Dead Man:
directed by Jim Jarmusch
Stupid fucking white man.
Look out the window. And doesn’t this remind you of when you were in the boat, and then later than night, you were lying, looking up at the ceiling, and the water in your head was not dissimilar from the landscape, and you think to yourself, “Why is it that the landscape is moving, but the boat is still?”
Chinatown with a happy ending? The pragmatic melding of vice and virtue? Copland with a few new twists? Dexter without “the code”? You know me: Make up your own mind. But then be prepared to change it.
Good cop? Bad cop? I couldn’t make up my mind. Each new context seemed to tug me in another direction. But it’s a frame of mind I garner mostly from the world of entertainment. Like you too probably.
So why not explore [yet again] the gap between why folks choose to become cops and what actually being one does to reconfigure their point of view? With detectives in particular the gap seems to widen.
But always, always, always: it’s politics. Underlying and underminding everything.
IMDb
Many of the events in the movie were based upon real events. These include the Bloody Christmas scene where drunken police officers brutally beat up Hispanic prisoners suspected of beating up two uniformed cops (the real-life cops involved were named Trojanowski and Brownson – in the film, they’re referred to as Helenowski and Brown); the plot line of real-life gangster Mickey Cohen’s arrest touching off a gang war for control of the rackets; the LAPD Goon Squad which would kidnap out-of-town gangsters, beat them up and threaten to kill them if they ever tried to come back to set up their operations; Lana Turner dating gangster Johnny Stompanato (although this movie is set in 1953, and the real Turner and Stompanato didn’t start dating until 1957). In real life, Turner’s daughter Cheryl Crane stabbed Stompanato to death on April 4, 1958, after catching him beating her mother.
wiki
Critically acclaimed, the film holds a 99% rating at Rotten Tomatoes with 85 out of 86 reviews positive.
The odd guy out? Dwight Garner at Salon.com: “It’s the story of good white actors stranded, in the name of noir, in a movie that refuses to kick into gear until it’s far too late.”
What must it be like to see the film through his eyes? And how could he [or all the rest of us] get it so wrong?
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL
Directed by Curtis Hanson
[b]Dudley: Edmund, you’re a political animal. You have the eye for human weakness, but not the stomach.
Ed: You’re wrong, sir.
Dudley: Would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect you knew to be guilty, in order to ensure an indictment?
Ed: Dudley, we’ve been over this.
Dudley: Yes or no, Edmund?
Ed: No!
Dudley: Would you be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect you knew to be guilty?
Ed: No.
Dudley: Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some… lawyer…
Ed: No.
Dudley: Then, for the love of God, don’t be a detective. Stick to assignments where you don’t have…
Ed: Dudley, I know you mean well, but I don’t need to do it the way you did. Or my father.
…
Bud: Merry Christmas.
Lynn: Merry Christmas to you, officer.
Bud: That obvious, huh?
Lynn: It’s practically stamped on your forehead.
…
Dudley: Bud White is a valuable officer.
Ed: White’s a mindless thug.
Dudley: No, Edmund, he’s just a man who can answer yes to those questions I’ve asked you from time to time.
…
Dudley: I admire you as a policeman - particularly your adherence to violence as a necessary adjunct to the job.
…
Dudley: You’ll do as I say, and ask no questions. Do you follow my drift?
Bud: In technicolor, sir.
…
Lynn: There’s blood on your jacket. Is that an integral part of your job?
Bud: Sometimes.
Lynn: Do you enjoy it?
Bud: When they deserve it.
Lynn: Did they today?
Bud: I don’t know.
Lynn: But you did it anyway.
Bud: Yeah, just like the half-dozen guys you screwed today.
Lynn: Well, actually, it was two
…
Jack: Are you sure Golden Boy is up to the task, Cap?
Dudley: Oh, I think you’d be surprised what the lad is capable of.
…
Ed: A naked man with a gun? Do you really expect anyone to believe that?
Bud: Get the fuck away from me.
Ed: How’s it gonna look in your report?
Bud: It’ll look like justice. That’s what the man got. Justice.
Ed: You don’t know the meaning of the word, you ignorant bastard.
…
Lynn: Where’d this come from?
Bud: When I was twelve, my old man went after my mother with a bottle. I got in the way.
Lynn: You saved her.
Bud: …Not for long.
Lynn: I’m sorry, Bud, it’s none of my…
Bud: He tied me to the radiator. I watched him beat my mother to death with a tire iron. Then he left us there. Three days before a truant officer found us… They never found the old man.
Lynn: Was that why you became a cop? To get even?
Bud: …Maybe.
…
Mrs. Lefferts: Was it a rat?
Bud: Yeah, a great big one.
…
Jack: Why in the world do you want to dig deeper into the Nite Owl killings?
Ed: …Rollo Tamasi.
Jack: Is there more to that, or am I supposed to guess?
Ed: Rollo was a purse snatcher. My father ran into him off duty, and he shot my father six times and got away clean. No one even knew who he was. I just made the name up to give him some personality.
Jack: What’s your point?
Ed: Rollo Tamasi is the reason I became a cop. I wanted to catch the guys who thought they could get away with it. It’s supposed to be about justice. Then somewhere along the way, I lost sight of that…Why’d you become a cop?
Jack: [long pause] I don’t remember.
…
Bud: How would a two-bit hood like Meeks get his hands on a large supply of heroin?
Johnny: You’re right. It’s probably bullshit. And even if he did he could never unload it. Not without drawing all kinds of attention.
Bud: Maybe that’s why he’s under a house in Elysian Park and he don’t smell too good.
…
Lana Turner: Who in the hell do you think you are?
Jack: Ed…
Ed: Take a walk, honey, before I haul your ass downtown.
Johnny: You are making a large mistake.
Lana Turner: Get away from our table!
Ed: Shut up! A hooker cut to look like Lana Turner is still a hooker.
Johnny: Hey!
Ed: She just looks like Lana Turner.
Jack: She is Lana Turner.
Ed: What?
Jack: She is Lana Turner.
[Turner throws a drink in Ed’s face]
…
Lynn: [to Ed] Fucking me and fucking Bud aren’t the same thing, you know.
…
Dudley [to Jack]: Don’t start trying to do the right thing, boyo, you haven’t had the practice.
…
Dudley: Edmund, might I have a word with you? We’re trying to run down a lead on an associate of Vincennes. The records check has led to a dead end.
Ed: What’s the name?
Dudley: Rollo Tomasi. Have you ever heard Vincennes mention him?
…
Sid: I can tell you he’s on a night train to the Big Adios.
…
Bud: The Nite Owl case made you. Do you want to tear all that down?
Ed: With a wrecking ball…You want to help me swing it?
…
Ed [to Ellis]: Is that how you used to run the good cop-bad cop?[/b]
Motels by the hour. You know what that means. But try to imagine figuring out what it means when you are a 13 year old kid helping your mother to run one. And your family is from out of town. Like half way around the world out of town.
But then what exactly is an “Asian-American” perspective? Don’t they have daseins there?
It seems we might be able to gravitate to some around us if others around us weren’t intent on yanking them away. Before we push them away instead.
trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=EMcKXlWrO6s
THE MOTEL
Written and directed by Michael Kang
[b]Ahma: Room 6 needs a new lock.
…
Ernest: So, do I get dinner?
…
Sam: I know what you were thinking. I hope this guy speaks english.
Ernest: No, I guess I knew you spoke English.
Sam: Really, how?
Ernest: You walk like you speak english.
…
Sam: I’ll bet you see a lot of shit growing up here. And you don’t even flinch!
…
Daughter: How come people stay at our house for three hours?
Mother: Sometimes people like to take naps.
Daughter: How come they’re so loud when they take naps?
…
Sam: I tried. You can’t say I didn’t try.[/b]
The crying game. Two of them in fact. One on the battlefield [of sorts] and one in the bedroom.
The one in the bedroom is played straight until it is not. But by then it is too late: he has already fallen in love.
Falling in love and doing battle are, apparently, “in our nature”. But the permutations down here on the ground make that all but
moot at times. Like here for example.
I think could fall in love with her. But, then again, she’s insufferably “feminine”.
IMDb
[b]A few weeks into filming, Jaye Davidson got ill from flu. A doctor was called to the set to take a look at him. The doctor entered Jaye’s tiny trailer, examined him and came out to talk to director Neil Jordan. The doctor asked Neil “Have you considered the possibility that she might be pregnant?”. To which Neil and the other crew began to laugh. The doctor looked bemused, and was only let in on the secret a few minutes later. He felt very foolish.
Time magazine critic Richard Corliss subtly gave away the movie’s plot twist in his review of the film. The first letter of each paragraph spells out the phrase “She is a he”.[/b]
THE CRYING GAME
Written and directed by Neil Jordan
[b]Jody: I’m thinking to myself, What the fuck am I doing here?
Fergus: What the fuck were you doing here?
Jofy: I got sent.
Fergus: You could have said no.
Jody: Can’t. Once I signed up.
Fergus: Why did you sign up?
Jody: It was a job. So I get sent to the only place in the world they call you nigger to your face. Fergus: Shouldn’t take it personally.
Jody [imitating a Belfast accent]: “Go back to your banana tree, nigger.” No use telling them I came from Tottenham.
…
Jody: Now put it back in. It’s only a piece of meat.
…
Jody: Two types of people, Fergus. The scorpion and the frog. Ever heard of them? The scorpion wants to cross a river, but he can’t swim. Goes to the frog, who can, and asks for a ride. Frog says, “If I give you a ride on my back, you’ll go and sting me.” Scorpion replies, “It would not be in my interest to sting you since as I’ll be on your back we both would drown.” Frog thinks about this logic for a while and accepts the deal. Takes the scorpion on his back. Braves the waters. Halfway over feels a burning spear in his side and realizes the scorpion has stung him after all. And as they both sink beneath the waves the frog cries out, “Why did you sting me, Mr. Scorpion, for now we both will drown?” Scorpion replies, “I can’t help it, it’s in my nature.”
Fergus: So what’s that supposed to mean?
Jody: Means what it says. The scorpion does what is in his nature. Take off the hood, man. Fergus: Why?
Jody: 'Cause you’re kind. It’s in your nature.
…
Col: It takes all types.
Fergus: So who’s he?
Col: He’s what she should run a mile away from.
Fergus: Then why doesn’t she?
Col: Who knows the secrets of the human heart?
…
Dil: Funny the way things go. Don’t you find that, Jimmy? Never the way you expect it.
…
Deveroux: Does Pat have a tart?
Fergus: She’s not a tart.
Deveroux: No, of course not. She’s a lady.
Fergus: No, she’s not that either.
…
Fergus [to Deveroux]: Did you ever pick your teeth up with broken fingers?
…
Fergus: Do they know?
Dil: Know what, honey?
Fergus: Know what I didn’t know. And don’t call me that.
Dil: Can’t help it, Jimmy. A girl has her feelings.
Fergus: Thing is, Dil, you’re not a girl.
Dil: Details, baby, details.
…
Jude: We’ve got some plans here. And we’ll need a Mister Nobody to execute them.
Fergus: No way, Jude. I’m out.
Jude: You’re never out, Fergus.
…
Dil: My pills…
Fergus: What pills?
Dil:. For my condition.
Fergus: What condition?
Dil: My condition. Ennui.
…
Dil: She was there, wasn’t she?
Fergus: She was.
Dil: And she used her tits and that cute little ass to get him, didn’t she?
Fergus: Yes.
…
Dil: What am I supposed to call you then, Jimmy?
Fergus: Fergus.
Dil: Fergus… Fergus. My love. Light of my life.
Fergus: Please, Dil.
Dil: Can’t help it. You’re doing time for me. No greater love as the man says. I wish you’d tell me why.
Fergus: As a man said, it’s in my nature.
Dil: What’s that supposed to mean?
Fergus: Well… there’s this scorpion, you see, and he wants to go across a river. Well, he can’t swim so he goes to this frog, who naturally enough can swim. And he says,
[imitating the scorpion’s voice]
Fergus: “Excuse me, Mr. Froggy. I want to go across the river.”
[continues narrating]
Fergus: So the frog accepts the idea. The scorpion hops on the frog’s back. Suddenly, the frog: “Aah!” He feels this sting! “You stung me! Why did you go and do that?” The scorpion looks at him and says, “I can’t help it, it’s in my nature”.[/b]
That [in 1965] this was a true story in South Africa won’t surprise many. Though surprisingly some will insist it can never happen again. Or happen here. Wherever here happens to be for you.
What people think gets tangled up in all sorts of variables—factors one would assume are tangential to a rational perspective. A prejudice against those deemed “different” – and in all the ways that can be deemed – has been the lot of many construed to be “other then we are”.
The extent of this can’t help but make you wonder how we will ever live in a world where the only variables that count are the ones that are true.
The story becomes particularly surreal when Sandra’s father tries to keep Sandra [who clearly looks black but is legally white] away from Petrus [who clearly looks and legally is black]. Again: How can otherwise rational and intelligent people think like this?
wiki
Skin is a British-South African 2008 biographical film directed by Anthony Fabian, about Sandra Laing, a South African woman born to white parents who was classified as “Coloured” during the apartheid era, due to a genetic case of Atavism.
Sandra Laing at wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Laing
trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=wbj691Z1Z1E
SKIN
Directed by Anthony Fabian
[b]Title card: Apartheid was a system of racial segregation legally enforced by the ruling white minority in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. The Population Registration Act [1950] classified all citizens by racial group. People of different races were forbidden to enter the same shop, attend the same school or live under the same roof.
…
Young Sandra: Mother, why are they all staring?
Sannie: You’re new here, my sweet. They’re just curious.
…
Elize: Sandra? I’m Elize.
Young Sandra: What do you want?
Elize: I’m from Swaziland. That’s another country.
Young Sandra: I know that, I’m not stupid.
Elize: All of my friends have always been black.
Young Sandra: I’m not black.
…
Young Sandra: Upon seeing Elize with a bloody nose: What happened? Tell me.
Elize: I told Annie you weren’t black and she hit me.
…
Teacher: …and on these plains were savage natives who were always trying to take our land, There were many wars between them. Why do you think that was, students?
Annie: They couldn’t live together because they were different.
Teacher: That’s right. Good, good, good. Because they were…
Class: Different!
…
Young sandra [after the school doctor measures her head]: Am I sick?
…
Dr Sparks [a geneticist from Wits Universtiy at a court hearing]: I believe there is a plausible genetic explanation for Sandra’s appearance. The history of our country is such that many, indeed, we believe most Afrikaners carry black genes. So two white-looking parents can contribute enough black genes to produce a child quite a bit darker than themselves. This phenomenon is commonly known as a throwback. We prefer to use the more precise term, polygenic inheritance.
…
Reporter [on the radio]: And in Parliament today an amendment was made to the Population Registration Act. Descent rather than appearance, will be the determining factor in all classification cases. Children must now be classified the same race as their parents.
Abraham: Thank God. She’s white again.
…
Abraham: Sandra! You’re white!
…
Abraham: What do you think you’re doing with my daughter.
Petrus: Just talking, baas.
Abraham: Six feet Petrus. That’s the distance you keep when talking to her.
Petrus: Sure, my baas.
…
Sannie: No more smart talk Sandy, this is serious.
Sandra: I like him. Petrus.
Sannie: You like him like a friend, like a brother?
Sandra: A boyfriend.
[her mother slaps her hard across the face]
Sannie: Petrus is a black man. Dirt in this country.
…
Abraham [to Petrus while holding a gun]: Dead and buried. That’s how you’ll be if you come near my property or my family again. You understand?
Petrus: Sure, baas.
…
Sannie [to Abraham]: You know what keeps me awake at night? Maybe she made the right choice.
…
Sannie: All these years you’ve kept us apart. You didn’t even want to see the pictures of her children. What has changed? Why is it okay now?
Abraham: Please. I need to see her.
Sannie: You need to see her? I have needed to see her every day for the last ten years!
Abraham: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was wrong. I need…I have to tell her.
Sannie: You want her forgiveness? You don’t deserve it. Neither do I.
Abraham: Sannie, I’m begging you.
Sannie: No. You made your choice.
…
Sannie: Your father wasn’t a bad man. He did the best he could.
Sandra: “Never give up”.
Sannie: I wish that I had never heard those words.
Sandra: No, Ma. They kept me going.
…
Title card: Sandra’s Rainbow Tuck Shop was launched in 2003. She now has 7 grandchildren.
Sandra’s two brothers Leon and Adriaan refuse to reunite with her to this day.[/b]
What will always impress me most about this film is Stone’s willingness to broach the military industrial complex as an impetus behind the Kennedy assassination. He focus on means, motive and opportunity. Around this:
The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison, is for war. The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers. Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War in his second term. He wanted to call off the moon race and cooperate with the Soviets. He signed a treaty to ban nuclear testing. He refused to invade Cuba in 1962. He set out to withdraw from Vietnam. But all that ended on the 22nd of November, 1963.
Is this entirely true? Perhaps not. But, with billions of dollars at stake, why take chances?
IMDb
[b]The film generated intense controversy upon its release with many accusing Oliver Stone of making up many of the facts. In fact, Stone published an annotated version of his screenplay, in which he justifies and attributes every claim made in the film. Stone later addressed the controversy in his TV movie Wild Palms in which he has a cameo. That film takes place in the 21st Century and has Stone appearing on a talk show discussing how all his conspiracy theories surrounding “JFK” had been proven true.
Dr. Marion Jenkins, the anesthetist, plays himself in the film. He was genuinely surprised at the level of detail and research that had gone into preparation for that key scene. Even the tiles for the set of Trauma Room One were exactly the same shade of green he remembered (even though the scene itself is black and white in the finished film).
Shortly after the film’s release, film critic Roger Ebert received a tongue-lashing from Walter Cronkite, berating him for praising “JFK”. Cronkite was adamant that there wasn’t a shred of truth to the film.[/b]
Bashing the bashers from Huffington Post:
huffingtonpost.com/jefferson … 73722.html
And for those who want to bash them right back:
mcadams.posc.mu.edu/jfkmovie.htm
Like Ferrie said: a mystery inside a riddle inside an enigma.
JFK
Written and directed by Oliver Stone
[b]title card: “To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of men.” - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
President Eisenhower: …We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. And to do this three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishement. We annually spend on military security alone…
Narrator: January, 1961. President Dwight D. Eisenhowers’s Farewell Address to the Nation.
President Eisenhower: …This conjunction of an immense military establishment and arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office in the federal government. We must guard against the aquisition of unwarranted influence - whether sought or unsought - by the military-industrial complex. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
…
Banister: Here’s to the New Frontier. Camelot in smithereens. I’ll drink to that.
…
Garrison: Thank you for your time, David. I’m sorry this has to end inconveniently for you but I am going to have to detain you for further questioning by the FBI.
Ferrie: Why, what’s wrong?
Garrison: David, I find your story simply not believable.
Ferrie: Really? What part?
…
Dean: You’re a mouse fighting a gorilla. JFK’s dead as that crabmeat. The government’s still breathing.
…
David Ferrie: Oh man, why don’t you fuckin’ stop it? Shit, this is too fuckin’ big for you, you know that? Who did the president, who killed Kennedy, fuck man! It’s a mystery! It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fuckin’ shooters don’t even know! Don’t you get it?
…
X: After I came back, I asked myself, why was I, the chief special officer, selected to travel to the South Pole at that time that any number of others could have done? And I wondered if it was because one of my routine duties if I had been in Washington would have been to arrange for additional security in Texas, so I decided to check it out. And sure enough, someone had told the 112th Military Intelligence Group at Fourth Army Headquarters at Fort Sam Houston in Texas to stand down that day, over the protests of the Unit Commander, Colonal Rike. This is significant because it is standard operating procedure, especially in a lnown hostile city like Dallas.
…
X: We would have arrived days ahead, studied the route, checked all the buildings. Never would have allowed all those wide-open windows overlooking Dealy Plaza, never! We would have had our own snipers covering the area the minute a window went up! They would have been on the radio. We would have been watching the building, checking for baggage, coat under the arms… Never would have allowed a man to open an umbrella along the way! Never would have allowed the car to slow down to 11 miles an hour, much less take that unusual curve at Houston and Elm! You would have felt an army presence on the streets that day. But none of this happened. It was a violation of the most basic protection code we have, and it’s an indication of a massive plot based in Dallas.
…
X: Don’t underestimate the budget cuts that Kennedy called for in March of 1963. Nearly 52 military installations in 25 states. Twenty-one overseas bases. Big money. You know how many helicopters have been lost in Vietnam? Nearly 3,000 so far. Who makes them? Bell Helicopter. Who owns Bell? Bell was nearly bankrupt when First National Bank of Boston asked the CIA to use the helicopter in Indochina. How about the F-111 fighter? General Dynamics of Fort Worth, Texas. Who owns that? Find out the defense budget since the war began. $75 going on $100 billion. Nearly $200 billion will be spent before it’s over. In 1949, it was $10 billion. No war…no money.
…
Garrison [to his wife after watching a damning NBC special report]: There’s only 20 or 30 million people watching this tonight. At least my reputation is still fine with people watching “Laugh In”.
…
Broussard: How the hell can you keep a conspiracy going between the mob, CIA, FBl, Army Intelligence and who knows what else when you can’t keep a secret in this room between 12 people?
Here’s where some say the “conspiracy” goes off the deep end:
…
Garrison: Could the Mob change the parade route, Bill, or eliminate the protection for the President? Could the Mob send Oswald to Russia and get him back? Could the Mob get the FBI the CIA, and the Dallas Police to make a mess of the investigation? Could the Mob appoint the Warren Commission to cover it up? Could the Mob wreck the autopsy? Could the Mob influence the national media to go to sleep? And since when has the Mob used anything but .38’s for hits, up close. The Mob wouldn’t have the guts or the power for something of this magnitude. Assassins need payrolls, orders, times, schedules. This was a military-style ambush from start to finish… a coup d’etat with Lyndon Johnson waiting in the wings.
Broussard: You’re saying Lyndon Johnson was involved? The President?
Garrison: Johnson got $1 billion for his friends, Brown and Root to dredge Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.
Broussard: Boss, are you calling the President a murderer?!
Garrison: If I’m so far from the truth, why is the FBI bugging our offices? Why are witnesses being bought off and murdered? Why are federal agencies blocking our extraditions and subpoenas?
Broussard: I don’t know.
…
Broussard: This is Louisiana, chief! I mean, how do you know who your daddy is? Because your mama told you so? You are taking a crap in the wind. And I am not going along on this one.[/b]
The heart of the conspiracy:
[b]Garrison: The Warren Commission thought they had an open-and-shut case. Three bullets, one assassin. But two unpredictable things happened that day that made it virtually impossible. One, the eight-millimeter home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder while standing by the grassy knoll. Two, the third wounded man, James Tague, who was knicked by a fragment, standing near the triple underpass. The time frame, five point six seconds, determined by the Zapruder film, left no possibility of a fourth shot. So the shot or fragment that left a superficial wound on Tague’s cheek had to come from the three shots fired from the sixth floor depository. That leaves just two bullets. And we know one of them was the fatal head shot that killed Kennedy. So now a single bullet remains. A single bullet now has to account for the remaining seven wounds in Kennedy and Connelly. But rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further, the Warren Commission chose to endorse the theory put forth by an ambitious junior counselor, Arlen Spector, one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people. We’ve come to know it as the “Magic Bullet Theory.” The magic bullet enters the President’s back, headed downward at a 17-degree angle. It then moves upwards to leave Kennedy’s body from the front of his neck wound #2 where it waits 1.6 seconds presumably in midair, where it turns right, then left right, then left and continues into Connally’s right armpit. Wound #3. The bullet then heads down at an angle of 27 degrees, shattering his rib and exiting from the right side of his chest. Wound #4. The bullet turns right, reentering Connally’s body at his right wrist. Wound #5. Shattering the radius bone the bullet exits Connally’s wrist, wound #6 makes a dramatic U-turn, then buries itself in Connally’s left thigh. Wound #7, from which it later falls out and is found in almost pristine condition on a stretcher in a corridor of Parkland Hospital. Some bullet. Any combat vet can tell you, never in the history of gunfire has there been a bullet this ridiculous.
…
Garrison: When my office or you, the people, asked those questions, demanded evidence the answer from on high has always been: national security. What kind of national security do we have when we’re robbed of our leaders? What national security permits the removal of fundamental power from the people and validates the ascendancy of an invisible government in the US? That kind of national security is when it smells like it, feels like it, and looks like it you call it what it is: Fascism! I submit to you that what took place on November 22, 1963 was a coup d’état. Its most direct and tragic result was the reversal of Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam. The war is the biggest business in America worth billions of dollars a year. President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy planned at the highest levels of our government carried out by fanatical and disciplined cold warriors in the Pentagon and CIA’s covert-operation apparatus. Among them, Clay Shaw, here before you.
…
Garrison: There’s a simple way to determine if I am paranoid. Ask the two men who profited most from the assassination former President Johnson and your new President, Nixon to release the 51 CIA documents pertaining to Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby. Or the secret CIA memo on Oswald’s activities in Russia that was destroyed while being photocopied. These documents are yours. The people’s property. You pay for it. But as the government sees you as children who might be too disturbed to face this reality or because you might lynch those involved you cannot see these documents for another 75 years. I’m in my 40’s so I’ll have “shuffled off this mortal coil” by then. But I’m telling my eight-year-old son to keep himself physically fit so that one glorious September morning, in 2038 he can go to the National Archives and learn what the CIA and FBI knew. They may push it back then.[/b]
Based [loosely as they say] on actual events this film explores the kind of stuff that folks like me [and probably you] barely begin to understand. It’s like following Saint and Morrow here at ILP regarding TEW and RM. The fact that nothing is finally resolved though speaks volumes about the complexity of the variables.
Thus how close they are to the way things really are is not for me to say. The problem, however, is is all the stuff that deviates from the dark matter at hand. The “personal” stuff. The stuff of “ego, politics and cultural insensitivity”. You can only imagine how good the film might have been. But still worth watching.
The lesson to be learned: My truths are objective, your truths are not.
And what the hell is Meryl Streep even doing in this movie?
One point of view:
math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=677
trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=p8kM2cjlPog
DARK MATTER
Directed by Chen Shi-zheng,
[b]Jacob: You did this?
Liu Xing: Can this be my dissertation?
Jacob: Are you out of your mind? This is way over your head…beyond your capabilities.
Liu Xing: But I’ve already got a good result.
Jacob: Let me explain something to you. This is a marathon. You cannot sprint all the way. Pick something simpler and then build on that. You have to pay your dues first, okay?
…
Professor Colby: You have to admit this is a highly original piece of work.
Jacob: Do you really want to sign off on a thesis that may be entirely inaccurate simply because some of the ideas in it are intriguing.
Professor Colby: Jake, he made a very persuasive argument.
Jacob: He took the most speculative theory in physics and speculated a little further. He is in way over his head.
Professor Colby: Well maybe he is way over our head.
Jacob: Liu Xing. I’m afraid we can’t accept your dissertation until you redo the computations.[/b]
In other words, until they are more in line with his own.
Fucking men. In particular the fucking lowlife scumbag working class sort. Not all of them of course but it sometimes seems that way. But with so much at stake what alternative is there but for both sides to push back as hard as they can?
Some might find it hard to sympathize with the victum here. But those that made her the victum are way beyond anything but contempt.
And it also exposes the [behind the curtain] practice of “let’s make a deal” for what it sometimes is: the least possible justice.
This is an unusual case in that those on trial were not only the rapists themselves but those who cheered the rapists on and encouraged them.
IMDb
[b]The movie is based on a real-life gang rape that occurred on 6 March 1983 at Big Dan’s Bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Upon seeing a pre-screening of the film, Jodie Foster thought her performance as Sarah Tobias was so awful that she immediately began preparing for and taking the GRE’s for graduate school. She was prepared to leave her film career behind and focus on academia…until she won the Academy Award for her performance.
Linda Hamilton, Melanie Griffith, Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joan Cusack, Tatum O’Neal, Molly Ringwald, Debra Winger, Justine Bateman, Rosanna Arquette and Jennifer Connelly all turned down the role of Sarah. Diane Lane, Brooke Shields, Sarah Jessica Parker, Carrie Fisher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sigourney Weaver, Kelly McGillis and Geena Davis were all reportedly offered it. The part was actually written for Andie MacDowell. Valerie Bertinelli, Jennifer Grey, Meg Ryan, Mia Sara, and Sharon Stone were considered for the role of Sarah Tobias.[/b]
wiki
This film was one of the first Hollywood films to deal with rape in a direct manner.
THE ACCUSED
Directed by Jonathan Kaplan
[b]Kathryn: A lot of alcohol.
Rape center volunteer: Legally drunk.
Kathryn: And grass too. What else?
Rape center volunteer: What difference does that make? She was raped by three men.
Kathryn: I’m not a rape counselor. I’m a prosecutor, and I have to make a rape case.
Rape center volunteer: Then go prosecute.
…
Sarah: And I heard someone screaming. And it was me.
…
Sarah: What the hell are you talking about? You saw me at the hospital, what you think I asked for that? Is that what you think? If that’s what you think then you get the fuck out of my house!
…
Kathryn: Have you ever made love to more than one man at a time?
Sarah: What the fuck kind of question is that?
Kathryn: It’s the kind of question you’re going to be asked on the withness stand. You’re also going to be asked if a man has ever hit you and you liked it. You’re going to be asked about your drug bust and how many drinks you had that day. And how many joints you smoked. And how often you go to bars alone and whether or not you wear underwear when you go to them. And which diseases you’ve caught and how many abortions you’ve had. And I will object to all those questions. And sometimes the judge will sustain me, but sometimes not.
Sarah: That ain’t fair.
Kathryn: Sarah you’re a witness and the defense’s job is to show the jury that you’re a rotten witness because you’ve got a rotten character.
Sarah: I’ve got a rotten character. You ain’t gonna defend me because I’m some low-class bimbo?
Kathryn: I didn’t say that.
…
Kathryn [in plea bargaining negociations]: This is what the jury is going to see. And they are going to see the girl too and you can’t tell it from these. But she’s tiny. She’s the most defenseless looking thing you ever saw.
…
Sarah [at Kathryn’s dinner party]: You don’t understand how I feel! I’m standing there with my pants down and my crotch hung out for the world to see and three guys are sticking it to me, a bunch of other guys are yelling and clapping and you’re standing there telling me that that’s the best you can do. Well, if that’s the best you could do, then your best sucks! Now, I don’t know what you got for selling me out, but I sure as shit hope it was worth it!
…
Sarah [to Kathryn]: I don’t get it. I thought you were on my side. You told me you were on my side. Why did you do that?
…
Cliff: No, I don’t know her. She’s a whore, the last time I saw her she was doing a sex show.
Kathryn: You watched?
Cliff: You bet your ass I watched. She put on a great show!
Kathryn: I thought she was raped?
Cliff: Raped? She fucked a bar full of guys then she turns round and blames them for it? Listen lady, she loved it, she had an audience, she did the show of her life!
…
Kathryn: Listen again…“A person is guilty of criminal solicitation if he commands, induces, entreats or otherwise persuades another person to commit a felony-”
D.A.: You can read it to me until you’re blue in the face, I am not gonna let you prosecute a bunch of spectators -
Kathryn: [cutting him off] They’re not spectators. They solicited the rape.
D.A.: Do you really want to ask a jury to lock up a bunch of people for clapping and cheering?
Kathryn: Clapping? Cheering? Pushing? Goading? Getting the rape going and keeping it going!
D.A.: And what happens if you lose? You’ll look like an incompetent. If you win, you’ll look like a vengeful bitch. Either way, you’ll hurt yourself and this office. Now, drop it. You’ve got more important things to do.
Kathryn: No I haven’t.
D.A.: You haven’t got more important things to do than go to trial with a sure loser? What the hell’s gotten into you?
Kathryn: We owe her.
D.A.: Owe her what? We put the rapists away.
…
Kathryn: Ladies and Gentleman, Mr. Paulson has told you the testimony of Sarah Tobias is nothing. Sarah Tobias was raped but that is nothing. She was cut, bruised, and terrorized but that is nothing. All of it happened in front of a howling crowd and that is nothing. Well, it may be nothing to Mr. Paulson, but it is not nothing to Sarah Tobias and I don’t believe it’s nothing to you. Next, Mr. Paulson tried to convince you that Kenneth Joyce was the only one in that room who knew that Sarah Tobias was being raped. The only one. Now you watched Kenneth Joyce, how did he strike you? Did he seem specially sensitive? Did he seem so remarkable that you said to yourselves, “Of course. This man would notice things other people wouldn’t.” Do you believe that Kenneth Joyce saw something in that room that those three men didn’t see. In all the time that Sarah was pinned down on that Pinball machine that other people didn’t know? Kenneth Joyce confessed to you that he watched a rape and did nothing. He told you that everyone in that bar behaved badly and he was right. But no matter how immoral it may be, it is not the crime of criminal solicitation to walk away from a rape. It is not the crime of criminal solicitation to watch a rape. But it is the crime of criminal solicitation to induce, or entreat, or encourage, or persuade another person to commit a rape. Hold her down, stick it to her, make her moan. These three men did worse than nothing. They cheered and they clapped and they rooted the others on. They made sure that Sarah Tobias was raped, and raped, and raped, and raped. And tell me, was that nothing?[/b]
Do movies like this exist because this is the way high schools are or are high schools the way they are because movies like this exist? Sort of along the lines of Woody Allen’s, “life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.” And then into this increasingly sub-mental menagerie is thrown the rape of a 13 year old girl.
Everyone complains about the extent to which school kids in America are so far down the list when it comes to language skills or math or science. But that is the least of it if this accurately portrays the mentality of our “youth”. So many of these kids are really nothing less than complete assholes.
Unfortunately, there are a bunch of stick figures here too. And they have speaking parts. Besides, this is a whole other world now.
trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=uSCzahFXMrs
SPEAK
Written and directed by Jessica Sharzer
[b]Melinda [voiceover]: The school board decided that Trojans didn’t send a strong message of abstinence. So we’ll now be the home of the Merryweather Hornets.
…
Cheerleader: What are we supposed to cheer? “We are the hornets, the horny horny hornets!”?
…
Melinda [voiceover]: All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. No one really cares what you have to say.
Heather: So here’s the plan. We join 5 clubs. One for every day of the week. Not like Latin club, but cool stuff. What do you wanna join? Hey, maybe we can tutor kids at the elementary school. What about your friends from last year? Don’t you know Nicole?
Melinda [voiceover]: I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.
…
Melinda [voiceover]: Gym should be illegal. It’s humiliating.
…
Melinda [voiceover]: We’re studying American history for the ninth time in nine years. Every year they say we’re gonna get right up to the present but we always get stuck in the industrial revolution.
…
Mr. Neck: My family has been in this country for over 200 years. We built this place. We fought in every war, from the first one to the last one, paid our taxes and voted. So tell me why my son can’t get a job?
[a number of students raise their hand but he ignores them]
Mr. Neck: Reverse discrimination. He wanted to be a firefighter. Went up for the job but he didn’t get it. What I’m suggesting here is maybe if we had closed our boarders in 1900 then real americans would get the jobs they deserved.
[the Native American student raises his hand but the teacher points to Heather]
Mr. Neck: Young lady.
Heather: Um, I think that we’re all foreigners and should just give the country back to the native americans.
Mr. Neck: Now we have a debate, don’t we? “Native Americans”?
Black student: Maybe your son didn’t get the job because he wasn’t good enough. Or maybe he’s lazy. Or maybe the other guy was just better than him.
Mr. Neck: Watch your mouth, mister. That’s my son you’re talking about. You know what? That’s enough debate. Everybody take out your book.
[Dave stands up to speak]
Mr. Neck: Mr. Petrakis, please take your seat.
David: If the class is debating then each student has the right to say what’s on his mind.
Mr. Neck: I decide who talks in here, Mr. Petrakis.
David: You opened a debate, you can’t close it just because it’s not going your way.
Mr. Neck: Watch me! Take your seat, Mr. Petrakis!
David: The constitution does not recognize different levels of citizenship based upon the time spent in the country. As a citizen and a student I’m protesting the tone of this lesson as racist, intolerant, and zenophobic.
Mr. Neck: Sit your butt in that chair, Mr Petrakis, and watch your mouth! I try to get this debate going and you people turn it into a “race” thing. Sit down, Mr. Petrakis, or you’re gonna go down to the principal’s office.
[Dave walks out of the room]
Melinda: [voiceover] Dave Petrakis is my new hero.
…
Melinda [voiceover]: Heather has found a clan. The Marthas. Very Connecticut. Very prep. I suspect money changed hands.
…
Melinda [voiceover]: And then there’s me. I’m clanless.
…
Hairwoman: Every word Hawthorne wrote, every comma, every paragraph break, these were done on purpose. It is our job to try and figure out what he’s really trying to say.
Melinda [voiceover]: Why couldn’t he just say what he meant? Would they pin a scarlet letter on his chest? “S” for straightforward?
…
Loudspeaker: Attention, Merryweather students. The final tally is in. Bees 35. Icebergs 17. Hilltoppers 6. Wombats 84. We will now be the home of the Merryweather Wombats.
Heather: What rhymes with wombats?
…
Heather: Once you get through this “life sucks” phase I’m sure lots of people will want to be your friend.
…
Melinda [voiceover]: I’ll write about the Suffragettes. Before they came along women were treated like dogs.
…
David: The suffragettes fought for their right to speak. They were attacked, arrested and thrown in jail for daring to do what they wanted to do. Like them, Melinda is willing to stand up for what she believes. That no one should be forced to give speeches.
Mr. Neck: What is this?
David: Melinda has to deliver her report to the class as part of the assignment. She made copies everyone can read.
Mr. Neck: Oh, no you don’t. When I say oral I mean oral. Now you sit down! And you Sordino read that report. Open your mouth Sordino. Open your damn mouth!
[Melinda remains silent]
Mr. Neck: I am so sick of your attitude.
[he drags her by the arm to the principal’s office]
Melinda [voiceover]: I forgot the suffragettes were hauled off to jail.
…
Melinda: It’s time for a mental health day. So conjugate this: I cut class. You cut class. He/she/it cuts class.
…
Melinda: It happened. There’s no avoiding it. No forgetting.
…
Hairwoman: A revolutionary is only as good as his analysis. What does that mean?
[Melinda raises her hand]
Hairwoman: Melinda, better late than never. Why is a revolutionary only as good as his or her analysis?
Melinda: I think you should know what you stand for, not just what you’re against. You should be able to show how things can be better.[/b]
ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!
EVERYthing was political back then. No matter how badly bungled.
And Murphy’s Law might have been thought up here.
But underneath it all lies the guy’s motive: hearthfelt and…surreal.
We get ourselves into predicaments way, way beyond explaining to others. Even to the point it gets way, way beyond explaining to ourselves. Sure, you can just call the guy a loser but that just says more about you than it does about him. Though he sure as hell isn’t one of the winners here.
IMDb
[b]Based on the real-life story of John Wojtowicz. On 22 August 1972 he and Salvatore Naturile attempted to rob a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank on the corner of East Third Street and Avenue P in Brooklyn. They held nine bank employees hostage for over 14 hours. Wojtowicz was trying to get money for his lover, Ernest Aron, to have a sex change operation. Naturile was killed in the standoff and Wojtowicz received 20 years in a federal penitentiary. Wojtowicz was paid $7,500 plus one percent of the net movie profits for the movie rights for his story. He gave $2,500 to Aron to have the operation. Aron had the surgery and changed her name to Liz Eden. She died of AIDS in 1987. Wojtowicz was released from prison after serving 20 years. He died of cancer in 2006.
The entire film is mostly improvised, though around the script. After rehearsing the script for weeks with his cast, Sidney Lumet took the improvisations that were made while rehearsing and made that the official screenplay.
John Cazale was cast at Al Pacino’s insistence, despite being nowhere the age of the real Sal, who was 18 at the time. Sidney Lumet was opposed to the idea because the actor was clearly inappropriate for the part. However, when Cazale came in to read for the part, Lumet was sold on him within 5 minutes.
The bank’s manager Robert Barrett later said he had more laughs in that one night than he’d had in weeks, while teller Shirley Bell said if they’d been her houseguests on a Saturday night it would have been hilarious.
The real life incident became a part of police training on how to deal with hostage situations and crowds that were out of control.[/b]
wiki
Although Dog Day Afternoon was released nationally in 1975, it is based on events that took place in Brooklyn three years earlier, in 1972. During this era of thick and extremely heavy opposition to the Vietnam war, “anti-establishment” Sonny repeatedly reminds people he is a Vietnam veteran and repeats the counter-cultural war cry of “Attica!” in reference to the 1971 Attica Prison riots.[15] Another point made clear in the film is that Sonny never quite adjusted to civilian life after Vietnam.
DOG DAY AFTERNOON
Directed by Sidney Lumet
[b]Sonny: What the fuck you tryin’ to do? Trip the alarm? Use the spur key? Use the other one…
Mulvaney: I must of been outta my mind.
Sonny: Well, you get your mind right. I’m a Catholic and I don’t wanna hurt nobody, but goddamn it, don’t you play no games with me. Unnastand?!?
…
Sonny [to head teller]: Cheer up, you’ll be the veteran of a robbery. The bank sends you a dozen red roses, you know that?
…
Sonny: Sal, I’m sorry about this. But we can get outta this thing. There’s a way outta this.
Sal: Are you serious? About throwin’ a body outta here if we have to?
Sonny: Well, I stalled him for a while. When it comes the time, then we’ll work it out. Okay?
Sal: But do you mean it?
Sonny: I want him to think that.
Sal: But I want to know what you think.
Sonny: We won’t have to.
Sal: I’ll tell you right now that I’m ready to do it.
…
Sheldon: Why didn’t you just wait and try to take 'em out there in the street?
Moretti: I made an error in judgment. I thought the sons of bitches would be overwhelmed with remorse at the sight of a police officer.[/b]
After the fire, this was the real fuck up here. But had he waited I wouldn’t be typing this, right?
[b]Sonny: Kiss me.
Moretti: What?
Sonny: Kiss me. When I’m being fucked, I like to get kissed on the mouth.
…
Sonny [to Moretti]: What’s he doing?
Moretti [to approaching cop]: Get back there man!
Sonny: He wants to kill me so bad he can taste it! Huh? ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!
[Yells it too cheering crowd]
Sonny: ATTICA! ATTICA! REMEMBER ATTICA!
…
TV newsman: Why are you doing this?
Sonny: Doing what?
TV newsman: Robbing a bank.
Sonny: Why? I don’t know what you mean by that. I’m robbing a bank because they got money here. That’s why I’m robbing it.
TV newsman: No, what I mean is why do you feel you have to steal for money? Couldn’t you get a job?
Sonny: Uh, no. Doing what? You know if you want a job you’ve got to be a member of a union. See, and if you got no union card you don’t get a job.
TV newsman:: What about non-union occupations?
Sonny: What’s wrong with this guy? What do you mean non-union, like what? A bank teller? You know how much a bank teller makes a week?
Head teller: Not much.
Sonny: A hundred and fifteen to start, right? How are you going to live on that? I got a wife and a couple of kids, how am I going to live on that?
…
Sal: …if you’re talking about coppin’ a plea, I’m tellin’ you right now, there’s no deal. I’m never going back to prison. We got our own deal already. Do you remember the pact we made? You and me and Jackie - that night in the bar? We were talkin’ about if we get trapped in the bank, what are you gonna do…right? What did we say? What did we say!
Sonny: That we’d kill ourselves.
Sal:: Does that still go?
Sonny: We’re not there yet.
…
Sonny: Wait a minute. We’ve been looking at this all wrong. Let’s look at it the other way. Look, we gotta get a jet outta here…outta the country. We gotta get a helicopter. Okay, Sal? We get a helicopter on the roof to take us to the jet and we fly to the sunny Caribbean. Algeria. We got to look at the bright side. We got 'em by the balls, we got the hostages, we can get anything we want. They gotta give it to us. I’m flying to the tropics. Fuck the snow!
…
Sonny: Is there any special country you wanna go to?
Sal: Wyoming.
…
Pizza delivery man: I’m a fucking star!
…
Leon: I couldn’t explain why I did the things I did. So I went to this psychiatrist who explained to me I was a woman in a man’s body. So Sonny right away wanted to get me money for a sex change operation: but where was he to get that? 2500 dollars! My God, he’s in hock up to his ears already.
…
Television newsman: Phone calls have arrived from various factions of the gay community. Some in full support of Sonny and his actions, others totally condemning the present events and calling the marriage a farce, and, quote “A case of sheer exhibitionism” end quote.
…
Sal: Sonny? You hear that?
Sonny: What?
Sal: They keep sayin’ two homosexuals. I am not a homosexual. I want you to stop them saying that.
Sonny: What difference does it make. Let them say what they want.
Sal: I’m not a homosexual. Tell them to get that right. That’s going out on the TV.
Sonny: Sal, what am I supposed to do. I can’t control what they say on television. Look, Sal…forget about it. It’s a freak show to them. That’s all they’re interested in. I can’t control it.
…
Sonny: You’d like to kill me? Bet you would.
Sheldon: I wouldn’t like to kill you. I will if I have to.
Sonny: It’s your job, right? You know the guy who kills me…I hope he does it because he hates my guts, not because it’s his job.
…
Sal [pointing a gun at Sheldon]: Tell the TV to stop saying there’s 2 homosexuals in here.
Sheldon: I will, Sal.
…
Sheldon: You handled yourself real well, Sonny. A lot of men would’ve choked, and we might have had a death or a multiple death on our hands. But you handled it. I respect that. Now don’t you try to take Sal. We’ll handle him. Just sit tight and you won’t get hurt.
[Sheldon turns to walk away]
Sonny: Wait a minute… What are you talking about?
Sheldon: You just sit quiet. We’ll handle Sal.
[Sheldon leaves]
Sonny: Do you think I’d sell him out? You fuck!
…
Sonny: [talking to Sal, waiting for his wife to answer the phone] You know I can call anybody, they’d put it on the phone? The Pope, an astronaut, the wisest of the wise…Who do I have to call?
…
Mulvaney: Ladies…I want to apologize for my use of language back there.
Sylvia: What’d you say? I didn’t hear you say anything.
Jenny: He said the ‘F’ word.
Margaret: What?
Jenny: The ‘F’ word. He did. He said the ‘F’ word.
Miriam [to Margaret]: Fuck.
Margaret: I know Miriam!
Edna: Well, I’m a Christian and my ears are not garbage cans.
[the younger girls burst out laughing]
…
Maria: Sal. Because this is your first plane trip don’t be scared, okay?
…
FBI agent: Sal, keep the gun pointed up, okay?
…
Sonny: Don’t shoot me.[/b]
1984 is linked to Communism. But it can be just as easily be linked to fascism. To any authoritarian and/or totalitarian ideology.
And what is this other than the mass production of a prefabricated dasein. But the real dasein is never all that far below the surface of the least brainwashed.
It’s a world whereby if it can’t be expressed in percentages it might as well not even exist. A world where all are equal but those in the Inner Party are ten times as equal as everyone else. And then the O’Briens: hundreds of times as equal.
And aside from Asian POWs captured at the “Eastasian front” this is an entirely white society.
See if you can spot the parts that Wilhelm Reich could have written himself.
Maybe it’s just me but The Leader here bears a striking resemblance to Martin Heidegger. At least the one on the television screen.
DoublePlusBig my brothers and sisters.
Eurythmics:
youtube.com/watch?v=aGwUNTGrnvE
wiki
Upon hearing a news report declaring the Oceanian army’s utter rout of the enemy (Eurasian)'s forces in North Africa, Winston looks at Big Brother, then turns away and almost silently says “I love you” - a phrase that he and Julia used during their relationship, indicating the possiblity that he still loves Julia. However, he could also be declaring his love for Big Brother instead. His conversation with Julia in the rented room earlier in the film where they express the only hope they can through retention of their true feelings might have been extinguished “if they can make me change my feelings, they can stop me from loving you, that would be real betrayal”
1984
Written and directed by Michael Radford
From the novel by George Orwell
[b]Title card: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
…
Winston [voiceover]: Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself.
…
Winston: [voiceover] April the 4th, 1984. To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man…greetings.
…
Winston: How’s the Newspeak Committee?
Syme: Working overtime. Plusbig waste is in adjectives. Plusbig waste is timing the language to scientific advance.
Winston: Yes.
Syme: It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. You wouldn’t have seen the Dictionary 10th edition, would you Smith? It’s that thick.
[illustrates thickness with fingers]
Syme [narrowing fingers]: The 11th Edition will be that thick.
Winston: So, The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect?
Syme: The secret is to move from translation, to direct thought, to automatic response. No need for self-discipline. Language coming from here [the larynx] not from here [the brain].
…
Winston [reciting poem]: “Under the spreading chestnut tree / I sold you / You sold me.”
…
Big Brother: War is peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength! A triumph of willpower over the orgasm.
…
Big Brother: At a rally of the Anti-Sex League in Victory Square tonight held to celebrate a 20-percent decrease in civil marriages over 10,000 Party women took a vow of celibacy.
…
Winston: Look, I hate purity. I hate goodness. I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt.
Julia: I ought to suit you, then. I’m corrupt to the core.
…
Speaker: I just want to finish by saying a few words about the impact of this imminent neurological breakthrough. When the orgasm has been finally eradicated the last remaining obstacle to the psychological acceptance…The introduction of artsem, combined with the neutralization of the orgasm will effectively render obsolete the family until it becomes impossible to conceptualize.
…
Winston [voiceover]: It is folly…as though deliberately, we move one step nearer the grave. I can’t understand why she accepted the idea…she, who is so careful.
…
Winston: If they can make me change my feelings they can stop me from loving you. That will be real betrayal.
Julia: They can’t do that. It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can torture you and make you say anything. But they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you. They can’t get to your heart.[/b]
We’ll see about that.
[b]O’Brien: There are thought criminals who maintain that the resistance is not real. Believe me, Winston, it is very real. Perhaps you are not familiar with how it operates.
Winston: I am attentive to the news.
O’Brien: Indeed. Then perhaps you imagine a huge network of conspirators prepared to commit any atrocity to weaken and demoralize the order of our society. The reality is infinitely more subtle. If Goldstein himself fell into the hands of the Thought Police, he could not give them a list of his agents. Such a list does not exist. They are not an organization in the sense we know. Nothing holds it together but an idea. Individually, they cheat, forge, blackmail, corrupt children, spread disease and prostitution, in the name of spreading knowledge from generation to generation, until…in a thousand years…
…
Winston: [reads from Goldstein’s book] “In accordance to the principles of Doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects. And its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”
This is the role of the military industrial complex with respect to foreign and domestic policy here in America.
…
Winston: Parsons.
Parsons: Keep away from me, Smith. I’m an agent of Goldstein. I didn’t even know it myself. Thoughtcrime is so insidious. It just creeps up on you. My daughter found it out. Very proud of her. Very grateful I’ve been discovered before it’s too late. They won’t shoot me, will they, Smith? I know I could be very useful in a labor camp.
…
Winston: They got you too?
O’Brien: They got me a long time ago.
…
O’Brien: Shall I tell you why we brought you here? To cure you. To make you sane. That was 40. You can see that the numbers on this dial run up to 100. Will you please remember that, during our conversation? I have it in my power to inflict pain on you at any time…and in whatever degree I choose.
…
O’Brien: How many fingers, please?
Winston: Four. What else could I say? Five, or anything you like. Will you please stop it? Stop the pain…How can I help it? How can I help what I see in front of my eyes? Two and two makes four.
O’Brien: Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five, sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once.
…
O’Brien: Neither the past, nor the present, nor the future exists in its own right. Reality is in the human mind… not in the individual mind…which makes mistakes and soon perishes…but in the mind of the Party…which is collective and immortal.[/b]
So much of ideology and “objectivism” is rooted in this: The Party, the truth reflects necessity. And this necessity carries on beyond the grave. Thus through them you become immortal.
[b]O’Brien: How many fingers, Winston?
Winston [in agony]: Four. Four, I suppose there are four. I tried to see five. I wish I could.
O’Brien: Which do you wish? To persuade me that you can see five, or really to see them? Winston: Really to see them.
…
O’Brien: We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us. As long as he resists us, we never destroy him. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. We make his brain perfect before we blow it out. And then when there is nothing left but sorrow and love of Big Brother we shall lift you clean out of history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you. Not a name in a register. Not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past, as well as in the future.
…
Winston: Does Big Brother even exist?
O’Brien: Of course he exists.
Winston: No, I mean… does he exist like you or me?
O’Brien: You do not exist.
…
O’Brien: If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
…
Winston: In the end, they’ll beat you. Sooner or later, they’ll tear you to pieces.
O’Brien: On what evidence?
Winston: Goldstein’s book.
O’Brien: I wrote it. Or, at least, I collaborated in writing it. No book is individually produced, as you know.
…
Winston: I know you’ll fail. Something in this world…some spirit you will never overcome…
O’Brien: What is it, this principle?
Winston: I don’t know. The spirit of man.
O’Brien: And do you consider yourself a man?
Winston: Yes.
O’Brien: If you’re a man, Winston, you’re the last man.
…
Winston: When will you shoot me?
O’Brien: Might take a long time. But don’t give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later.
…
O’Brien: What are your feelings towards Big Brother?
Winston: I hate him.
O’Brien: You must love him. It is not enough to obey him. You must love him.
…
O’Brien: Room 101.
…
O’Brien: You once asked me, Winston, what was in room 101. I think you know. Everyone does. The thing that is in room 101…is the worst thing in the world. It goes beyond fear of pain or death. It is unendurable, and it varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive or castration…or many other things. In your case, it is rats.
…
O’Brien: In the proletarian areas, the rats will attack a baby and within five minutes, strip it to the bone. They also attack the sick and dying. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless.
…
O’Brien: The mask fits over your head, leaving no exit. I press the first lever and the rats move into the front compartment. I press the second, and the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot at you like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the air? They will leap onto your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue.
…
Winston: Do it to her! Do it to Julia! I don’t care what you do to her, but do it to her! Tear her my face off! Do it to Julia, not to me! Do it to Julia! Not to me!
…
Winston: I love you.
…
Title card: This film was photographed in and around London during the period April-June 1984, the exact time and setting imagined by the author.[/b]
A true story.
And over and again this story will be told: 1] What would you do? 2] What is the right thing to do? 3] How do you rationalize what you end up doing instead?
Every man for himself? Anything to stay alive?
Here though the better you are at your job the sooner you die. And what you do is aid and abet the Nazis in conquering the world.
The horns of a monstrous dilemma. Survival at all cost? Or is there a line to be drawn? But so much here depends on the admixture of many variables: what you are enduring, the likelihood of success, your philosophy of life, belief in God—or The Cause, how much you have to lose. Etc.
Conflicting goods. Eventually, we are always back to that “out in the world”; and always a particular world viewed from a particular point of view.
wiki
The film is based on a memoir written by Adolf Burger, a Jewish Slovak typographer who was imprisoned in 1942 for forging baptismal certificates to save Jews from deportation, and was later interned at Sachsenhausen to work on Operation Bernhard. Ruzowitsky consulted closely with Burger through almost every stage of the writing and production.
trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=qwr9nCurEEQ
THE COUNTERFEITERS [Die Fälscher] 2007
Written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky
Hans: They’re for our people.
Salomon: Our people? I’m myself. Everyone else is everyone else.
Hans: Don’t you see what’s happening around us? What the Nazis are doing to us?
Salomon: Know why the Jews are always persecuted? Because they refuse to adapt. It’s really not that hard.
Hans: Sally, don’t you have any…
Salomon: No. Need a certificate of Aryan purity? I’ll do one proving you descend from Siegfried and the Dragon.
He won’t think this way for long.
[b]Salomon: One adapts or dies.
…
Salomon: I won’t give the Nazis the pleasure of being ashamed I’m still alive.
…
Prisoner: …anything, as long as we are not put out here again. Anything.
…
Salomon: Rags! The English use rags! Fibers torn and abraded thousands of times.
…
Burger [who is a Communist]: …we should organize ourselves. There’s a lot of us. We’re well nourished, we’re strong, we could fight! We’ve got tools.
Salomon: Retouching knives? Against an SS company?
Burger: Rather than let them gas us!
Salomon: I’d rather be gassed tomorrow than shot for nothing today. A day is a day.
…
Burger: Can’t anyone see what’s happening? The Germans are bankrupt. No foreign currency means no gasoline, no raw materials. We’re financing the German war effort!
Salomon: So? Are you suggesting sabotage? In a concentration camp?!
[the look on Burger’s face says it all: Yes]
…
Burger: You cheap whore!
Salomon: Just be thankful you are in here, you idiot!
…
Burger: No, Sorowtsch’s negative was perfect, as always.
Prisoner: But why?
Burger: My wife and I were sent to Auschwitz for printing anti-Nazi flyers. I’m not going to print money for the Nazis.
…
Burger: We could contribute to fighting the Nazis here that wouldn’t be just a symbolic gesture!
Salomon: We’re alive. That’s worth a hell of a lot.
Burger: Isn’t it about more than just your own shittly little life?
Salomon: Our shitty little lives are the only thing we have!
Burger: Is this about surviving or proving you can forge the dollar? I’ll keep on destroying your negatives. You can squeal to Herzog if you want.
Salomon: We’ll have to pay if we don’t deliver the dollar. All if us will pay!
Burger: Yes.
…
Salomon: One doesn’t betray one’s mates.
Zilinski: Mates? We’re to die for the ideals of that shitty political ideologue? Burger the hero! Always determined to die the martyr. That’s fine for him, not me. I lost four toes to frostbite in Buchenwald. They broke my back in Dachau. More than once I nearly died of starvation. I deserve to survive this too!
Salomon: One never squeals on one’s mates. Never!
Zilinski: What’s this, jailbirds’ honor?
Salomon: If you betray him, I’ll kill you.[/b]
But then later…
Salomon [to Burger]: We’ve delayed the dollar by months. You’ve had your fun. But now our mates’ lives are at stake.
A “fuck the world” kind of guy. Well, most of the time. And not too many folks like this get to sit next to David Letterman on Late Night. Though after his last appearance no one like him probably ever will.
He is brutally cynical at times but can get away with it because he is also funny as hell. Well, if you like cynical humor.
A very strange guy for being so ordinary.
IMDb
NBC would not lease out the actual Late Night with David Letterman footage where Harvey Pekar finally lashed out at David Letterman, so the scene had to be recreated with actors.
trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=APpxQm7sH5k
AMERICAN SPLENDOR
Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
[b]Young Harvey: Why does everybody have to be so stupid?
…
Real Harvey [introducing his on-screen character]: OK. This guy here, he’s our man, all grown up and going nowhere. Although he’s a pretty scholarly cat, he never got much of a formal education. For the most part, he’s lived in shit neighborhoods, held shit jobs, and he’s now knee-deep into a disastrous second marriage. So, if you’re the kind of person looking for romance or escapism or some fantasy figure to save the day…guess what? You’ve got the wrong movie.
…
Harvey: “Plebeian”?
…
Harvey: Let’s get back to your book. What are you gonna do with it?
Crumb: I haven’t really thought about it. It’s just an exercise.
Harvey: No man, it’s more than just an exercise. It’s breaking ground, man. There’s some wild shit in here, Bob.
Crumb: You’re spitting on me, Harvey.
…
Crumb: You turned yourself into a comic hero?
Harvey: Sorta, yeah. But no idealized shit. No phony bullshit. The real thing, y’know? Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.
…
Harvey: People are starting to know the name Crumb. When you croak, man, you’re gonna leave something behind.
Crumb: Yeah, I guess.
Harvey: Come on, man. I tell you something, it sure beats working a gig like mine…being a nobody flunky and selling records on the side for $1.
Crumb: Well, that’s true.
…
Real Harvey [narrating]: Here’s our man, eight comics later. A brand new decade, same old bullshit. Sure, he gets lots of recognition for his writing now. His comics are praised by all the important media types telling people what to think. But so what? It’s not like he makes a living at it, like Bob Crumb. He can’t go and quit his day job or nothing. Who am I kidding?
…
Harvey [waking up in a cold sweat]: I got a job!
…
Alice: You’re Harvey Pekar? Alice Quinn, from school.
Harvey: College, yeah. We had a couple of Lit classes together.
Alice: What happened to you? You disappeared after two semesters.
Harvey: Yeah, I know. I got good grades and all, but there was that required Math class… hanging over my head. Eventually, the pressure got to be too much, so…[/b]
Gee, me too.
[b]Harvey [on phone]: You should meet me because I’m a great guy. Despite the way my comics read I got a lot of redeeming characteristics.
Joyce: I don’t know. Where would I stay?
Harvey: I don’t know. With me. Don’t worry. I’m not gonna put no moves on you.
Joyce: I’m not worried about that.
Harvey: So what are you worried about then?
Joyce: It’s the way all the different artists draw you. Sometimes you look like a younger Brando. But then, the way Crumb draws you…you look like a hairy ape, with all these wavy, stinky lines undulating off your body. I don’t really know what to expect.
…
Harvey [meeting Joyce for the very first time]: Look, you might as well know right off the bat, I had a vasectomy.
…
Joyce: I’ve had a lot of trouble eating animals. I support and identify with groups like PETA but unfortunately, I’m a self-diagnosed anemic. Also, I have all these food allergies to vegetables which give me serious intestinal distress. I guess I have a lot of borderline health disorders…that limit me politically when it comes to eating.
Harvey: Wow, you’re a sick woman.
Joyce: Not yet, but I expect to be. Everyone in my family has some sort of degenerative illness.
…
Harvey [at his apartment]: I was gonna clean up…but why should I give you any false notions? The truth is, I got a serious problem with cleanliness. If I had to wash a dish times, it’d still be dirty. They even kicked me out of the army 'cause I couldn’t learn to make a bed.
Joyce: I’ve seen worse. Could you get me some water and a few aspirin?
Harvey: What, you got a headache?
Joyce: No, but I want to avoid one.
…
Harvey: You don’t have any problems with moving to Cleveland?
Joyce: Not really. I find most American cities to be depressing in the same way.[/b]
A match made in Heaven?
[b]Real Joyce: There’ve been stories that I’ve participated in or things that have happened, and I’ve seen them as a lot more happy things going on in there. He just doesn’t put that in because he just doesn’t think that sunshine and flowers sell. Is that right? You always say, “Misery loves company.”
Real Harvey: You know, I’m just a gloomy guy, that’s all. It’s my perspective: gloom and doom.
…
[after watching the movie Revenge of the Nerds]
Harvey: What a crock of shit, man.
Joyce: You missed the whole point of the movie.
Harvey: Where the hell am I supposed to find the point in garbage? I agree with Toby.
Joyce: I think it’s a story of hope and tolerance.
Toby: Yes, it’s about time that the people who get picked on get to be the heroes.
Harvey: It’s an entertaining flick and all, and I can see why you like it, Toby. But those people on the screen ain’t even supposed to be you man! They’re college students who live with their parents in big houses in the suburbs. They’re gonna get degrees, get good jobs, and they’re gonna stop being nerds man! Look, Toby, the guys in that movie are not 28-year-old file clerks who live with their grandmother in an ethnic ghetto. They didn’t get their computers the way you did…by trading in a bunch of box tops and $49.50 at the supermarket.
Toby: You’re funny, Harvey.
…
Real Harvey [narrating]: Maybe I was being so harsh on Toby on account of my own problems. You see, I wasn’t even married a month and my old lady was already showing signs of trouble. Granted, I tend to get married fast, 'cause I’ll take any woman that’ll have me. But this time I really met my match.
…
Harvey: I’ll make room for you, okay? You just have to give me time. I’m not so good at these things.
Joyce: Because you’re obsessive-compulsive.
Harvey: Come on! I don’t wanna hear that psycho-babble crap.
Joyce: I don’t care if you don’t wanna hear it. You are the poster child for the DSM III. I’ll have you know I come from a very dysfunctional family. I can spot a personality disorder miles away.
…
Real Harvey [narrating]: If you think reading comics about your life seems strange, try watching a play about it. God only knows how I’ll feel when I see this movie.[/b]
And then a tiny [and very rare] peek inside the media industrial complex…
[b]Letterman: You know, folks, if it really is true that misery loves company our next guest must always have a house full of people.
Harvey [to himself]: Okay, asshole. You’re gonna pay for that one, man.
Letterman: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back Harvey Pekar.
[Harvey comes out wearing a t-shirt that reads ON STRIKE AGAINST NBC]
Letterman: Harvey, this is not the forum. This is not Meet The Press.
Harvey: You just want me to talk about simple-minded bullshit, David. But I ain’t co-opted like you. I got things to say.
Letterman: Relax, Harvey.
Harvey: For instance, I want to talk about a conflict of interest situation. Can we do that, David? How about that? You know, like GE owning this network, NBC. GE has basically become a military, industrial, financial…
Letterman: Can we get the singing shitzu back here? Has he left the building yet?
Harvey: You think NBC news is gonna cover what they do fairly? I got other things I wanna talk about.
Letterman: That’s enough…
Harvey: Just shut up, man! Don’t push me. I’m doing my own thing.
Letterman: Harvey, this is not…
Harvey: Are you afraid of the truth, David?
Letterman: It’s not about what you’re saying. It’s about your choice of venue. It may come as a shock to you, but this is a comedy show.
Harvey: Not tonight, it ain’t.
Letterman: You can take your winning personality and go get your own show.
Harvey: I don’t want my own goddamn show.
Letterman: We’ve had you on this show many times. You sulk, complain, and promote your comic book…and you really haven’t been appreciative.
Harvey: You didn’t do me any favors, okay? I’m still a file clerk. I’ve always been a file clerk… and it’s no thanks to you or to your goddamn pathetic audience.
Letterman: We’re gonna take a commercial. And when we come back, guess who’s not gonna be here.
Harvey: You want me to leave, David? Come on, ask me like a man. Don’t go hiding behind a commercial.
…
Harvey: Joyce, tell me the truth. Am I a guy who writes about himself in a comic book? Or am I just a character in that book?
Joyce: What are you talking about? What are you saying?
Harvey: If I die, will that character keep going? Or will he just fade away?
…
Harvey Pekar: My name is Harvey Pekar - that’s an unusual name - Harvey Pekar. 1960 was the year I got my first apartment and my first phone book. Now imagine my surprise when I looked up my name and saw that in addition to me, another Harvey Pekar was listed. Now I was listed as “Harvey L. Pekar”, my middle name is Lawrence, and he was listed as “Harvey Pekar” therefore his was a - was a pure listing. Then in the '70s, I noticed that a third Harvey Pekar was listed in the phone book, now this filled me with curiousity. How can there be three people with such an unusual name in the world, let alone in one city? Then one day, a person I work with, expressed her sympathy with me, concerning what she thought, was the death of my father, and she pointed out an obituary notice in the newspaper for a man named Harvey Pekar. And one of his sons was named Harvey. And these were the other Harvey Pekar’s. And six months later, Harvey Pekar Jr. died. And although I’ve met neither man, I was filled with sadness, ‘what were they like?’, I thought, it seemed that our lives had been linked in some indefineable way. But the story does not end there, for two years later, another ‘Harvey Pekar’ appeared in the phone book. Who are these people? Where do they come from? What do they do? What’s in a name? Who is “Harvey Pekar”?[/b]
Or John Smith for that matter.
Not being deaf myself [and never having interacted at length with anyone who was] I can only speculate that this is an entirely different manner in which to embody dasein. You are outside the norm so you create a new norm in the deaf community. But in many different ways others are outside the norm too. And even within the norm you create there are as many different narratives as there for those outside your own. Somehow these gaps need to be bridged while at the same time accommodating the ones that can never be.
Here they do an admirable job in discovering that above all else this is never easy. And nothing [of importance] is ever really fully resolved.
But how large is the gap between being born deaf and having once being a hearing person and then gone deaf?
IMDb
[b]Marlee Matlin won the Best Actress Academy Award for her role as Sarah Norman in this film. At 21 (actually 21 years and 218 days), she is the youngest ever winner of a Best Actress Oscar.
Marlee Matlin has only one spoken line in English during the entire film. The rest of her performance is in American Sign Language.[/b]
wiki
[b]Marking the film debut for deaf actress Marlee Matlin, Children of a Lesser God is notable for being the first since the 1926 silent film You’d Be Surprised to feature a deaf actor in a major role.
There was some criticism that the film was told entirely from a hearing perspective, for a hearing audience. The film is not subtitled (neither the spoken dialogue nor the signing); instead, as pointed out by Roger Ebert, the signed dialogue is repeated aloud by Hurt’s character, “as if to himself.”[/b]
CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD
Directed by Randa Haines
[b]Dr. Franklin: This is the most amazing résumé I’ve ever seen.
James: I’ve been with some really good schools. The best.
Dr. Franklin: All of them. All of the best. One right after another. You’ve also been with the Lucky Erin Bar and Grill.
James: Pittsburgh. Bartender.
Dr. Franklin: And a disc jockey.
James: Yeah, that was in Oklahoma. I used to broadcast in sign language.
Dr. Franklin: You’ve covered all the map, Mr. Leeds.
James: I’ve got a lot of energy.
Dr.Franklin: I’m sure you do have a lot of energy and a lot of new ideas. I did too when…
[signing like a long time ago]
Dr. Franklin: But nobody’s trying to change the world around here. Just trying to help a few deaf kids get along a little better. But that’s all. Everything else is razzle-dazzle. Am I making myself clear?
James: Yes, I believe that are you.
…
James: You know, if you let me, I bet I could teach you how to speak.
Sarah: And I could teach you to mop the floor.
James: But I don’t want to mop the floor.
Sarah: And I don’t want to speak.
[She walks away]
James [to himself]: Schmuck.
…
James [of the waiter]: He doesn’t think you’re stupid. He thinks you’re deaf. No. Only stupid hearing people think that deaf people are stupid.
…
Sarah: I don’t do anything I can’t do well.
…
Mrs Norman: Let’s get this straight. Sarah doesn’t want to see me.
James: Has she said why?
Mrs Norman: We don’t communicate very well.
James: Did you ever learn to sign? Some of the parents…
Mrs Norman: I’m really sick of you people coming here every few years asking the same questions, blaming me.
James: God. No one’s blaming you.
Mrs Norman: Of course they are. They can’t blame themselves. So, it’s all my fault. Fine. I don’t give a damn anymore.
…
James: I really just came to ask one question. What happened when Sarah tried to speak?
Mrs: Norman: What happened? She looked awful. She sounded awful. People made fun of her. What do you think?
…
Dr. Franklin: Yelling at the back of a deaf person, very good James. He’s been to all the best schools.
…
Sarah: Hearing boys? They could never be bothered to learn my language. I was always expected to learn to speak. Well, I don’t speak. Sex was always something I could do as well as hearing girls. Better! At first, I let them have me because they wanted to. Before long, the boys were lined up on a waiting list my sister kept for me. No introduction, no talk. Just went to a dark place and fucked. They didn’t even take me out for a Coke first.
…
James: Sarah…you are the most mysterious, beautiful, angry person I have ever met.
…
Dr Franklin: Oh, uh…your size?
James: Yeah.
Dr. Franklin: Be careful, Jimbo.
…
Dr. Franklin: Nobody’s going to fuck with one of my students.
James: She’s no student! She’s a -year-old woman!
Dr. Franklin: Alright, nobody’s going to fuck with one of my employees. It’s going to stop!
James: She’s quitting her job! She’s quitting. She’s moving in with me!
Dr Franklin: Oh. Oh, I see. She’s going to be your maid now, huh?
…
James: Sarah…what do you want?
Sarah: You.
James: You got me. What else?
Sarah: Children. I want deaf children.
James: What do you want me to say, that I want deaf children? No, I don’t. But if they were, that would be fine.
…
James [on phone]: Don’t translate that to Orin. Please. No, I’m not saying please. Wait a minute. That was Orin saying please. Look, it’s my fault. I probably sounded like myself instead of like the dorm counselor sounding like Orin.
…
James: You know I haven’t turned on my hi-fi since you…Hold it. That sounds like…like I’m blaming you for me not listening to music…Thank you. I will. I’ll rest my hands nd listen to something beautiful.
[Bach Plays]
James: I can’t enjoy it. I can’t, because you can’t.
…
James: What do you hear? I mean, is it just silence
Sarah: No one has ever gotten in there to find out.
James: Will you ever let me in?
…
Sarah: Nothing. I can do nothing. I’m equipped for nothing and trained for nothing. I feel like an idiot. You treat me like an idiot. You pity me. And now you see Marian…
James: What about Marian?
Sarah: Let me be me. You don’t. You want me to be a deaf person so you can change me into a hearing person!
…
Sarah: You don’t want to help anybody. You just want to change and control them. I think that you want me to speak. And I just want to be me.
James: Well, who the hell are you?!
…
Sarah: …you think for me, think for Sarah. As though there were no “I.” I will be with you, quit my job, learn how to play poker, leave Orin’s party, learn how to speak." That’s all you, not me. Until you let me be an “I” the way you are, you can never come inside my silence and know me. And I can’t let myself know you.
James: Well…that’s all very moving. But how are you going to manage? You can lock yourself back in your precious silent castle…I heard. I heard every word, goddamn it. I translated for myself. It went from your hands into my brain and out my mouth. And you know what? I think you’re lying. I don’t think that you think being deaf is so goddamn wonderful. I think that you’re scared to death to try. I think it’s nothing but stupid pride that’s keeping you from speaking right. You want to be on your own. You don’t want to be pitied. Then you learn to read my lips and use your mouth for something besides showing me you’re better than hearing girls in bed. Read my lips. What am I saying? You want to talk to me, then you learn my language. Did you understand that? Of course you did. You’ve probably been reading lips for years. But that’s the great control game, isn’t it? I’m the controller? What a fucking joke. Now, come on! Speak to me! Speak! Speak to me!
Sarah [all but screaming]: Aah! See my mouth! Aah! Hear my voice! I’m not afraid!
…
Mother: I sent you away because I didn’t know how to take care of you. Your father couldn’t accept you. He felt he’d failed…You’re right. I hated you for driving him away. Please forgive me.
…
Sarah: I have been angry since I was a little girl. I didn’t want to hurt again, so I used my anger to push you away. I’m sorry.
James: I’m sorry…for hurting you.
Sarah: But I learned from you. I learned that I can hurt…and I won’t shrivel up and blow away.
James: I don’t want to be without you, either. Do you think that we could find a place where we can meet not in silence and not in sound? [/b]
Asperger’s syndrome. It’s a type of Autism. A busted brain. Only some parts of it are anything but.
It makes no difference where you go, there are always bullies and thugs. Here a lot more than there but no less infuriating there I’ll bet. Being different, of course. These scumbags always poke around there. And then you learn the scumbags are bullied in turn. Somewhere. At home usually. That makes it harder to despise them. Then you think: it’s “the system”. It’s the nature of capitalism in the modern world to twist the lumpenproletariat [the NEDS] into the worst sort of human beings.
As for video games that take you into another world and let you be who you wish you were rather than who you are [here it is ArchLord] I’ve never had any inclination to play them. But I can easily understand why others would.
Would that all the bastards could be exposed like this.
IMDb
[b]The title Ben X is the character’s name, but when spoken quickly in Dutch, you get Benniks, meaning: I am nothing.
The memorial speech scene bears a strong resemblance to the one in the novel ‘Tom Sawyer’ where the two boys were watching their own funeral ceremony then revealed themselves.[/b]
wiki
[b]Ben X is a 2007 Belgian drama film based on the novel Nothing Was All He Said by Nic Balthazar, who also directed the film. The film is about a boy with autism (played by Greg Timmermans) who retreats into the fantasy world of the MMORPG ArchLord to escape bullying.
The novel was inspired by the true story of a boy with autism who committed suicide because of bullying.[/b]
trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=O3RJtmhMm90
BEN X [2007]
Written and directed by Nic Balthazar
[b]Ben [narrating]: It’s hard to explain. It’s hard to explain myself. But I never tell lies. Everything I say is true, even when I don’t say a thing.
…
Ben: I’m the one who is always wrong but no one could tell me exactly how to be right.
…
Doctor: Think of them as a computer that is configured differently. They see everything. They see every leaf extremely clearly, but they don’t see the tree. They literally can’t see the forest for the trees.
…
Ben [narrating]: The big picture—that’s what it’s all about. You have to try and see the big picture ande see that it doesn’t see you.
…
Teacher: God damn it, Bogaert! Leave Ben alone!..Ben’s just different from you, from the below-average members of the class. Fortunately for him if you ask me. But you obviously find it very difficult to accept that someone is different.[/b]
Of course this just puts a bigger target on Ben.
[b]Doctor: You have to remember that Ben isn’t feeble-minded. On the contrary. You could almost say he is strong-minded.
…
Ben [narrating]: He talks and talks and talks, the man who understands me.
…
Doctor: He has extraordinary perception. But every day he fights to be ordinary.
…
Doctor: They are volcanoes. They are walking volcanoes. Timebombs living under cover in our world. We don’t know when they will erupt. And their reactions often happen much later than the cause.
…
Text message on Ben’s phone: HEY MARTIAN, HE WHO TALKS IS GETTING IT
Ben: Me the Martian. I’d be getting it. Getting it. Getting it. But getting what? I was always getting it. Always.
…
Ben [narrating]: And then it was over. I was over. Eyes open again, head shut once more. Then it was time for truthfulness. Shamefulness, painfulness. Everything can be destroyed so easily. Why couldn’t I just be destroyed too?
…
Ben [narrarting in front of the mirror]: Then I saw that jerk standing there again. And I attacked him. I’d heard it before, the calling of night falling. Going right to the end of pain. How beautiful blood flowing from the vein.
…
Ben [narrating]: My father who never knows what to say. So I understand him in that way.
…
Ben [narrating]: The endgame. The endThe endThe endThe endThe endThe endThe endThe endThe end. The endgame.
…
Ben [narrating]: I had to say something. Anything. But the only thing I say is nothing.
…
Father: I remember he once asked me, How many reasons does one need to commit suicide?" I asked him what he meant by how many. He said, “How many? Two, five, ten?” That’s what he was thinking about. He wanted to know if he had enough.
…
Ben [narrating]: The endgame. My plan. The one-word plan. Murder. The murder of myself. Catch the train to nowhere. There is one advantage to killing yourself. You never have to look far for your victum.
…
Scarlite: If you think it’s all over quickly, you’re wrong. Even if you’re lucky enough to be decapitated immediately, apparently your head remains conscious for another 13 to 15 seconds. So you can imagine that what goes through your mind isn’t pleasant.
…
Scarlite: Do you want to quit this world, Ben? Go on then, go. But if you want revenge, take revenge. Otherwise you’re exactly what they say you are, a loser.
…
Ben [narrating]: She called it dying creatively. Suicide without dying. I had to learn everything. But I’d forgotten the most important thing. Learning to lie. To deceive.
…
Mother [on TV]: Someone had to die first. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come. Not for a boy. You can’t keep on begging and asking. And asking again and again and again that something be done to put a stop to it. That they would finally stop tormenting my son and making his life so impossible.[/b]
But what will really change in the world we know now? For as many as are shamed many more will be reborn in the belly of the capitalist beast.
I was in the military for three years. That’s not a prerequisite here but it does facilitate a better understanding of what you are up against when everything revolves around “following orders”. And [this being Jack Nicholson following them] stretching the meaning of that almost to the breaking point. But not beyond. He’s still a lifer.
Is this justice?
[That’s a joke]
I still find it hard to believe: Carol Kane as the “young whore”.
Warning: This being a film about folks in the Navy be prepared for some really foul language. Although nothing compared to the language in films today.
IMDb
[b]The script was completed in 1970, but contained too much profanity to be shot as written. Columbia Pictures waited for two years trying to get writer Robert Towne to tone down the language. Instead, by 1972, the standards for foul language relaxed so much that all the profanity was left in.
A tamer version with less profanity was filmed at the same time for TV showings. Because of the amount of swearing, the entire movie was pretty much shot twice.
Nancy Allen was originally offered the part of the “Young Whore”. But she turned it down because she felt she would be too nervous to speak while being nude on-camera.[/b]
Look for Gilda Radner. Just don’t blink at the wrong time.
THE LAST DETAIL
Directed by Hal Ashby
[b]Mulhall: You’re shittin’ me!
M.A.A.: I would never shit you. You’re my favorite turd!
…
Buddusky: Is that true what the chief said? You’re getting eight years and a dishonourable discharge for stealing $40?
Meadows: I didn’t get no $40. They caught me while I was lifting it from the box. I didn’t get it.
Buddusky: Jesus Christ! Eight years and a DD for $40 and you didn’t even get it?!
…
Buddusky: Meadows, is your word worth anything?
Meadows: Sure, it’s as good as the next guy’s.
Mulhall: The next guy is a prick.
…
Buddusky: Y’know, kid…you got a helluva knack for killin’ a conversation.
…
Buddusky: Let me tell you something about a kid like Meadows. He’s the kind…he’s going to the brig, and secretly he’s probably glad. On the outside too many things can happen to him. All of them bad. This way, the worst has already happened. He’s probably glad.
…
Mulhall: I hate this detail. I hate this fucking chickenshit detail!
…
Mulhall: You think having a good time in Washington will make it easier to pull his eight years? It won’t. It’ll make it harder.
…
Marine O.D.: [in bathroom at bus station] Sailor looks like he’s lost something.
Marine: Probably has trouble finding it with those thirteen buttons.
Buddusky: If I was a Marine, I wouldn’t have to fuck with no thirteen buttons. I’d just take my hat off.
…
Mulhall: That one guy was a big homo.
Meadows: Yeah, but, you guys, he sure was a happy homo.
…
Buddusky [responding to a woman’s sarcastic remark about his navy uniform]: You know what I like most about this uniform? The way it makes your dick look.
…
Meadows: If you’re Catholic, do you think it’s, uh, sacrilegious to chant?
Buddusky: Did it get you laid?
Meadows: No.
Buddusky: Then Meadows, what the fuck do you want to go on chanting for?
Mulhall: Chant your ass off, kid. But any pussy you get in this world, you gonna have to pay for, one way or another.
…
Young prostitute: Jesus Christ! That’s what I call quick.
…
Buddusky: You wanna try it again, kid?
Meadows: Yeah.
Buddusky [to prostitute]: Okay, honey.
Mulhall: Don’t worry about it, kid…plenty more where that came from.
…
Mulhall: You ever been married?
Buddusky: Not so you’d notice.
…
Buddusky: Welcome to the wonderful world of pussy, kid. The sink’s yours.
…
Buddusky: He don’t stand a chance in Portsmouth, you know. You know that, don’t you? Goddamn grunts, kickin’ the shit outta him for eight years…he don’t stand a chance.
Mulhall: I don’t want to hear about it.
Buddusky: ‘Maggot’ this, ‘maggot’ that…Marines are really assholes, you know that? It takes a certain kind of a sadistic temperament to be a Marine.[/b]
Based on a true story.
Yet another glimpse inside the world of religious faith. This time Jehovah’s Witnesses. But they are all the same when push comes to shove. It’s a world in which what you believe pales next to the fact that you believe in whatever that might happen to be. It’s a world of ritual and necessity. But, again, what you do is basically interchangable in all faiths. Why? Because what matters most is that you recognize the necessity to do particular things over and over and over again. Believing that if you do you are granted eternal life.
And the only way you can deprogram minds like these is to somehow get them to understand this. But usually [emotionally and psychologically] there is simply too much at stake. Especially with minds that have been brainwashed [indoctrinated] for years and years as children.
And these folks are the worst because they believe that unless you accept their faith and their faith alone your soul is lost.
Beware “the elders”.
This shunning bullshit is no joke. It rips families, friends, lovers to shreds. These people genuinely love each other. But they love – or fear – God more.
Poor Thea.
trailer:
youtu.be/fP0grwoiF-w
IMDb
In the last scene, the girl in the train who looks up and smiles at Sara is the “real life-Sara”. Her name is Tabita, and the director got the inspiration for the film from reading her story in a national Danish newspaper in 2006. While the story is fictionalized in places it is mostly true to Tabita’s story. The titles at the end of the film about Sara’s future accurately reflect Tabita’s life.
WORLDS APART [To Verdener] 2008
Written and directed by Niels Arden Oplev
[b]Father: I’ve done something terribly wrong.
Sara: What have you done?
Father: Now it’s all falling apart.
Sara: But what have you done?
Father: I was too weak. I was tempted.
…
Elizabeth: Dad did something very wrong.
Sara: Yes. But it’s worse that Mom won’t forgive him even though he repents.
…
Thea: There are three kinds of young Witnesses, you know. The 1s break all the rules. The 2s try out stuff without talking about it much.
Sara: That’s you.
Thea: And the 3s are the nerds. They attend all the meetings and sit at home with their parents and never do anything wrong.
Sara: That’s me.
Thea: Soon to become a 2.
…
Teis: When is the last time you saw your brother?
Sara: A year ago.
Teis: The rest of your family don’t see him either?
Sara: No.
Teis: Why not? Why not?
Sara: It’s none of your business, is it?
Teis: No, I guess not.
Sara: He didn’t behave correctly. He read the wrong book.
Teis: Okay. And you really didn’t like that book? I’d sure like to read it.
Sara: He’s expelled. That’s why.
Teis: Expelled from what?
Sara: We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Teis: You’re kidding me…
…
Teis: Aren’t you the ones who believe in all that Doomsday crap?
Sara: It’s called Armageddon and it’s not Doomsday but a transition to a new world.
Teis: Where everyone but you dies, right?
Sara: Yes.
Teis: So I’m going to die? [points to a woman] Is she going to die?
Sara: Unless she accepts Jehovah as the one true God, yes, she is.
Teis [pointing to another woman]: What about her?
Sara: Stop it.
Teis [pointing to a baby in a stroller]: Is that child going to die? Say the parents don’t accept your truth and the child is too young to understand, it’s still doomed?
…
Teis: So sex is a no-no. What else?
Sara: You don’t want to hear.
Teis: I’m serious.
Sara: You can’t join the army, you can’t vote, you can’t smoke or celebrate Christmas and birthdays. You can’t contradict the elders. But sex is the worst thing.
…
Teis: It’s so weird. You actually believe in God?
Sara: It’s weirder not to believe.
…
Teis: So if the doctor can only save you by giving you blood, you still say no? Even if you know you may die?
Sara: Yes, if your faith is strong. Jehovah says you should not take the blood of others.
…
The elder [after telling Sara she must break up with Teis]: I know you want to be God’s friend. You know what you must do in return. Right?
Sara [in tears]: Can’t you help me. Please?
The elder: You must trust in Jehovah. Only by trusting in Jehovah can you avoid Satan’s trials.
Sara: Isn’t there some way I can still see him. As a friend?[/b]
Nope.
[b]Teis: Don’t let them walk all over you and make you break up with me so you can hand out phamphlets and tell people they’re better off dead!
…
Jette [Teis’s mother]: Teis told us about your faith.
Teis: Jette and Vagn don’t believe in anything.
Jette: I have to say, we’re worried about how your being in a sect will affect Teis.
Vagn: We’ve been over that Jette.
Sara: Why do you call it a sect?
Jette: Well, that is what I’d call a closed group of uneducated people who believe in the end of the world and that they’re the only ones who’ll survive it.
Sara: We don’t think you need to be educated to be happy. We just try to bring people closer to God. That’s the only road to truth.
Jette [sarcastically]: The truth. Do you think there is only one truth, Sara? Jehovah’s Witnesses have proclaimed the end is near countless times with dates they get out of the blue. That’s what I call brainwashing. Do you know what that is? It’s when you tell children the same lie over and over again. You think so too, Vagn.[/b]
Here’s the problem though: By this time you like Sara a lot and tend to see Lette as the arrogant intellectual snob.
But not for long.
Teis: I don’t agree with the way my mother put it, but she’s right. Somewhere deep inside, you know she is.
Sara: I thought you were approaching us. I thought you wanted to help me.
Teis: I know how much is at stake for you but I just can’t. I can’t believe in it.
Sara: But we slept with each other.
Teis: I slept with you because I wanted to and because you wanted to. Stay here. Don’t go.
But she does.
But not for long.
[b]Mother: You’re walking on a razor’s edge.
Sara: I know.
…
Sara [to Elizabeth]: It’s not me who says I can’t be with him as well as with you.
Elizabeth: You lied to us.
…
The Elder: Sara, you know that fornicators offend the purity of Jehovah. If you choose carnal lust, you choose the lonliness of the soul. If you choose desire instead of Jehovah, you choose eternal death.
…
Father: Sara, I can’t see you anymore.
Sara: What do you mean? Sure you can. Why can’t you?
Father: You live here with your boyfriend.
Sara: My address is with Mom.
Father: But you live here.
Sara: Didn’t you hear me? My address is at Mom’s.
Father: God sees all.
Sara: In that case, He sees you choosing to believe me becasue you love me.
Father: Jehovah is truth, not a personal emotion.
Sara: So you want to stop seeing me?
Father: No, that’s what you want, Sara. This is your choice and yours alone. Jehovah sees you make that choice.
Sara: Don’t hide behind Jehovah. This is your choice.
…
Sara: So, this is goodbye?
Father: Yes, I suppose so.
Sara: Goodbye then.
Father: Goodbye, Sara.
…
Jonas: I can’t go on. I can’t stand being outside the church. It’s just too hard. I want to repent. If you do too, we can all be together again.
Sara: I’m sorry, Jonas. But I can’t.
…
Sara: Do you love me?
Father: How can you even ask? Of course I do.
Sara: Do you love God more than me?
Father: Yes.
Sara: Why?
Father: He created me. He is my Heavenly Father and will give me eternal life.
Sara: Know what, Dad? I think that’s very selfish of you.
Father. You could come back. Repent and come back so we can be a real family again.
Sara: Goodbye Dad.
…
Sara [voiceover]: Jehovah God. This is the last time we talk because I don’t believe in you anymore.
…
Title card: Sara doesn’t see her father and younger siblings anymore. She lives in Copenhagen where she’s studying to become a teacher.[/b]
What did she know and when did she know it? And what happens when we can’t ask the dead fetus to confirm it?
Forget the morality. Here we have to determine if what she did is legal. And what if what she believes happened is contradicted by what can be established as in fact having happened? Or what if she can’t remember what really happened at all? Or what if she is lying about what she thinks happened? Is she a murderer?
These things get complicated. Way past words.
And yet another peek inside the vapid, pop culture world of “America youth”. Are the “girls” or the “boys” the worst offenders?
trailer:
youtu.be/yFoky5z7fkw
STEPHANIE DALEY
Written and directed by Hilary Brougher
[b]Prosecutor: Claims she didn’t know she was pregnant. Claims that the infant was stillborn. Used her teeth to cut the cord.
Lydia [forensic psychologist]: Air in the lungs?
Prosecutor: And bowels. Also toilet paper embedded in the face.
…
Lydia: Did they talk to you about abortion?
Stephanie: No. But I could never do that.
Lydia: Why not?
Stephanie: Because it would be killing a baby.
…
Teacher [quoting Hawthorne]: No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitudes before finally becoming bewildered as to which may be true.[/b]
I don’t know about that. I’ve been doing it for years and years now.
[b]Teacher: Alright, we’re talking about The Scarlet Letter here. Anyone want to tell me the point of this book? Stephanie?
Stephanie: I think the point of the book is that it is harder to live a lie than it is to tell the truth and be punished.
Teacher: That’s good Steph. Anyone think the story has any relevance today? Satin?
Satin: I think it’s bullshit. He writes about this hypocritical priest who trashes this woman’s life and we’re supposed to feel sorry for him because he’s ruined his relationship with God.
Teacher: And you don’t think a relationship with God is important?
[the teacher gets down in her face]
Teacher: You know what great literature is about, Satin? It’s about man and God. Nothing else really matters.
…
Satin [to Stephanie]: You’re such a fucking sheep.
…
Stephanie: I already knew she was going to be dead.
Lydia: How did you know that?
Stephanie: I just knew.
Lydia: Did you check for a pulse?
Stephanie: I wrapped her up in toilet paper…
Lydia: …and threw her away.
Stephanie [in a whisper]: Yes.
Lydia: But first you had to cut the umbilical cord. Did you hold her while you chewed the cord?
Stephanie: I don’t remember.
Lydia: What did you do with your hands?
Stephanie: I don’t know.
Lydia: Tell me what you believed happened.
Stephanie: What if what I believe turns out not to be true?
Lydie: Then stop believing it.
…
Stephanie: I’m, uh, going to take a plea bargain.
Lydia: I think that’s a good idea.
Stephanie: Criminally negligent homicide. My lawyer says I’ll get five years. But if I go to jail for 6 months I might be able to get parole.
Lydia: You’ll get parole.
…
Lydia [seeing the bandage on Stephanie’s hand]: What happened?
Stephanie [misunderstands and thinks she is talking about the baby]: I held her.
Lydia [confused]: What?
Stephanie: I held her. She barely moved. She was so small. She wasn’t crying. Her breathing was bad. But I knew she wanted to live. But I did not want her to. So I told her to die. And she did. I killed her with my mind.[/b]
Three historical contexts. The rich and the poor, the rich and an emerging middle class and the rich and a burgeoning middle class. That can make all the difference in the world regarding the narratives we use. Even “over there”. But some will ever resist anything other than Us and Them.
Seeing how the rich live never motivates me to want a lot of money myself. I just need enough to do the things I enjoy. But any civilized society should strive to provide all citizens with access to the middle class. And fuck that maid shit. In fact, the whole idea of having “servants” is repugnant to me.
I do however prefer that folks [rich or not] be intelligent and “cultured”. That’s just a prejudice but I suspect a pervasive one here.
In the end the servant gets her revenge. If you call self-immolation revenge.
wiki
Although the film includes some key elements of the original, Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid from 1960, Im has said that he tried to never think of it during the production in order to come up with a modern and original work. One major difference between the versions is that the original film took place in the middle class, while the remake is set in an extreme upper-class environment. Im explains this with South Korea’s social structure around 1960, which was a time when the country’s middle class started to form and many poor people moved from the countryside to work in the cities: “women became housemaids who served not only for the rich but also the middle class and that issue had served as the basis to Kim Ki-young’s work. What I realized upon reworking The Housemaid in 50 years was that there are much more wealthy people now, people who are millionaires.”
One thing though that hardly changed at all: men.
Look for Shin-ae from Secret Sunshine.
As for the ending, here is what the director has to say:
There has been a lot of controversy surrounding that last scene. Even one of the producers wanted it deleted. Many people complain about it. But without that scene, I think the movie would have been just so-so. I went with my gut feeling and included it. It’s a simple set-up: they’re giving a birthday party to a little girl who just witnessed something terrible and trying to cover up her trauma with expensive gifts. I wanted audiences to wonder if she could truly heal from such an event.
Maybe. But no way in hell would I have used it.
Is this a remake?
hancinema.net/hancinema-s-fi … 27819.html
Unfortunately, it’s been years since I watched the original. And even a used DVD at Amazon now cost $115. New? $200!!
trailer:
youtu.be/CvZowWUNRh4
THE HOUSEMAID [Hanyo] 2010
Directed by Sang-soo Im
[b]Mrs. Cho: Madam’s underwear is in the bathroom, you should hand wash it. When you get that big, you pee just by sneezing.
…
Hae-ra: I don’t understand why your brother’s wife stopped after two kids. That’s for common people who have to struggle to raise them.
…
Eun-yi: I love how you’re such a nice girl. You’re not bad-tempered, you’re polite to me.
Nami: I learned that from father. He said to treat people politely. It may seem like a sign of respect, but it’s really putting myself first.
…
Mi-hee [Hae-ra’s mother]: She doesn’t even realize she’s pregnant yet?
Mrs. Cho: Well, she’s kind of on the slow side.
Mi-hee: Slow? Really? What do you think she’ll do when she finds out?
Mrs. Cho: Slow, or naive, she’s not completely stupid, but she won’t pull any tricks. She’s pure-hearted.
Mi-hee: Hmm. Like Dostoyevsky’s Idiot.
…
Woman [mother?] : Your boss came in naked and you didn’t even resist?
Eun-yi: I was naked too and waiting for him.
Woman: Are you out of your mind? So, is it different with a rich man?
Eun-yi: [handing her the check from Hoon]: He finished with that.
Woman: Wow. I guess it is different.
…
Mi-hee: Your husband’s fucking her, and she’s pregnant. That’s a fact. The possibility that the baby’s not your husband’s? Zero.
…
Mrs. Cho [handing Eun-yi yet another check]: Your consolation payment. You know this is how that family solves any problems, right? Convenient for them and not bad for us either.
…
Mrs Cho: R.U.N.S.! Revolting Ugly Nauseating and Shameless work!
…
Mi-hee: There are obstetrics tests listed on the hospital bill. Now she knows she is pregnant. Let’s see what that bimbo tries to pull.
Hae-ra: What did he see in that cheap, common slut?
…
Hae-ra: How could that bastard do this to me? In my house, with the bitch who washes my underwear?!
…
Mi-hee [to Hae-ra]: Let him sleep around all he wants. Later, you can enjoy yourself and live like a queen.
…
Mi-hee [to Eun-yi]: That’s a $100,000 check. That thing inside you, it’s nothing. You can just cut it off, like a cyst.
…
Mrs. Cho: These people are scary.
…
Eun-yi: I’m pregnant. But the ladies of the house found out everything. They really smacked me around. They said they’d give me $100,000 if I have an abortion. But I’m having this baby.[/b]
No, she’s not. You just don’t fuck with scary people. Especially not the rich ones. Unless, of course, you’re crazy.
Eun-yi: R.U.N.S…R.U.N.S.
Is she a cruel sadistic pig and crazy? Does that make it different?
This is a movie “inspired by actual events”. That can mean practically anything. But in this world it isn’t hard to imagine it all unfolding—even more horrifically than this. Just tune in to the Discovery ID channel from time to time.
Especially if you think this sort of stuff doesn’t go on today.
This is a really hard movie to watch. You feel helpless because you know you can’t do a goddamn thing to stop what is still going on.
And the boys? Is it all about sex to them? Or more Mother Knows Best? And then there’s David.
Oh, and don’t forget: God sees all. And the irony still being that you need Him here because, well, what else is there?
IMDb
The movie (and the novel it was based on) is based on a true story. The character of Ruth is inspired by Gertrude Baniszewski, who, in 1965, tortured two girls who were in her care (with the help of her sons, daughters, and one of her daughters’ boyfriends). Gertrude (and her daughter, Paula) was given a life sentence; in 1985, she (Gertrude) successfully made parole. She died of lung cancer in June of 1990, at the age of 60.
wiki
[b]The film had a polarizing effect on film critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it currently holds a 67% “Fresh” rating. In contrast, Metacritic assigns it a 29.
Stephen King said about the movie, “The first authentically shocking American film I’ve seen since Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer over 20 years ago. If you are easily disturbed, you should not watch this movie. If, on the other hand, you are prepared for a long look into hell, suburban style, The Girl Next Door will not disappoint. This is the dark-side-of-the-moon version of Stand By Me.”[/b]
Here is what the film is based on:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Likens
Pay particular attention to this:
The boys would spend two years in prison. In 1971, Paula and Gertrude Baniszewski were granted another trial. Paula pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was released two years later. Gertrude, however, was again convicted of first-degree murder. She came up for parole in 1985, and despite a public outcry and petitions against her release, the parole board took her good behavior in prison into account, and she was released.
This fucking world.
trailer:
youtu.be/typY725pjZ4
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR [2007]
Directed by Gregory Wilson
[b]Adult David: You think you know about pain? Talk to my second wife. When she was nineteen she got between a couple of fighting cats, and one of them went at her, climbed her like a tree, tore gashes out of her thighs and breasts and belly that you can still see today. She got thirty stitches and a fever that lasted for days. My second wife says that’s pain. She doesn’t know shit, that woman.
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Ruth: I’m just warning you, Honey, if I see any slutting going on around here, your ass is grass.
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Ruth: You too Davey, go. Sorry, but I got some difficult thinking to do.
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Ruth: Good morning David. Grab yourself a beer if you want.
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Ruth: Damn it, Donnie, now we’ve got to cauterize.
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Ruth: One sound down here and I promise I’ll kill the both of you. Not just punish you, kill you. Dead. You got that, David? Are we straight about that?
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Ruth: You boys better string her up again. We’ve got her so no man will ever want her.
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Adult David: The past catches up to you, whether you like it or not. It can be a gift or a curse if you let it. I will never forget the gift of Meg Loughlin, though I am plagued with the torment of failing again, failing somebody. But as she taught me, it’s what you do last that counts.[/b]
It’s really hard to make up your mind about David here. About what he did first, for example. And second. And third. And fourth.