But the universe is a pretty cold place. It’s we who invest it with our feelings. And, under certain conditions, we feel that the thing isn’t worth it any more.

…

Clifford [to Halley after Professor Levy’s demise]: He left a note. He left a simple little note that said “I’ve gone out the window.” This is a major intellectual and he leaves a note that says “I’ve gone out the window.” He’s a role-model. You’d think he’d leave a decent note.

…

Judah: I believe in God, Miriam. Because without God, the world’s a cesspool.

…

Judah: …and after the awful deed is done, he finds that he’s plagued by deep-rooted guilt. Little sparks of his religious background which he’d rejected are suddenly stirred up. He hears his father’s voice. He imagines that God is watching his every move. Suddenly, it’s not an empty universe at all, but a just and moral one, and he’s violated it. Now, he’s panic-stricken. He’s on the verge of a mental collapse-an inch away from confessing the whole thing to the police. And then one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining, his family is around him and mysteriously, the crisis has lifted. He takes his family on a vacation to Europe and as the months pass, he finds he’s not punished. In fact, he prospers. The killing gets attributed to another person-a drifter who has a number of other murders to his credit, so I mean, what the hell? One more doesn’t even matter. Now he’s scott-free. His life is completely back to normal. Back to his protected world of wealth and privilege.
Clifford: Yeah, but can he ever really do back?
Judah: Well, people carry sins around with them. Oh, maybe once in a while he has a bad moment…but then in time it all fades.
Clifford: Yeah, but now his worst beliefs are realized.
Judah: Well, I said it was a chilling story.[/b]

With God though, there’s the part about after we die. There’s the part about Sin and Hell and Devine Justice.

Judah: In reality, we rationalize, we deny, or we couldn’t go on living.
Clifford: Here’s what I would do. I would have him turn himself in because then your story assumes tragic proportions because in the absense of a God he’s forced to assume that responsibility himself. Then you have tragedy.
Judah: But that’s fiction, that’s movies. You’ve seen too many movies. I’m talking about reality. I mean if you want a happy ending you should go see a Hollywood movie.

Or broach it here with an objectivist.

Professor Levy [voiceover]: We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions. Moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on lesser points. But! We define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included, in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.

It’s the same ending Allen always opts for. But then what other one is there in a world without God?

Giles De’ath?

Well, at least we’re off to a good start.

He is the consumate intellectual. There is art and “culture”. And there are words piled up aesthetically into sublime ideas. And then there is everything else.

But among all “else” there is the flesh. And he is smitten. And, apparently, this is how it works for gay folks who still live in the 19th century too.

Come on, lots of us have these vicarious “relationships”. We see someone up on the screen and the fantasies begin. And they play themselves out right up to the moment he/she opens his/her mouth and says something. Then we rationalize. They aren’t like that in “real life”. They are forced to be these cartoon characters because that’s the only stuff “the industry” makes. And even if they aren’t all that much like us “in reality” once we spend some time with them we can turn them around. What’s really important is that “in the flesh” they turn us on and we want them.

Not entirely sure why but it all sort of reminds me of…Lolita?

trailer: youtu.be/fdeIKlZ7fVY [couldn’t find one in English]

LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND [1997]
Written and directed by Richard Kwietniowski

[b]Giles [voiceover]: It is so difficult to know where I should begin, especially when, unlike you, I already know the ending. But let us say that this story began with the end of another far, far from the surf of Long Island. For many years, I had absolutely no public life. I had said, “No,” to interviews so often, it was widely regarded as my forte. Then, just once – on impulse – I said, “Yes.”

…

Giles [aloud in the theater]: “This isn’t EM Forster.”

…

Taxi Driver: The sign says “no smoking.”
Giles: No, the sign says “thank you for not smoking.” As I am smoking, I don’t expect to be thanked.

…

An imagined Quiz Master: And what is your chosen specialized subject?
Giles: The life and work of Ronnie Bostock.
Quiz Master: You have two minutes on the life and work of Ronnie Bostock, starting…now. Ronnie Bostock was born in Southern California but where does he live now?
Giles: Chesterton, Long Island.
Quiz Master: Correct. What is the name of the dog which features prominently in his publicity stills?
Giles: Strider.
Quiz Master: Correct. What is Ronnie Bostock’s favorite reading material?
Giles: Stephen King and science fiction.
Quiz Master: Correct. For what does Ronnie have a self-confessed weakness?
Giles: Pizza?
Quiz Master: Yes. I’ll accept that. It’s actually pizza with extra anchovies. Under what circumstances would Ronnie do a nude scene?
Giles: If it were tasteful…
Quiz Master: And?
Giles: …essential to the plot.
Quiz Master: Correct. Why was he not cast in the original Hotpants College?
Giles: Uh, too young?
Quiz Master: No. He was unable…to break his contract with the sitcom Home Is Where The Heart Is. What is Ronnie’s favorite kind of training shoe and why?
Giles: Reeboks, because British stuff is cool.
Quiz Master: Correct. With which of his rock idols was he recently photographed?
Giles: Axl Rose.
Quiz Master: Correct. Ronnie claims to like nothing better than hanging out with the guys. What exactly do these “guys” mean to him?
Giles: I wonder…

…

Giles: If one has to have a theme, Henry, it would be the discovery of beauty where no one ever thought of looking for it.

…

Giles [as a lecturer]: So, the largely unrecognized art of film acting depends entirely on the ability of the actor to make everything about himself seem equally permanent. When, thus, an actor is called upon to smile, he must then try to select a smile from a collection – a repertoire – a whole file of smiles, as it were. Naive, rueful, sly, sarcastic…and so on.

…

Giles [looking at himself in the mirror]: Dear God, this is ridiculous.

…

Giles: In Europe, we have a much stronger tradition of work with what you call a message. That is, after all, why I’ve been persuaded to write my first screenplay. Yes, if Tex Mex had been, say, German about the plight of the exploited Gastarbeiters, it would have met with a far greater success. It probably would have made less money than Hotpants, but in Europe we’re not necessarily interested in that kind of a success, not when a film can change the way people think. And that, Ronnie, is why I write. It’s also why you act, although you may not yet know it.[/b]

Now it’s up to Ronnie to play his part.

[b]Giles: Ronnie, there is nothing more solitary than an artist’s life. No doubt you’ll find that out for yourself. Painfully, perhaps. One yearns for solace without quite knowing where to look for it. But I found it in you.
Ronnie: Oh–That’s great.
Giles: Ronnie, I have another confession to make. I brought you here not to say good-bye, but to make you an offer.
Ronnie: An offer?
Giles: I am prepared to devote myself to your career.
Ronnie: Wow, Giles, I, uh–I’m honored. I don’t know what to say. You got to come out west. We can start to work on something.
Giles: No, Ronnie, forget Los Angeles. Put it behind you. Your future lies in Europe.
Ronnie: Giles, I gotta take things one step at a time. Aud would love to go back to Europe and do more work. It would be cool to spend time there–
Giles: “Cool”? I’m talking about a turning point in your life!

…

Giles: Listen to me, Ronnie. In Europe, it is often the case that a–a young man benefits from the–the wisdom and the experience of an elder. Why, there’s almost a tradition of such friendships. Cocteau and Radiguet. Uh, Verlaine, Rimbaud.
Ronnie: Rambo?
Giles: Arthur Rimbaud, French poet. He…He was Paul Verlaine’s lover.

…

Giles [to himself after Ronnie leaves]: Dear God. What have I done.

…

Giles [voiceover in a fax to Ronnie]: But what of you my darling? For no one on earth knows you better than I do. And if you’ve read thus far, I know you’ll never bring yourself to destroy this letter, nor will you ever show it to anyone else. And it will gradually dawn on you that your life might have taken a very different course had you simply been able to open your heart to another. And you’ll often return to this letter. You’ll read it again and again in the years to come until you no longer have to read what you know by heart. And you’ll cherish it as a source of pride in the face of an uncaring world.[/b]

Based on a true [and oh so familiar] story.

The names of the tragedies change like the names of the folks that made them names in the first place. But it always revolves around the part that libertarians and objectivists [among others] insist has little or nothing to do with real capitalism.

After all, if a company is befouling the water we drink or the food we eat or the air we breathe and people start to get sick and die we can just go out into the marketplace and get these things from a competitor. And we can always rely on the governmment to do the right thing when they get caught.

Erin is rather resourceful. She always seems to come up with a way to solve her problems. But, again, why in the world should someone be reduced to this in the richest nation on earth?

What’s crucial of course is not that a major corporation fucked up and people died. After all, it’s not like it was premeditated murder. It’s not like they meant to do it. What’s important is that over and over and over and over and over and over again the expression “profits before people” has very real [sometimes dire] consequences “out on the world”.

But claims were “settled”. And the criminal prosecutions? Where were they? Are any of these fuckers in jail?

This is a movie about emotion. Erin takes the lawsuit personally because she is absolutely outraged at what these “suits” did – destroyed lives! killed people! – and knew that they did and never gave a fuck about anything other than their own bottom line. Right up to the time they got caught.

But “the law” doesn’t revolve around this sort of reaction and never will.

And that’s before you get to the part about the money.

I always come back to this though: these folks killed people [and knew they did] and all that goes back and forth is money. Nobody goes to jail. It’s like all the mindnumbing pain and suffering the bankers caused [to millions] flushing the economy down the toilet and none of them were ever indicted for, say, conspiracy to commit fraud. Or, in Washington, for accepting bribes from the cronies on K Street?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich_(film
Ein Brockovich at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich

ERIN BROCKOVICH [2000]
Directed by Steven Soderbergh

[b]Erin: Don’t make me beg. If it doesn’t work out, fire me…But please don’t make me beg.
Ed [after a long pause]: No benefits.

…

George [to Erin]: What’s the matter, you got so many friends in this world, you can’t use one more?

…

George [parrying Erin’s rejection of free babysitting]: Are you always this hard on people who try and help you?
Erin: I’m out of practice.

…

Erin [at the moment that started it all]: I’m sorry. I just don’t see why you’re corresponding with PG&E about your medical problems in the first place.
Donna Jensen: Well, they paid for the doctor’s visit.
Erin: They did?
Donna Jensen: You bet. Paid for a checkup for the whole family. And not like with insurance where you pay and a year goes by and maybe you see some money. They just took care of it just like…
[snaps fingers]
Donna Jensen: …that. We never even saw a bill.
Erin: Wow. Why’d they do that?
Donna Jensen: Because of the chromium.
Erin: The what?
Donna Jensen: The chromium. Well, that’s what kicked this whole thing off.

…

Frankel: What kind of chromium is it?
Erin: There’s more than one kind?
Frankel: Yes. There’s straight-up chromium – does all kinds of good things for the body. There’s chrom 3, which is fairly benign, and then there’s chrom 6, hexavalent chromium, which, depending on the amounts, can be very harmful.
Erin: Harmful, like – how? What would you get?
Frankel: With repeated exposure to toxic levels – God, anything, really – from chronic headaches and nosebleeds to respiratory disease, liver failure, heart failure, reproductive failure, bone or organ deterioration – plus, of course, any type of cancer.
Erin: So that stuff – it kills people.
Frankel: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Highly toxic, highly carcinogenic. It also getds into your DNA so it very bad for your kids. Bad, bad stuff.

…

Frankel [to Erin]: Oh, and I wouldn’t advertise what you’re looking for if I were you…incriminating records have a way of disappearing when people smell trouble.

…

Erin: …so Donna gets this call from somebody at PG&E saying that a freeway’s gonna be built and they want to buy her house so they can make an off ramp for the plant…Meanwhile, the husband’s sick with Hodgkins and she’s in and out of the hospital with tumors - believing one thing has anything to do with the other.
Ed: Because PG&E told her about the chromium.
Erin: Get this - they held a seminar. They invited about two hundred residents from the area. They had it at the plant in this warehouse. They set up legal booths to tell them what their legal rights were. They had medical booths to tell them what their medical rights were…Telling them all about Chromium 3 and how it was good for you, when all the time they were using Chromium 6.

…

Ed: What makes you think you can just walk in there and take whatever you want?
Erin: They’re called boobs, Ed.

…

Donna: No. Hunh-uh, see, that’s not what the doctor said. He said one’s got absolutely nothing to do with the other.
Erin: Right, but – didn’t you say the doctor was paid by PG&E?

…

Baum: Mr. Masry, before you go off on some crusade, you might want to remember who it is you’re dealing with here. PG&E is a twenty-eight-billion-dollar corporation.
Ed (smiling, acting excited/greedy): Twenty-eight billion dollars! I didn’t know it was that much! WOW!

…

Pete: If PG&E messed with our water, why would they bother saying anything about it to us? Why not just keep quiet about it?
Ed: To establish a statute of limitations. See, in a case like this, you only have a year from the time you first learn about the problem to file suit. So PG&E figures, we’ll let the cat out of the bag – tell the people the water’s not perfect; if we can ride out the year with no one suing, we’ll be in the clear forever.

…

Ed:…and what the hell do you know about any of this anyway!? Something like this, Erin – it could take forever. They’re a huge corporation. They could bury us in paperwork for the next fifteen years. I’m just one guy with a private firm.
Erin: …who happens to know they poisoned people and lied about it.

…

Ed: This is a whole different ball game. A much bigger deal.
Erin: Kind of like David and what’s-his-name.
Ed: It’s kind of like David and what’s-his-name’s whole fucking family.

…

Erin: Hey Scott, Tell me something. Does PG&E pay you to cover their ass, or do you just do it out of the kindness of your heart?
Scott: I don’t know what you’re talking about…
Erin: The fuck you don’t! Nobody calls me Pat-te, That heavy-breathing sicko that called the other night, Could have only found out about me from you… People are dying, Scott, you’ve got document after document here telling you why, and you haven’t said one word. I wanna know… How the hell you sleep at night!

…

Erin: So then it’s all up to what this one judge decides?
Ed: Basically, yeah.[/b]

Here the judges goes their way. In part because his family gets their own water right next door to Hinkley. But had he been one those Bushworld corporate lackey judges, the whole thing could have gone down the drain.

[b]Ms. Sanchez [at the meeting with the PG & E lawyers]: Let’s be honest here. $20 million dollars is more money than these people have ever dreamed of.
Erin: Oh see, now that pisses me off. First of all, since the demur we have more than 400 plaintiffs and…let’s be honest, we all know there are more out there. They may not be the most sophisticated people but they do know how to divide and $20 million isn’t shit when you split it between them. Second of all, these people don’t dream about being rich. They dream about being able to watch their kids swim in a pool without worrying that they’ll have to have a hysterectomy at the age of twenty. Like Rosa Diaz, a client of ours. Or have their spine deteriorate, like Stan Blume, another client of ours. So before you come back here with another lame ass offer, I want you to think real hard about what your spine is worth, Mr. Walker. Or what you might expect someone to pay you for your uterus, Ms. Sanchez. Then you take out your calculator and you multiply that number by a hundred. Anything less than that is a waste of our time.
[Ms. Sanchez picks up a glass of water]
Erin: By the way, we had that water brought in specially for you folks. Came from a well in Hinkley.
Ms. Sanchez [Puts down the glass, without drinking]: I think this meeting is over.
Ed: Damn right it is.

…

Matthew [son]: This girl’s about my age. Is she one of the people you’re helping?
Erin: Yeah, she’s really sick so I’m going to get her some medicine to feel better.
Matthew: Why doesn’t her own mom get her medicine?
Erin: Because her mom’s really sick too.
Matthew: Oh.

…

Erin [to Ed]: NOT PERSONAL?! That is my WORK, my SWEAT, and MY TIME AWAY FROM MY KIDS! IF THAT IS NOT PERSONAL, I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS!

…

Charles Embry: Would it be important to you if I told you that when I worked at the Hinkley plant, I destroyed records?

…

Charles Embry: My cousin passed away yesterday. He had kidney tumors, no colon. His intestines were eaten away. 41 years old. I’d see him over at the cooling towers wearing one of those doctor face masks. They’d be soaked in blood from the nosebleeds.

…

Charles Embry: I was working in the compressor, and out of nowhere the supervisor calls me up to the office and says, we’re gonna give you a shredder machine, and send you on down to the warehouse. We want you to get rid of all the documents stored out there.
Erin: Did he say why?
Charles Embry: Nope. And I didn’t ask.
Erin: Did you get a look at the stuff you destroyed?
Charles Embry: There was a lot of dull stuff – vacation schedules, the like. But then there were a few memos about the holding ponds. The water in them. They had readings from test wells, stuff like that.
Erin: And you were told to destroy those?
Charles Embry: That’s right. Erin plays it down, takes a sip of beer…Course as it turns out, I’m not a very good employee.

…

Erin [to Kurt and Theresa]: Here are internal PG&E documents, all about the contamination. The one I like best says, and I’m paraphrasing here, but it says “yes, the water’s poisonous, but it’d be better for all involved if this matter wasn’t discussed with the neighbors”. It’s to the Hinkley station, from PG&E Headquarters. Stamped received, March, 1966.

…

Kurt: Wha… how did you do this?
Erin: Well, um, seeing as how I have no brains or legal expertise, and Ed here was losing all faith in the system, am I right?
Ed: Oh, yeah, completely. No faith, no faith…
Erin: I just went out there and performed sexual favors. Six hundred and thirty-four blow jobs in five days… I’m really quite tired.

…

Erin: Ya know why everyone thinks that all lawyers are back stabbing, blood sucking scum bags? Because they are! And I cannot believe you expect me to go out, leave my kids with strangers and get people to trust you with their lives while all the while you’re screwing me! You know, Ed, it’s not about the number! It’s about the way my work is valued in this firm…
[She looks at the two million dollar bonus check]
Ed: Like I was saying, I thought that the number you proposed was inappropriate, so I increased it.
[Turns to walk away and turns around to her]
Ed: Do they teach beauty queens how to apologize? Because you suck at it!
Erin [Long pause, after Ed has already left the office]: Uh, Ed… uh… thank you…

…

Title card: The settlement awarded to the plaintiffs in Hinkley v. PG&E was the largest in a direct-action lawsuit in United States history.[/b]

After one smacks down the capitalists [above] he can then move on to the Communists. The lives of others? Indeed.

So, which one is the worst of all possible worlds?

As always: It depends on where you are at any particular place and time. And who you are.

Here though some of the government officials really do act out of idealistic conviction. The whole point [for them] is the triumph of socialism. When they go after enemies of the state the bottom line is not expressed in bulging wallets but in moral obligations.

And then there are the corrupt bastards. For them the bottom line revolves around the perks of power.

You have all of these people in the “artistic community” going right up to the line…but trying not to cross over it. But the line keeps changing depending on the will [or the whim] of the “big wigs”. There is much at stake but the bottom line here is always the same: different people have more at stake than others. In other words, a lot more to lose. Every point of view is unique however much some try to cram them all together.

IMDb

All the listening/recording props used in the film are actual Stasi equipment on loan from museums and collectors. The props master had himself spent two years in a Stasi prison and insisted upon absolute authenticity down to the machine used at the end of the film to steam-open up to 600 letters per hour.

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

trailer: youtu.be/n3_iLOp6IhM

THE LIVES OF OTHERS [Das Leben der Anderen] 2006
Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

[b]Title card: 1984, East Berlin. Glasnost is nowhere in sight. The population of the GRD is kept under strict control by the Stasi, the East German secret police. Its force of 100,000 employees and 200,000 informers safeguards the Dictatorship ot the Proletariat. It’s declared goal: “To know everything”.

…

Student [at the Stasti academy]: Why keep him awake so long? It’s inhuman.
Wiesler [putting a mark next to his name]: An innocent prisoner will become more angry by the hour due to the injustice suffered. He will shout and rage. A guilty prisoner becomes more calm and quiet. Or he cries. He knows he’s there for a reason. The best way to establish guilt or innocence is non-stop interrogation.

…

Wiesler [to Dreyman’s neighbor after she beomes aware that Stasi has wired his apartment]: Frau Meineke, one word of this to anyone, and Masha loses her spot at the university. Is that understood.
Frau Meineke: Yes.
Wiesler [to colleague]: Send Frau Menieke a gift for her cooperation.

…

Wiesler [typing his report]: 11:04 p.m… Lazlo and CMS unwrap presents. Then presumably have intercourse.

…

Lt. Stigler: I’ve got a new one. So…Honecker comes into his office in the morning, opens the window, looks at the sun, and says…
[his friends look worried]
Lt. Stigler:… eh… what is it?
[he sees Wiesler and Grubitz sitting at the table]
Lt. Stigler: Oh, excuse me. That was… I’m just… I…
Grubitz [tries to put Stigler at ease]: No no no, please colleague. We can still laugh about our state officials. Don’t worry. I probably know it already anyway. Come on! Tell it.
Lt. Stigler [feeling more comfortable]: Well… Honecker, I mean…the General Secretary… sees the sun, and says, ‘Good morning dear sun!’…and the sun answered, ‘Good morning dear Erich!’ At afternoon Erich sees the sun again and says, ‘Good day dear sun’ And the sun says: ‘Good day dear Erich!’ After work Honecker goes back to the window and says, ‘Good evening dear sun!’ But the sun doesn’t answer! So he says again, ‘Good evening dear sun, what’s wrong?’ And the sun answered and said, ‘Oh, kiss my ass, I’m in the West now!’
Grubitz [becoming deadly serious]: Name? Rank? Department?
Lt. Stigler [frightened]: Me? Stigler, 2nd Lieutenant Alex Stigler. Department M.
Grubitz: I don’t need to tell you what this means for your career, what you just did.
Lt. Stigler [scared]: Please Lieutenant Colonel… I just…
Grubitz [angry]: You just mocked our party! That was political agitation! Surely just the tip of the iceberg! I am going to report this to the minister’s office.
[Grubitz starts laughing]
Grubitz: I was just kidding! Pretty good, huh? Yours was good too. But I’ve got a better one. What is the difference between Erich Honecker and a telephone?
[pauses]
Grubitz: Nothing! Hang up… try again. Hahaha![/b]

From IMDb: The punchline of the joke is a play on the words ‘aufhängen’ and ‘neuwählen’. In terms of a telephone it means hang up and redial, respectively. In terms of politics it means hang somebody and elect someone new.

[b]Wiesler [aloud to himself]: Time for some bitter truths, “Lazlo”.

…

Georg [answering the phone]: Yes?
Wallner: Georg? Wallner herre
Georg: What’s up?
Wallner: Georg, it’s about Jerska. He hanged himself last night.

…

Georg [to Christa]: You know what Lenin said about Beethoven’s Apassionata? He said, “if I keep listening to it, I won’t finish the revolution.” Can anyone who has heard this music – truly heard it – really be a bad person?

…

[Wiesler enters the elevator at his apartment building. A young boy with a ball joins him]
Boy: Are you really with the Stasi?
Wiesler: Do you even know what the Stasi is?
Boy: Yes. They’re bad men who put people in prison, says my dad.
Wiesler: I see. What is the name of your…
[pauses]
Boy: My what?
Wiesler [thinks for a few more seconds]: …ball. What’s the name of your ball?
Boy: You’re funny. Balls don’t have names.

…

Georg [of Hempf]: You are a great artist. I know that. Your audience knows that. You don’t need him. Stay here. Don’t go to him.
Christa: No? Don’t I need him? Don’t I need this whole system? And what about you? Then you don’t need it either. Or need it even less. But you get in bed with them, too. Why do you do it? Because they can destroy you, too, despite your talent and your faith. Because they decide what we play, who isw to act, and who can direct. You don’t want to end up like Jerska. And neither do I.

…

Georg [voiceover]: The state office for statistics on Hans-Beimler street counts everything; knows everything: how many pairs of shoes I buy a year: 2.3, how many books I read a year: 3.2 and how many students graduate with perfect marks: 6,347. But there’s one statistic that isn’t collected there, perhaps because such numbers cause even paper-pushers pain: and that is the suicide rate.

…

Georg ]voiceover]: In 1977, our country stopped counting suicides. They called them “self-murderers.”…When we stopped counting, only one country in Europe drove more people to their death: Hungary.

…

Grubitz [to Wiesler]: I have to show you something: “Prison Conditions for Subversive Artists: Based on Character Profile”. Pretty scientific, eh? And look at this: “Dissertation Supervisor, A. Grubitz”. That’s great, isn’t it? I only gave him a B. They shouldn’t think getting a doctorate with me is easy. But his is first-class. Did you know that there are just five types of artists? Your guy, Dreyman, is a Type 4, a “hysterical anthropocentrist.” Can’t bear being alone, always talking, needing friends. That type should never be brought to trial. They thrive on that. Temporary detention is the best way to deal with them. Complete isolation and no set release date. No human contact the whole time, not even with the guards. Good treatment, no harassment, no abuse, no scandals, nothing they could write about later. After 10 months, we release. Suddenly, that guy won’t cause us any more trouble. Know what the best part is? Most type 4s we’ve processed in this way never write anything again. Or paint anything, or whatever artists do. And that without any use of force. Just like that. Kind of like a present.

…

Grubitz [to Wiesler]: There’s one thing you should understand, Wiesler. Your career is over. Even if you were too smart to leave any traces. You’ll end up in some cellar, steam-opening letters until you retire. That means the next 20 years. 20 years. That’s a long time.

…

Bookstore cashier: 29.80. Would you like it gift wrapped?
Wiesler: No. It’s for me.[/b]

But…seriously?

Well, I come back to this “theme” time and time again: pop culture, mindless consumption and 24/7 celebrities. It’s everywhere. And the paradox is this: it is both deadening and infuriating.

But this is no Idiocracy.

Roger Ebert: The first half hour or so…promises so much more than the film is finally able to deliver. Here is a film that begins with merciless comic savagery and descends into merely merciless savagery. But wow, what an opening.

It simply fails to live up to its potential.

But obviously for some more so than for others. It depends in large part on the distance you are able to keep between you and them. After all, no one forces you to indulge in this crap. On the other hand, you either are or are not able to distant yourself from “the masses”.

Think of this as doing “the worst person in the world” with guns.

But with each passing year it gets harder and harder to satirize this stuff because the actual culture itself is already way ahead of you.

Want to exchange lists?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Bless_America_(film
trailer: youtu.be/GEFj0Pngu_E

GOD BLESS AMERICA [2011]
Written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait

[b]Frank [voiceover]: I hate my neighbors. The constant cacophony of stupidity that pours from their apartment is absolutely soul-crushing. It doesn’t matter how politely I ask them to practice some common courtesy - they’re incapable of comprehending that their actions affect other people. They have a complete lack of consideration for anyone else, and an overly developed sense of entitlement. They have no decency, no concern, no shame. They do not care that I suffer from debilitating migraines and insomnia. They do not care that I have to go to work, or that I want to kill them. I know it’s not normal to want to kill, but I also know that I am no longer normal.

…

Ed [the neighbor]: Hey buddy, what’s wrong?
Frank [pumping shotgun]: A lot.

…

Frank: I wish I was a super-genius inventor and could come up with a way to make a telephone into an explosive device that was triggered by the American Superstarz voting number. The battery could explode and leave a mark on the face, so I could know who to avoid talking to before they even talked.

…

Frank: It’s not nice to laugh at someone who’s not all there. It’s the same type of freak-show distraction that comes along every time a mighty empire starts collapsing. “American Superstarz” is the new colosseum and I won’t participate in watching a show where the weak are torn apart every week for our entertainment. I’m done, really, everything is so “cool” now. I just want it all to stop. I mean, nobody talks about anything anymore. They just regurgitate everything they see on TV, or hear on the radio or watch on the web. When was the last time you had a real conversation with someone without somebody texting or looking at a screen or a monitor over your head? You know, a conversation about something that wasn’t celebrities, gossip, sports, or pop politics. You know, something important, something personal.

…

Frank: Oh, I get it. I am offended. But not just because I got a problem with bitter, predictible, whining millionaire disc jockeys complaining about celebrities or how tough their life is, while I live in an apartment with paper-thin walls next to a couple of Neanderthals who, instead of a baby, decided to give birth to some kind of nocturnal civil defense air raid siren that goes off every fucking night like it’s Pearl Harbor.

…

Office Worker: So, you’re against free speech now? That’s in the Bill of Rights, man.
Frank: I would defend their freedom of speech if I thought it was in jeopardy. I would defend their freedom of speech to tell uninspired, bigoted, blowjob, gay-bashing, racist and rape jokes all under the guise of being edgy, but that’s not the edge. That’s what sells. They couldn’t possibly pander any harder or be more commercially mainstream, because this is the “Oh no, you didn’t say that!” generation, where a shocking comment has more weight than the truth. No one has any shame anymore, and we’re supposed to celebrate it. I saw a woman throw a used tampon at another woman last night on network television, a network that bills itself as “Today’s Woman’s Channel”. Kids beat each other blind and post it on Youtube. I mean, do you remember when eating rats and maggots on Survivor was shocking? It all seems so quaint now. I’m sure the girls from “2 Girls 1 Cup” are gonna have their own dating show on VH-1 any day now. I mean, why have a civilization anymore if we no longer are interested in being civilized?

…

Roxy: Who you going to killing next? Do you take requests? Because I was thinking maybe some Kardashians, my gym coach. People who give high fives. Really, any jock. Twihards. People who talk about punk rock. Who else really rips my cock off? Oh, Mormons and other religious assholes who won’t let gay people be married. And adult women who call their tits “the girls”.

…

Roxy: You’re seriously not interested in me at all as a girlfriend?
Frank: What the hell are you talking about? I’m not a pedophile.
Roxy: So we’re Platonic spree killers?
Frank: Yeah. And that’s all.

…

Frank: I only wanna kill people who deserve to die.
Roxy: You know who we should kill?
Frank: Who?
Roxy: People who use rockstar as an adjective. As in rockstar parking.
Frank: People who pound energy drinks all day.
Roxy: People who use the term edgy, in your face, or extreme.[/b]

Uh, and “cool”?

Frank [On the air]: My name is Frank. That’s not important. The important question is: who are you? America has become a cruel and vicious place. We reward the shallowest, the dumbest, the meanest and the loudest. We no longer have any common sense of decency. No sense of shame. There is no right and wrong. The worst qualities in people are looked up to and celebrated. Lying and spreading fear is fine as long as you make money doing it. We’ve become a nation of slogan-saying, bile-spewing hatemongers. We’ve lost our kindness. We’ve lost our soul. What have we become? We take the weakest in our society, we hold them up to be ridiculed, laughed at for our sport and entertainment. Laughed at to the point, where they would literally rather kill themselves than live with us anymore.

Unfortunately, Steven doesn’t get that part either. So, fuck it, he goes down too.

Either the irony of war or the irony in war. Apparently, that all becomes less relevant if you volunteer for it. Unless of course you volunteer because economically you had no choice. But that’s another movie. Another kind of irony. And [no doubt] another catch altogether.

The catch here though is that this is all only more or less absurd depending on the war. It’s not just a coincidence for example that even though the war in the movie is the Second World War it aired in theatres during the Vietnam War. In fact this movie was released while I myself was stationed in Vietnam! So I missed it. And trust me, it was Patton they showed at military installations, not Catch-22.

Really, try to even imagine this coming out when Hitler was around. It only works then when the death and destruction revolves around the “best and the brightest”. Or [re Dubya, Saddam and Iraq] buffoons.

On the other hand, in all wars there are those who know how to, let’s say, make the best of it. Remember Sergeant Sefton? Well, imagine how much easier it must be when you are not in a Stalag. The wheelers and the dealers in other words. And those who can twist this into that. And then back again. That’s right: Another “syndicate”.

Hmm. So the target here may well be more the, uh, military? Or maybe even [gasp!] the entire military industrial complex? Here in the form of M & M Enterprises. Think Dick Cheney and Haliburton.

IMDb

Second Unit Director John Jordan refused to wear a harness during a bomber scene. While giving a hand signal to another airplane from the tail gunner position in the camera plane, he lost his grip and fell 4000 feet to his death.

Why Catch-22? imdb.com/title/tt0065528/faq … q_1#.2.1.1

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(film

trailer: youtu.be/G41SJUIawVo

CATCH-22 [1970]
Directed by Mike Nichols

Yossarian: Those bastards are trying to kill me.
Milo: No one is trying to kill you sweetheart. Now eat your dessert like a good boy.
Yossarian: Oh yeah? Then why are they shooting at me Milo?
Dobbs: They’re shooting at everyone Yossarian.
Yossarian: And what difference does that make?
Dobbs: Look Yossarian, suppose, I mean just suppose everyone thought the same way you do.
Yossarian: Then I’d be a damn fool to think any different.

Here’s the actual catch:

[b]Yossarian: Can you ground someone who’s crazy?
Doc: Of course. The rules say I have to ground anyone who’s crazy.
Yossarian: I’m crazy! Ask anybody. Ask Nately, Dobbs, McWatt… Orr, tell him!
Orr: Tell him what?
Yossarian: Am I crazy?
Orr: He’s crazy. He won’t fly with me. I’d take good care of him but he won’t. He’s crazy, all right.
Yossarian: See that? They all say I’m crazy.
Doc: They’re crazy.
Yossarian: Ground them.
Doc: They never ask me to.
Yossarian: Because they’re crazy!
Doc: Of course they’re crazy. I just told you that. And you can’t let crazy people decide whether you’re crazy or not, can you?
Yossarian: Is Orr crazy?
Doc: Of course he is. He has to be crazy to keep flying after all the close calls he’s had.
Yossarian: Why can’t you ground him?
Doc: I can, but first he has to ask me.
Yossarian: That’s all he’s gotta do to be grounded?
Doc: That’s all.
Yossarian: Then you can ground him?
Doc: No. Then I cannot ground him.
Yossarian: Aah!
Doc: There’s a catch.
Yossarian: A catch?
Doc: Sure. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat isn’t really crazy, so I can’t ground him.
Yossarian: Ok, let me see if I’ve got this straight. In order to be grounded, I’ve got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.
Doc: You got it, that’s Catch-22.
Yossarian: Wow…That’s some catch, that Catch-22.
Doc: It’s the best there is.

…

Danby: Weather conditions have improved tremendously over the mainland, so you won’t have any trouble at all seeing the target. Of course, we mustn’t forget, that means that they won’t have any trouble at all seeing you.

…

Milo: If I take a plane this afternoon, I’ll get this material to Alexandria. There’s a huge cotton crop this year. Cotton is a very liquid commodity.
Cathcart: How much?
Milo: We’ll trade for it.
Cathcart: With what?
Milo: Silk! Four thousand yards of silk. How did you get hold of so much silk?
[meanwhile]
Yossarian [in the bomber]: Where the hell’s my parachute?!

…

[repeated lines]
Yossarian: What’s that? I don’t get you.
Voice: Help him!
Yossarian: What?
Voice: Help him! Help him!
Yossarian: Help who?
Voice: Help the bombardier!
Voice: I’m the bombardier, I’m all right.
Voice: Then help HIM. Help HIM!

…

Maj. Major: Sergeant, from now on, I don’t want anyone to come in and see me while I’m in my office. Is that clear?
Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir. What do I say to people who want to come in and see you while you’re gone?
Maj. Major: Tell them I’m in and ask them to wait.
Sgt. Towser: For how long?
Maj. Major: Until I’ve left.
Sgt. Towser: And then what do I do with them?
Maj. Major: I don’t care.
Sgt. Towser: May I send people in to see you after you’ve left?
Maj. Major: Yes.
First Sgt. Towser: You won’t be here then, will you?
Maj. Major: No.
Sgt. Towser: I see, sir. Will that be all?
Maj. Major: Also, Sergeant, I don’t want you coming in while I’m in my office asking me if there’s anything you can do for me. Is that clear?
Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir. When should I come in your office and ask if there’s anything I can do for you?
Maj. Major: When I’m not there.
Sgt. Towser: What do I do then?
Maj. Major: Whatever has to be done.
Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir.
[after the major leaves]
Sgt. Towser [to Capt. Tallman]: The major will see you now, Captain.

…

Gen. Dreedle [to Captain Yossarian who is buck naked]: Unless I miss my guess, Captain, you’re out of uniform.

…

Maj. Major: Is something wrong?
Chaplain: No, no. I…I just thought I saw something.
Maj. Major: A naked man in a tree?
Chaplain: Yes, that’s it.
Danby [looking through binoculars]: That’s just Yossarian.

…

Milo: I want to serve this to the men. Taste it and let me know what you think.
[Yossarian takes a bite and spits it out]
Yossarian: What is it?
Milo: Chocolate covered cotton.
Yossarian: What are you, crazy?
Milo: No good, huh?
Yossarian: For Christ’s sake, you didn’t even take the seeds out!
Milo: Is it really that bad?
Yossarian: It’s cotton!!
Milo: They’ve got to learn to like it.
Yossarian: Why?
Milo: I saw an opportunity to corner the market in cotton. I didn’t know there’d be a glut of the stuff. I’ve got warehouses full of it all over Europe. People eat cotton candy, don’t they? This is even better, it’s made out of real cotton.
Yossarian: People can’t eat cotton!
Milo: They’ve got to, for the Syndicate.

…

Yossarian: He was very old.
Luciana: But he was a boy.
Yossarian: Well, he died. You don’t get any older than that.

…

Yossarian: What right did they have to take all the girls?
Old Woman: Catch-22.
Yossarian: What? What did you say?
Old Woman: Catch-22.
Yossarian: How do you know it was Catch-22?
Old woman: The girls said, “Why are you taking us away?” The men said, “Catch-22.” The girls said, “What right do you have?” The men said, “Catch-22.” All they kept saying was, “Catch-22, Catch-22.” What does it mean?
Yossarian: Didn’t they show it to you? Didn’t you ask them to read it to you?
Old woman: They don’t have to show it to us.
Yossarian: Who says so?
Old woman: The law says so.
Yossarian: What law?
Old woman: Catch-22.

…

Yossarian: Milo, I’m gonna kill you, you murdering son of a bitch!
Milo: I know how you feel, but it wasn’t my fault.
Yossarian: Who’s fault was it?
Milo: No one’s. Nately was the victim of certain economic pressures, the laws of supply and demand.

…

Yossarian: I didn’t know.
Luciana: That I work for Milo? Everybody works for Milo.[/b]

As for the ending, I don’t think it’ll catch on.

The paper chased here is a transcript of grades…and then a diploma. It hardly focuses at all on the paper that paper chases: the kind we stuff into our wallets. This is back in 1973 though. And idealism was nobler than the pursuit of mere bank accounts. Real integrity instead revolved around securing your humanity in a culture that wants to reduce you down to a pursuit of paper.

In any event the paper now is mostly electronic. It’s all about the numbers. And Harvard law may as well be be taught right on Wall Street.

The “law” is always tricky though. Often it can be infuriating because we know how words can be twisted by a lawyer to create any particular “reality” she chooses. And we know the law can be bought. We know it is used more for political gain than to secure something we might deem to be “just”. But without the rule of law, what’s the alternative? Philosopher kings? Metaphysical morality? Dog eat dog survival of the fittest?

We are stuck with it aren’t we?

In any event the filmmaker tacks on an ending here that doesn’t even have the balls to live up to the film’s own “message”!

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Chase_(film
trailer: tcm.com/mediaroom/video/7824 … iler-.html

THE PAPER CHASE [1973]
Written and directed by James Bridges

[b]Kingsfield: Loudly Mr. Hart, fill this room with your intelligence.

…

Toombs [in the dorm after a loud piercing scream]: That’s just the screamer, men. Screams every Friday and Sunday night at exactly 12 midnight. Nobody’s ever seen him. Not that I know of. They say that Kingsfield drove him mad. He’s driven a lot of lawyers mad over the past 40 years that he’s been teaching here. I heard he ripped up a 1-L this morning so bad, the guy lost his breakfast.
Hart: That’s true. That was me.

…

Toombs [to Hart]: There’s one more thing. All that stuff about grades is true. You gotta work like hell. No kidding. Nobody jokes about grades. Try getting a job without them.

…

Kingsfield: The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you. We use the Socratic Method here. I call on you, ask you a question and you answer it. Why don’t I just give you a lecture? Because through my questions, you learn to teach yourselves. Through this method of questioning, answering… questioning, answering…we seek to develop in you the ability to analyze that vast complex of facts that constitute the relationships of members within a given society. Questioning and answering. At times you may feel that you have found the correct answer. I assure you that is a total delusion on your part. You will never find the correct, absolute and final answer. In my classroom there is always another question…and question to follow your answer.[/b]

Of course, some answers will get you an A and others an F.

[b]Kingsfield: You teach yourselves the law…but I train your mind. You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.

…

Hart [to Susan]: You’re up against some incredible minds here. I look at the students and I think this guy’s gonna be a supreme court justice, this guy’s gonna run Wall Street, this guy might even be president of the United States. What it is though is this incredible sense of power.[/b]

See where the “Socratic Method” begins to shut down? The questions it doesn’t encourage him to ask?

[b]Susan: You law students are all the same. You can’t let things alone. You have to organize. The endless defining of irrational human behavior into tight little patterns. People are not rational. People are irrational.

…

Moss: So you flunked all your practice exams, huh? Every one?
Brooks: Yeah, every one.
Moss: Aww man, don’t look like that, you’ll be saved. Every person in this house almost flunked out of law school in their first year. It’s not hard to see why; they had broads on the brain. It’s the worst thing that can happen to a first-year law student. I don’t suppose that’s your problem?
Brooks: No, no. I’m married.
Moss: Well, the vote’s split on that, but I’ve saved all kinds. I moved in here and saved all these dum-dums. They’ll all graduate, all from Harvard. I give them a little lecture before each exam. They go out and take it on their own. They remember things for a day or two. They’re not stupid. Did you bring any samples of your work?
Brooks: Yeah, I brought some notes…
Moss: Notes don’t mean a thing. Take this down. Imagine an old woman comes to dinner with you. While you are mixing her drink, she slips on an ice cube, slides across the room smashing into your new breakfast table, demolishing it and killing herself. After you’ve cleaned her up off the floor you discover a statute which says homeowners must keep their land free of dangerous ice, especially but not exclusively ice on their sidewalks. And you find out the old lady suffered from dropsy a falling sickness. So you are sued on two accounts. The one relying on the statute and the other ordinary negligence. Can they recover from you for having caused the old lady’s death? Can you recover the price of the breakfast table from the old bag’s estate? Write out an answer. Take half an hour to do it. No help from your friend. Come back a month before exams, and we’ll go over it together. Don’t worry. There’s no possibility of error in my analysis.

…

Hart: My mind is really in his. I know what he is saying before he says it. I am three questions ahead. I am having a true Socratic experience.
Susan: Three questions ahead, Hart? You’re only three answers ahead.

…

Susan: They finally got you, Hart, they sucked all that Midwestern charm right out of you. Look, he’s got you scared to death. You’re going to pass, because you’re the kind the law school wants. You’ll get your diploma, your piece of paper that is no different than this [holding up a roll of toilet paper] and you can stick it in your silver box with all the other paper in your life. Your birth certificate, your driver’s license, your marriage license, your stock certificates…and your will.

…

Hart: They’re just grades, Kevin.
Brooks: You know better than that. It’s a number. It’s a letter. But it determines salaries and futures.

…

Kingsfield: Mr Hart, can you relate our case to the summary we’ve been building?
Hart: Thank you, I prefer to pass.
Kingsfield: What did you say?
Hart: Well, I have nothing relevant to say concerning the case.However, when I have something relevant to say, I shall raise my hand.
Kingsfield: Mister Hart, would you step down here?
[Hart walks to the podium]
Kingsfield: Here is a dime. Take it, call your mother, and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer.
Hart [turning back around as he walks toward the door]: You…are a son of a bitch, Kingsfield!
Kingsfield: Mr. Hart! That is the most intelligent thing you’ve said all day. You may take your seat.

…

Susan: Here’s your mail.
[hands Hart an envelope marked “GRADES ENCLOSED”]
Susan: I just got a letter from my father, something very interesting. My divorce is final. A piece of paper, and I’m free.
[pauses]
Susan: Aren’t you going to open your grades?[/b]

Nope. He turns the envelope containing them into an airplane and sends it flying out into the Atlantic ocean. But then, he doesn’t have to open it, does he? We already know that Kingsfield gave him an A.

By sheer coincidence John Houseman again. His last film.

But forget about the law here. This time the ideas revolve around the subjunctive cacaphony that is always, “how ought I to live my life?”.

Let’s start here: How many films are there where the leading character is the “director of undergraduate philosophy studies of a very fine women’s college”? Still: Ought she to focus on that or try to fix her flaccid marriage? Or, for that matter, flaccid life.

Turning fifty. It’s a personal experience of course but, for some, an ominous one. A time of Existential Doubt. The part ahead suddenly seems a lot shorter than the part behind. So the regrets become more palpable. And you are particularly keen on making the right choices now. But particularly keen as well on just how agonizing that can be. Especially as your options begin to thin. Or when you find [over and again] that you are faced with what seems to be only the lesser of two evils.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Woman
trailer: metacafe.com/watch/4188748/a … e_trailer/

ANOTHER WOMAN [1988]
Written and directed by Woody Allen.

[b]Marion [voiceover]: If someone had asked me when I reached my fifties to assess my life, I would have said that I had achieved a decent measure of fulfillment, both personally and professionally. Beyond that, I would say I don’t choose to delve.

…

Lynn: Don’t you know how Paul feels about you?
Miriam: Sure, we’ve always been very close.
Lynn: You’re deluding yourself. Of course in a way he idolizes you…but he also hates you.
Miriam: I’m sorry but I don’t accept that.
Lynn: You’re such a perceptive woman…how could you not understand his feelings?
Miriam: Look, I’m late. To tell you the truth I make it a practice to never get into these kinds of conversations. You know they’re fruitless and people just say things they always regret later.

…

Ken [to his ex-wife in a room filled with people]: Forgive me, I accept your condemnation.

…

Larry [to Miriam]: Maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you are two of a kind.

…

Father: There are times when even an historian should not look at the past.

…

Miriam [narrating]: I thumbed through my mother’s edition of Rilke. When I was 16 I had done a paper on his poem about the panther and on the image that the panther saw as it stared out from its cage. And that image I concluded was death. Then I saw my mother’s favorite poem, “Archaic Torso of Apollo”. There were stains on the page that I believe were her tears. They fell across the last line: For here there is no place that does not see you/You must change your life.

…

Paul: Do you remember some years ago when I showed you something I’d written, do you remember what you said?
Marion: No, I don’t remember. I was probably just trying to be truthful.
Paul: Yes, I’m sure. You said, “This is overblown, it’s too emotional, it’s maudlin. Your dreams may be meaningful to you, but to the objective observer, it’s just so embarrassing.”
Marion: I said that?
Paul: Exactly your words. So I tried not to embarrass you any more.

…

[excerpt from Miriam’s dream]
Hope: Life.
Psychiatrist: Life?
Hope: The universe. The cruelty and injustice. The suffering of humanity. Illness. Aging. Death.
Psychiatrist: All very abstract. Don’t worry about humanity. Get your own life in order. We can continue with this tomorrow.
[Hope gets up and leaves the office]
Psychiatrist: What would you say she is suffering from.
Miriam [decisively]: Self-deception.
Psychiatrist: It’s a little general.
Miriam: But I don’t think she can part with her lies.
Psychiatrist: No? Too bad.
Miriam: Not that she doesn’t want to.
Psychiatrist: It is precisely that she doesn’t want to. When she wants to she will.
Miriam: It’s all happening so fast.
Psychiatrist: I have to hurry. I’m trying to prevent her from killing herself. [/b]

Woody’s world. A world where Hope’s list of abstractions is something he concerned himself with only, well, abstractly. It’s an apolitical world that existed only because it could exist—because the outside world never did intrude much at all. Or largely on his terms.

[b]Miriam [to Hope]: Fifty. I didn’t think anything of turning thirty. Everybody said I would. Then they said I’d be crushed turning forty…but they were wrong. I didn’t give it a second thought. Then they said I would be traumatized turning fifty. And they were right. I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t think I’ve ever recovered my balance since turning fifty.

…

Marion [voiceover]: I closed the book, and felt this strange mixture of wistfulness and hope, and I wondered if a memory is something you have or something you’ve lost. For the first time in a long time, I felt at peace.[/b]

I know: Another blink.

If you are going to choose someone to play a “humanoid alien”, you can do worse than Ziggy Stardust. And wasn’t David Bowie up on the wall in Men In Black?

I only vaguely recall what this is all about. I watch it now mostly because it is fascinating just to take it in from time to time. The ambiance as it were. Especially after he meets Mary-Lou and starts accummulating all the televisions.

Just one more speculation about the relationship between “down here” and “up there”. And [of course] the role that the government [in conjunction with Big Business] will inevitably play in tweeking that to their own advantage.

ETs always seemed to make sense to me. Believing in them is not the same as believing in ghosts or in Gods. After all, given the estimated billions of potential earths “out there” it’s not hard to imagine that maybe an advanced technological civilization has “been here”. I haven’t seen any hard evidence actually demonstrating it, of course, but I don’t put it in the same category as, say, the “supernatural”.

IMDb

[b]Nicolas Roeg originally wanted to cast the 6-foot-10 author Michael Crichton as Thomas Jerome Newton.

James Sallis, writing in the The Boston Globe, describes “The Man Who Fell To Earth” as a Christian parable, not only about the corruption of an innocent being, but as being highly critical of the 1950s conventionalism which Tevis grew up with, along with environmental destruction and the Cold War.

David Bowie worked on a soundtrack for the film that was rejected. Many of the ideas he had for the soundtrack would later be utilized in his 1977 album ‘Low’.[/b]

Too bad. Low is one of my favorite albums. And it fits right into the “ambiance” I noted above.
Try it yourself: youtu.be/mkNmilE9ibk

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Wh … arth_(film
trailer: youtu.be/oKF5lHcJY9k

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH [1976]
Directed by Nicolas Roeg

Farnsworth: We’ve been together a long time now and I don’t see why you would want to sell off this division. I mean, if I owned a copyright on the Bible, I wouldn’t sell it to Random House.

Let’s just say he doesn’t see the bigger picture.

[b]Mary-Lou: You know Tommy, you’re a freak. I don’t mean that unkindly. I like freaks. And that’s why I like you.

…

Thomas: I can’t go to church.
Mary-Lou: Come on, Tommy, it’s a real good church. It makes me feel so good. It gives me something to believe in. Everybody needs to have a meaning in their lives. I mean when you look out at the sky, don’t you feel that somewhere out there there has got to be a God? Got to be…

…

Thomas: My interest is energy - transference of energy.

…

Thomas: Ask me…
Bryce: What?
Thomas: The question you’ve been wanting to ask ever since we met.
Bryce: Are you Lithuanian?

…

Thomas: The strange thing about television is that it doesn’t tell you everything. It shows you everything about life for nothing, but the true mysteries remain. Perhaps it’s in the nature of television. Just waves in space.

…

Thomas: If I stay, I’ll die.
Mary-Lou: What’re you talking about? Take me with you, I’ll see you don’t die.
Thomas: I can’t stay.
[walks away from her]
Mary-Lou: You’re an alien![/b]

Actually she thinks his visa has expired!

[b]Newton: Well I’m not a scientist. But I know all things begin and end in eternity.

…

Bryce: Don’t you feel bitter about it…everything?
Thomas: Bitter, no. We’d have probably treated you the same if you’d come over to our place.

…

Waiter: I think perhaps Mr. Newton has had enough, don’t you?
Bryce: I think…perhaps…you’re right.[/b]

A tiny town somewhere in New Hampshire. Everybody knows everybody else. But that’s only past the front door. In other words, as is always the case, inside a few of the homes are any number of “family secrets”.

You watch enough of these films and you begin wonder just how many families out there are not dysfunctional.

Then again who wants to see a movie about them?

I always see this as the way each of us pieces the past together differently. And then the way we stitch what we think was true into what we think is right and wrong. And then the way we have to stich that into all the conflicting narratives of everyone else we interact with. But what are the limits of our responsibilities to “family”. How much shit should we be forced to take before we strike back— or just go out on our own?

And even in a small town the politics of class is everywhere. Or maybe especially there because it sticks out all the more glaringly.

But it’s mostly about men and violence.

How the hell are we supposed to feel about this guy? Well, how close to or far away from his life is yours? I know some chunks of my life certainly do overlap.

IMDb

[b]During their praise of the film, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel noted that James Coburn was the perfect kind of person that seems like he could intimidate a man like Nick Nolte, who is famous for playing domineering and blustery men.

James Coburn came out of retirement to act in the film. He would later win an Oscar for his performance.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affliction_(film
trailer: youtu.be/yBvzSs2qo1c

AFFLICTION [1997]
Written and directed by Paul Schrader

[b]Rolfe [voiceover]: This is the story of my older brother’s strange criminal behaviour and disappearance. We who loved him no longer speak of Wade. It’s as if he never existed.

…

Wade: You know I get the feeling like a whipped dog some days. Some night I’m gonna bite back, I swear!
Rolfe: Haven’t you already done a bit of that?
Wade: No, no, I haven’t. Not really. I’ve growled a little, but I haven’t bit.

…

Lena: How about you Rolfe? Are you saved?
Rolfe: No, I’m not.
Lena: But then you’ll be in hell.
Rolfe: I guess I will. Me and Mom and Wade and Pop. We’ll all be there together.

…

Glen: Not one of you is worth a goddamn hair on that good woman’s head!

…

Lena: Jesus is more powerful than any demon.
Glen: Oh go fuck yourself!

…

Glen: That’s what I’ve got for children. Jesus freaks and candy-asses!

…

Lillian: I’m sorry about your mother, Wade. I liked her. You never know how much women like that suffer. It’s like they live their lives with the sound turned off – and then they’re gone.

…

Wade: It makes me mad. That somebody can pay to kill somebody, his own father-in-law, and not be punished for it. Don’t that piss you off?
Rolfe: Not particularly.
Wade: Right’s right, goddamnit! Don’t you care what’s right?
Rolfe: I care about what happened. The truth.

…

Rolfe: I was always careful around Pop. I was a careful child. And I’m a careful adult. But at least I was never afflicted with that man’s anger.
Wade [laughing]: That’s what you think.

…

Wade [to LaRiviere]: I’m free of you! You’re not on my back anymore! You see how easy it is?

…

Rolfe [voiceover]: You will say that I should have known terrible things were about to happen. You will say that I was responsible. But even so, what could I have done by then? Wade lived on the edge of his emotions. He was always first to receive the brunt of our father’s anger. He had no perspective to retreat to, even in a crisis.

…

Wade: Love? What the fuck do you know about love?
Glen: Love? I’m made of love!

…

Rolfe [voiceover]: The historical facts are known by everyone. All of Lawford, all of New Hampshire, some of Massachusetts. Facts do not make history. Our stories, Wade’s and mine, describe the lives of the boys and men for thousands of years: boys who were beaten by their fathers, whose capacity for love and trust was crippled almost at birth, men whose best hope for connection with other human beings lay in detachment, as if life were over. It’s how we keep from destroying in turn our own children and terrorizing the women who have the misfortune to love us; how we absent ourselves from the tradition of male violence; how we decline the seduction of revenge. Jack’s truck turned up three days later in a shopping mall in Toronto. Wade killed Jack, just as surely as Jack did not kill Evan Twombley, even accidentally. The link between Jack and Twombley, LaRiviere and Mel Gordon existed only in Wade’s wild imaginings. And briefly, I admit, in mine as well. LaRiviere and Mel Gordon were indeed in business. The Parker Mountain Ski Resort is now advertised across the country. The community of Lawford, as such, no longer exists. It is an economic zone between Littleton and Catamount. The house is still in Wade’s name, and I keep paying taxes on it. It remains empty. Now and then, I drive out there and sit in my car, and wonder, why not let it go? Why not let LaRiviere buy it and build the condominiums he wants there? We want to believe Wade died that same November, froze to death on a bench or a sidewalk. You cannot understand how a man, a normal man, a man like you and me, could do such a terrible thing. Unless the police happen to arrest a vagrant who turns out to be Wade Whitehouse, there will be no more mention of him. Or his friend, Jack Hewitt. Or our father. The story will be over, except that I continue. [/b]

It begins with an accident. Then a ferocious argument. They’re practically spitting on each other. Then he backs off. Then the cops come.

Johnny the truck driver is a familiar face to the cops. He was in prison three times. Once he put his wife in the hospital for two weeks.

But Matty has her own problems. Her husband the art teacher is a philandering asshole.

Try to guess where this is going.

Lots of us wake up one morning and find the gap between what our life is and what we want it to be [or once thought it might be] all but intolerable. But life is existential. So, for some of us, it’s not entirely hopeless. But we can’t rely on someone else to wrtite that script for us. Still, we are always taking a chance with someone new. We only know what they tells us about the past, for instance.

And sometimes we go back to someone not because we really want them; it’s more that we don’t want someone else to have them.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow,_Belgium
trailer: youtu.be/Q2J2EI14q20

MOSCOW, BELGIUM [Aanrijding in Moscou] 2008
Directed by: Christophe Van Rompaey

[b]Vera: Mom, are you taking a bath?
Matty: No, a big black guy is giving me a massage…

…

Matty: How hold are you?
Johnny: 29
Matty: I’m 41.
Johhny: So?
Matty: Want me to explain it in words with one syllable?

…

Johnny: You look nice.
Matty: You don’t need to get any ideas. I’ve come just to piss off my husband. My husband lives with his 22 year old girlfriend. He was her teacher. He teaches at the Art Academy. He’s very talented and makes beautiful things and I still love him. So don’t get any ideas.

…

Matty: Just say you want to sleep with me!
Johnny: No! My intentions are honorable.
Matty: You’re talking garbage. Anyway, Da Vinci was gay.
Johnny: Really?
Matty: And Mona Lisa isn’t smiling. She’s being eaten up inside by sadness. She’s just trying to hide it. She’s trapped, stuck.
Johnny: How do you know all this?
Matty: My husband told me. You…you just want to park it inside me.

…

Vera: Mom, your shirt is on inside out.

…

Johnny: Do you know what they say in Italy? ‘Ti Amo’
Matty: D’you know what they say in Ledeberg? ‘Kiss my ass!’

…

Matty: So you hit her because you loved her.

…

Johnny: That’s typical of an intellectual! Do you know what my Dad always used to say? He said, “John, all those intellectuals have one thing in common: they don’t know shit!”
Werner: He was a philosopher, was he?[/b]

This is mostly about the bombs themselves. And about those trained to put them out of commission. The war is just “there”. Why it is there…or whether it is a just war…is not explored much at all. And the extent to which it reflects the actual experiences of those assigned to do the task is not something I really know much about.

For some it might be analogous to a film focusing on a German bomb squad during World War II. There is no political or moral context to speak of at all.

Let alone the part about the money.

One such critique: crittheory-mcs.blogspot.com/2010 … ocker.html

Does this actually glorify or glamourize war? I think an argument can be made for that. Sgt. James seems to thrive on it. He’s the cowboy hero sort. He’s the “wild man”. He’s the adrenaline junkie and it is hardly ever made clear that’s not a good thing here. I just see too much of the macho warrior bullshit that any idiot in the military can fall for. I didn’t detect much irony here at all. But sure, I might have missed it.

Like, say, the scene in the cereal aisle of the supermarket when James gets home. The gap between that and what he’d just been through over there. His son and the boy with the bomb sewed into his chest. But all the wild man is thinking about is getting back over there. And Cheney and Bush Inc. will be more than happy to oblige him.

IMDb

The expression “the hurt locker” is a preexisting slang term for a situation involving trouble or pain, which can be traced back to the Vietnam War. According to the movie’s website, it is soldier vernacular in Iraq to speak of explosions as sending you to “the hurt locker”.

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

trailer: youtu.be/JIgEhiUVKh8

THE HURT LOCKER [2008]
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

[b]Opening Quote by Chris Hedges: The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.

…

Sanborn: I can’t get it in.
Thompson: What do you mean you can’t get it in? Pretend it’s your dick.
Sanborn: How about I pretend it’s your dick?
Thompson: Well in that case you’ll never get it in.

…

Eldridge: Aren’t you glad the Army has all these tanks parked here? Just in case the Russians come and we have to have a big tank battle?
Sanborn: I’d rather be on the side with the tanks, just in case, than not have them.
Eldridge: Yeah, but they don’t do anything. I mean, anyone comes alongside a Humvee, we’re dead. Anybody even looks at you funny, we’re dead. Pretty much the bottom line is, if you’re in Iraq, you’re dead. How’s a fucking tank supposed to stop that?
Sanborn: Would you shut the fuck up, Owen?
Eldridge: Sorry. Just tryin’ to scare the new guy.

…

Eldridge: He’s a rowdy boy.
Sanborn: He’s reckless.

…

James: Well, if he wasn’t an insurgent he sure as hell is now.

…

Sanborn: I was in intelligence seven years before I joined EOD. We ran missions in every shithole that you could possibly imagine. So, I’m pretty sure I can figure out a redneck piece of trailer trash like you.
James: Looks like you’re on the right track

…

Eldridge [after James removes his bomb suit]: What are you doing?
James: There’s enough bang in there to blow us all to Jesus. If I’m gonna die, I want to die comfortable.

…

Sanborn [as James approaches unexploded bomb]: You know, these detonators misfire all the time.
Eldridge: What are you doing?
Sanborn: I’m just saying shit happens, they misfire.
Eldridge: He’d be obliterated to nothing.
Sanborn: His helmet would be left. You could have that. Little specs of hair charred on the inside.
Eldridge: Yeah. There’d be half a helmet somewhere, bits of hair.
Sanborn: Have to ask for a change in technique and protocol, and make sure this type of accident never happen again, you know? You’d have to write the report.
Eldridge: Are you serious?
Sanborn: I can’t write it.
Eldrige: I mean are you serious about killing him.

…

James [to Eldridge]: Everyone’s a coward about something.

…

Sgt. James [Speaking to his son]: You love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your Mommy, your Daddy. You love your pajamas. You love everything, don’t ya? Yea. But you know what, buddy? As you get older…some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like your Jack-in-a-Box. Maybe you’ll realize it’s just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. And the older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things. With me, I think it’s one.[/b]

War is hell?

Hanoi. The present. But how different really is this from the lives of many folks here? Lots of themes apparently seem to overlap in the modern world. Family, friendship, marriage…infidelity. Incest?

The difficulty though is you have no idea the extent to which this reflects life “on average” in Vietnam today. Are these folks basically “typical”? Also, there are no political narratives here. That they inhabit a "communist” nation doesn’t seem a factor. Or maybe Vietnam is just following in the footsteps of China. Nominally socialist but in fact state capitalist.

Try though to even imagine a film of this sort being made in Hanoi 40 years ago. Here the entire focus is on personal relationships…and among those able to afford that.

In the opening scene, Hai turns on the stereo and we hear Lou Reed’s “Pale Blue Eyes”. I wasn’t expecting that. But what do I really know about Vietnam all these years later?

It sure is beautifully filmed though. Gorgeous. And the score is equally affecting.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vertic … of_the_Sun
trailer: youtu.be/4ma2Bt8c1Kc

THE VERTICAL RAY OF THE SUN [Mua He Chieu Thang Dung] 2000
Written and directed by Tran Anh Hung

It’s the American dream: rags to riches. The self-made man. Only on the other side of the law.

All that mindless mayhem chasing after all that money. And all that machismo

As with the Sopranos we are dealing here with folks that are little more than thugs. They have no class, style or wit. No interest really in anything other than being gangsters. They’ve got power. They get to boss people around. They wear the best suits and buy the most expensive bottles of wine in the most expensive restaurants in town. They’ve got big cars and big boats and big guns. But they’re basically hoodlums, dupes, goons, gorillas. Philistines, vulgarians, rubes.

But not sheep. And that’s where the narrative aims to go. This man basically takes what he wants while most of us only get what we are given. There is something about having this sort of power that is appealing to those who take shit all their lives. But there are many different ways to get it.

That’s why we need Mama Montana to put it all in perspective.

But this is still predicated largely on the sheer stupidity of the government’s “war on drugs”. That and the corruption. There is so much money involved here that folks in the government, the military, the police etc. can readily be bought off. Down there especially. But also up here.

IMDb

[b]When director Brian De Palma submitted the film to the MPAA they gave it an “X rating”. He then made some cuts and resubmitted it a second time; again the film was given an “X rating” (one of the reasons apparently being that Octavio the clown was shot too many times). He yet again made some further cuts and submitted it a third time; yet again it was given an “X”. De Palma refused to cut the film any further to qualify it for an R. He and producer Martin Bregman arranged a hearing with the MPAA. They brought in a panel of experts, including real narcotics officers, who stated that the film was an accurate portrayal of real life in the drug underworld and should be widely seen. This convinced the 20 members of the ratings board to give the third submitted cut of the film an “R rating” by a vote of 18-2. However De Palma surmised that if the third cut of the film was judged an “R” than the very first cut should have been an “R” as well. He asked the studio if he could release the first cut but was told that he couldn’t. However since the Studio execs really didn’t know the differences between the different cuts that had been submitted, De Palma released the first cut of the film to theaters anyway. It wasn’t until the film had been released on videocassette months later that he confessed that he had released his first unedited and intended version of the film.

Despite the title, Tony Montana is called “Scarface” only once throughout the movie, and in Spanish at that (“Caracicatriz”).[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarface_(1983_film
trailer: youtu.be/7pQQHnqBa2E

SCARFACE [1983]
Directed Brian De Palma
Written by Oliver Stone

[b]Title card: [first title cards] In May 1980, Fidel Castro opened the harbor at Mariel, Cuba with the apparent intention of letting some of his people join their relatives in the United States. Within seventy-two hours, 3,000 U.S. boats were headed for Cuba. It soon became evident that Castro was forcing the boat owners to carry back with them not only their relatives, but the dregs of his jails. Of the 125,000 refugees that landed in Florida an estimated 25,000 had criminal records.

…

Immigration Officer: You ever been to jail, Tony?
Tony: Me? Jail? No way. No.
Immigration Officer: Been in a mental hospital?
Tony: Oh, yeah. On the boat coming over.

…

Tony: You a communist? Huh? How’d you like it, man? They tell you all the time what to do, what to think, what to feel. Do you wanna be like a sheep? Like all those other people? Baah! Baah!
Immigration Officer: I don’t have to listen to this bullshit!
Tony Montana: You wanna work eight, ten fucking hours? You own nothing, you got nothing! Do you want a chivato on every corner looking after you? Watching everything you do? Everything you say, man? Do you know I eat octopus three times a day? I got fucking octopus coming out of my fucking ears. I got the fuckin’ Russian shoes my feet’s comin’ through. How you like that? What, you want me to stay there and do nothing? Hey, I’m no fuckin’ criminal, man. I’m no puta or thief. I’m Tony Montana, a political prisoner from Cuba. And I want my fuckin’ human rights, now!
[slams desk]
Tony: Just like the President Jimmy Carter says. Okay?
Immigration Officer: Carter should see this human right. He’s really good. What do you say, Harry?
Immigration Officer: I don’t believe a word of this shit! They all sound the same to me. That son of a bitch Castro is shittin’ all over us. Send this bastard to Freedom Town. Let them take a look at him. Get him outta here.
Tony: You know somethin’? You can send me anywhere. Here, there, this, that; it don’t matter. There’s nothing you can do to me that Castro has not done!

…

Tony: What you tell 'em?
Manny: I told 'em what you told me to tell 'em, I told 'em I was in sanitation, they didn’t go for it.
Tony: Sanitation?! I told you to tell 'em that you was in a sanitarium, not sanitation, sanitarium!

…

Tony: He’s political.
Manny: Yeah. Well, he’s coming in here today, man. Castro just sprung him. This guy, man, was one of the top dogs for Fidel in the early days. But Castro felt like he couldn’t trust him anymore and threw him in jail. But while he was on top, he tortured a few guys to death. And one of the guy’s brother is a rich guy in Miami now, and he wants the favor repaid. That’s where we come in.[/b]

Murder: You gotta start somewhere.

[b]Tony [to Manny]: Your big shot friend better come up with something soon. I didn’t come to the United States to break my fucking back.

…

Frank [to Tony]: You’re gonna find that when you stay loyal in this business you’re gonna move up. You’re gonna move up fast. Then you’ll find out your biggest problem is not bringing in the stuff…but what to do with all the fucking cash!

…

Frank: Lesson number one: Don’t underestimate the other guy’s greed!
Elvira [sarcastically]: Lesson number two: Don’t get high on your own supply.

…

Tony [to Elvira]: You’re good-looking. You got a beautiful body, beautiful legs…a beautiful face, all these guys in love with you. Only you got a look in your eye like you haven’t been fucked in a year!

…

Tony: Me, I want what’s coming to me.
Manny: Oh, well what’s coming to you?
Tony: The world, chico, and everything in it.

…

Tony: In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.

…

Elvira [after Tony tries to kiss her]: Don’t get it confused, Tony. I don’t fuck around with the help.

…

Mama Montana [to Tony]: You know, all we read about in the papers today are animals like you and the killings. It’s Cubans like you who are giving a bad name to our people. People who come here to work hard and make an honest living for themselves.
Gina: Mama! He is your son!
Mama Montana: Son? I wish I had one! He’s a bum! He was a bum then and he’s a bum now! Who do you think you are, hm? We haven’t heard a word from you in five years. Cinco anos. You suddenly show up here and you throw money at us? You think you can buy me with your money?
Tony: Come on, mama.
Mama Montana: You think you can come in here with your hot-shot clothes and make fun of us?
Tony: Mama, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Mama Montana: No that is not the way I am, Antonio! That is not the way I raised Gina to be. You are not going to destroy her. I don’t need your money. Gracias! I work for my living. I don’t want you in this house anymore! I don’t want you around Gina! So come on, get out! And take this lousy money with you! It stinks!

…

Tony [to Sosa]: I never fucked anybody over in my life didn’t have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don’t break them for no one. Do you understand? That piece of shit up there, I never liked him, I never trusted him. For all I know he had me set up and had my friend Angel Fernandez killed. But that’s history. I’m here, he’s not. Do you wanna go on with me, you say it. You don’t, then you make a move.

…

Bernstein: You ought to smile more, Tony. You gotta enjoy yourself. Every day above ground is a good day.

…

Frank: I’m giving you orders. Blow!
Tony: Orders? You giving me orders? The only thing in this world that gives orders is balls.

…

Manny: Right now, you happen to be the best thing in his life. The only thing that’s any good, that’s pure. Of course he doesn’t want you mixing with those people…growing up to be like him. He has this father thing for you. Feels like he has to protect you.
Gina: Protect me against what?
Manny: Against guys like that asshole you were dancing with tonight.
Gina: I like Fernando. He’s a fun guy and he’s nice. And he knows how to treat a woman. All right?
Manny: He knows how to treat a woman?
Gina: Yes.
Manny: By taking her to the toilet to make out?

…

Frank: Tony, don’t kill me, please!
Tony: I ain’t gonna kill you.
Frank: Oh Christ, thank you! Thank you!
Tony [looking at Manny]: Manolo, shoot that piece of shit!

…

Tony: Chi Chi, get the yeyo.

…

Tony: You know what capitalism is? Getting fucked!

…

Tony: You know what your problem is, Pussycat?
Elvira: What’s that?
Tony: You don’t got nothing to do with your life. Why don’t you get a job? Work with lepers. Blind kids. Anything’s gotta be better than lying around all day waiting for me to fuck you.

…

Tony: Is this it? That’s what it’s all about, Manny? Eating, drinking, fucking, sucking? Snorting? Then what? You’re 50. You got a bag for a belly. You got tits, you need a bra. They got hair on them. You got a liver, they got spots on it, and you’re eating this fuckin’ shit, looking like these rich fucking mummies in here… Look at that. A junkie. I got a fuckin’ junkie for a wife. She don’t eat nothing. Sleeps all day with them black shades on. Wakes up with a Quaalude, and who won’t fuck me ‘cause she’s in a coma. I can’t even have a kid with her, Manny. Her womb is so polluted, I can’t even have a fuckin’ little baby with her!

…

Tony [to the people in the restaurant]: What you lookin’ at? You all a bunch of fuckin’ assholes. You know why? You don’t have the guts to be what you wanna be? You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin’ fingers and say, “That’s the bad guy.” So… what that make you? Good? You’re not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don’t have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There’s a bad guy comin’ through! Better get outta his way!

…

Mama Montana [to Tony]: Why do you have to hurt everything you touch? Why do you have to destroy everything that comes your way? ¡Malagradecido!

…

Tony: You wanna fuck with me? Okay. You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend![/b]

Let’s start with the obvious: The Pin is no Tony Montana. We’re talking about a single brick here. It’s just small fish in a small pond. But that doesn’t make the danger any less real for the minnows perceived to have fucked up. Here then [as always] only One Man can straighten it all out.

One Man armed with the script.

But I’ve always been a sucker for this sort of protagonist: the outsider, the iconoclast, the cynical and nihilistic loner. But ultimately he becomes his own worst enemy for expecting the rest of the world to share his point of view. That’s all it is though: a point of view that makes sense to him given the reality of his own life. But why should others living entriely different lives understand it in the same way, let alone go along with it.

So [in part] this is really a film about how not to love someone: on your terms only.

But mostly it’s a complex and convoluted “who did what to whom–and why?” A murder mystery. This time though with a bunch of kids from high school.

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

trailer: youtu.be/uM7E0XGiyrc

BRICK [2005]
Written and directed by Rian Johnson

[b]Brendan: Still picking your teeth with freshmen?
Kara: Well, you were a freshman once.
Brendan: Way-once, sister.

…

Laura [on phone]: Who are you? Or I’ll hang up.
Brendan: You don’t know me - I’ll save you some time.
Laura: I know everyone and I’ve got all the time in the world.
Brendan: Folly of youth.

…

Emily: Brendan, I know you’re mad at all these people, cause you think I went away from you and went to them. But you’ve got to start seeing it as my decision, stop being angry because where I want to be at’s different from where you wanna be at.

…

Emily: And stop picking on Dode. He’s a good guy. He’s a good friend.
Brendan: So what am I?
Emily: Yeah, what are you? Eating back here alone, hating everybody. I mean, who are you judging anyone? God, I really loved you a lot but I couldn’t stand it, I had to get with people. I couldn’t handle life with you, I had to see what was what.

…

Brendan [to Brain]: So now that we’ve shaken the tree let’s wait and see what falls on our heads.

…

Brendan: I was going to make up some bit of information or set up some phony deal, anything so you’d let me walk. Then I was going to go to the vice principal and spill him the street address of the biggest dope port in the burgh.
[The Pin’s eyes shoot to Tugger, who doesn’t flinch]
Tug: He knows zip.
Brendan: 1250 Vista Blanca, the ink blotter at the desk in the den in the basement of the house with the tacky mailbox.

…

Brendan [to Tug]: Which wall’s the door in?

…

Brendan: Your muscle seemed plenty cool putting his fist in my head. I want him out.
The Pin: Looky, soldier…
Brendan Frye: The ape blows or I clam.

…

The Pin [to Brendan]: What are you services, exactly - so I can be specific on the invoice

…

Laura: Do you trust me now?
Brendan: Less now than when I didn’t trust you before.

…

Brendan: Why are you telling me all this? What’s your play?
Laura: You think nobody sees you. Eating lunch behind the portables. Loving some girl like she’s all there is, anywhere, to you. I’ve always seen you. Or maybe I liked Emily. Maybe I see what you’re trying to do for her, trying to help her, and I don’t know anybody who would do that for me.
Brendan: Now you are dangerous.

…

Kara: You better be sure you wanna know what you wanna know.[/b]