philosophy in film

Prepare or die!

Preppers. They’re everywhere these days. Or they are if you subscribe to cable television. And why not. There are so many potential threats out there. Consider: asteroids, comets, CMEs, a supernova, a supervolcano, a megatsunami, runaway climate change, a freak weather event, a viral pandemic, a nuclear war, a gamma ray burst, an economic implosion, a societal collapse…even something they call “grey goo”.

So, sure, take shelter.

Of course the calamity can also originate from inside your own mind. Disturbing dreams, for example. An apocalyptic mental illness. Once we go down this road though we always have to wonder: is it real…or is it all just in his head? And once it gets stuck in there it can come at you from all directions. You start to see what you believe. And not believe what others tell you they see.

Here you have to take shelter from yourself. Good luck with that. And good luck for those around you.

This is one of those movies that will spark debate: What happened at the end? What does the end of the movie mean? Some folks hate ambiguity. Some can’t get enough of it.

Oh, and you also get another look at health care in America. The part about how some just can’t afford to actually need it. Or barely can.

IMDb

[b]Tova Stewart, the little girl who plays Hannah, is deaf in real life. And so are both her parents.

Michael Shannon purposely didn’t read up on mental illnesses before taking on the role as Curtis, as this is something the character himself knew little about.

As it is mentioned in the DVD special features, the extras in the group lunch at the Lion’s Club were only told they would get free lunch and be in a movie. They had no idea the scene would escalate to a physical fight and (seemingly) psychotic rant.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Shelter
trailer: youtu.be/I5U4TtYpKIc

TAKE SHELTER [2011]
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols

[b]Curtis [talking about Hanna, his deaf daughter]: I still take off my boots not to wake her.
Samantha [whispering]: And I still whisper.

…

Curtis [to the family]: I’m thinking about cleaning up that storm shelter out back.

…

Curtis [paying for a prescription]: How much is it?
Clerk: $47.92.
Curtis: How much is the co-pay?
Clerk: That is the co-pay.

…

Curtis [at counselor’s office]: Out of the five possible symptoms needed to be diagnosed with schizophrenia – delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized behvior and the negative symptoms – I’ve had two. Delusions and hallucinations.
[the counselor looks at him…startled]
Curtis: So, I took this quiz in the back of the book. I scored a five out of a possible 20. Schizophrenia starts at 12. So they say it might be a brief psychotic disorder.[/b]

It seems his mother was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenia when she was 30. He’s now 35.

[b]Samantha [watching Curtis dig the shelter]: Are you out of your mind?!

…

Curtis [to Samantha]: You gonna leave me?

…

Curtis [ranting angrily at a roomful of neighbors]: You think I’m crazy? Well, listen up, there’s a storm coming like nothing you’ve ever seen, and not a one of you is prepared for it. Sleep well in your beds. 'Cause if this thing comes true, there ain’t gonna be any more.

…

Curtis: Sam?
Samantha: Okay.[/b]

This comes about as close as a mainstream movie is ever likely to in exposing what goes on behind the scenes in most top drawer American elections. Like the song says:

Presidential elections are planned distractions
To divert attention from the action behind the scenes
Like a game of chess when the house is a mess
Or a petty money squabble when your marriage is in trouble
Or a football game when there’s rioting in the streets
youtu.be/BbT1PJsTVkU

It’s a scenario cynics like me dream of: Some nationally known candidate [here a Senator] has nothing left to lose so he runs a political campaign predicated solely on what he actually believes is true and not what his handlers insist he must stump on based on the latest polls. Or in alignment with the wishes of his biggest campaign contributers.

Imagine a televised campaign debate where a candidate says this to the celebrity newswoman from the corporate media:

Come on, why are you here? Admit it. It’s because you make a bundle. Come on, come on. We got three pretty rich guys here getting paid by some really rich guys to ask a couple of other rich guys questions about their campaigns. But our campaigns are financed by the same guys that pay you guys your money!

The plot is totally absurd but no more absurd than the actual election campaigns we endure. Unfortunately, the very real points being made here about the nature of the American political process tend to get lost in slapstick, in farce…in the inanity that unfolds between the preposterous characters making the points.

And the ending? Oh well, this is Hollywood. And Twentieth Century Fox no less!

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulworth
trailer: youtu.be/-0SgQKpWGD4

BULWORTH [1998]
Directed by Warren Beatty

[b]Insurance company lobbyist: …you throw down some lazy welfare-taking, drug-dealing, rap singing punk and then you tell me my people have to give him a policy? Why? So he can burn down his house or smoke crack and get AIDS?
Bulworth: I’m not sure you can get AIDS by burning down your house, but I get your point.

…

Bulworth [to the guy who hires the hitman]: A check for the second half of the money. If I’m not dead by Monday, I stop payment on that check.[/b]

That’s right: He’s hiring someone to kill himself. Let’s just say it’s, uh, integral to the plot.

[b]Woman in the audience [at South Central church]: When the riots went down four years ago you promised us federal funding to rebuild our community. What happened?
Bulworth: What happened was we knew that was gonna be big news for a while so we all came down here – Bush, Clinton, Wilson – we got our pictures taken, told you all what you wanted to hear and then we pretty much forgot about it.

…

Woman in the audience [at South Central church]: We can’t get any insurance down here—no health insurance, fire insurance, life insurance. Why haven’t you come out for Senate Bill 2720?
Bulworth: Well, because you really haven’t contributed any money to my campaign have you? Do you have any idea how much these insurance companies come up with? They pretty much depend on me to take a bill like that and bottle it up in committee during an election and in that way we can kill it when you are not looking.

…

Woman in the audience: Are you sayin’ the Democratic Party don’t care about the African-American community?
Bulworth: Isn’t that obvious? You got half your kids are out of work and the other half are in jail. Do you see ANY Democrat doing anything about it? Certainly not me! So what’re you gonna do, vote Republican? Come on! Come on, you’re not gonna vote Republican! Let’s call a spade a spade!
[loud, angry booing]
Bulworth: I mean - come on! You can have a Billion Man March! If you don’t put down that malt liquor and chicken wings, and get behind someone other than a running back who stabs his wife, you’re NEVER gonna get rid of somebody like me![/b]

Next up: The Jews.

[b]Man: Senator, do you thnk those of us in the entertainment business need government help in determining limits on the amount of sex and violence in today’s movies?
Bulworth: You know the funny thing is how lousy most of your stuff is. You make violent films and dirty films and you make family films…but most of them are just not very good, are they? It’s funny…so many smart people could work so hard and spend all that money and make so much money on them. What do you think it is…it must be the money, huh? It turns everything to crap! How much money do you guys really need?
Man: Do you think it’s advisable to schedule campaign stops with industry leaders when you have such a low opinion of their product?
Bulworth: My guys are not stupid. They always put the big Jews on my schedule. You’re mostly Jews, right? Three out of four anyway. I’m sure Murphy put something bad about Farakhan in here for you.

…

Bulworth: What is it exactly you’re concerned about, Murphy?
Murphy: I’m concerned that you stood up in front of three hundred people in a black church and told them that they were not a factor and never would be as long as we remain in the pocket of the insurance lobby! I’m concerned that you went to a fundraiser in Beverly Hills and told various leaders of the entertainment industry that they make a lousy product, and since many of them also happen to be Jewish, you decided the prudent thing to do would be to mock their Jewish paranoia! I’m concerned that we are in an after-hours club in Compton on the eve of the most important event of the campaign swing, where God knows how much illegal activity is taking place and you are SMOKING MARIJUANA!

…

Bullworth: Murphy, Feldman, you’re lookin’ pretty beat / I thought you might feel better with some ribs to eat / Eat 'em, gentlemen, you’ll think they’re really fine / And if you want a couple more you can get 'em anytime!
Murphy: I am incredibly frightened.

…

Bulworth [now rapping his campaign]: One man, one vote now is that really real/The name of our game is “let’s make a deal”
Now people got problems the haves and have nots/But the ones that make me listen pay for 30 second spots.

…

Bulworth: Why do you think there are no more black leaders?
Nina: Some think it’s because they all got killed but I think it’s from the decimation of urban manufacturing bases. Senator, an optimistic, energized population throws up optimistic, energized leaders. When you shift manufacturing to the Thrid World you destroy the blue collar core of the black activist population…Fact is, I’m a materialist. If I look at the economic base, high employment means jobs for African-Americans. World War II meant lots of jobs for black folks. That is what energized people for the civil rights movement. An energized hopeful community not only produces leaders, but leaders they’ll respond to.

…

Bulworth [at the debate]: The companies we both get our money from want us to believe that corporations are more efficient than government, right? You want to know why the health care industry is the most profitable business in the United States? 'Cause the insurance companies take 24 cents out of every dollar that’s spent. You know what it takes the government to do the same thing for Medicare? Three cents out of every dollar. These guys need to be regulated. What, do you think these pigs are going to regulate themselves?

…

Bullworth: We’ve got people in this country that can’t even buy a meal! / Ask a brother who’s been downsized if he’s gettin’ a deal. / Or a white boy bustin’ ass till they put him in his grave / he ain’t gotta be black to be livin’ like a slave.

…

Bulworth: All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin’ everybody 'til they’re all the same color.[/b]

I’m reasonably certain the bourgeoisie – most of them – are [by now] indifferent to being mocked and ridiculed. As long as they get to keep doing the things that the bourgeoisie do. For instance, exploiting the rest of us.

In other words, for the “masses” [sadly], all they really have at their disposal is the ability to caricature them.

But enough of “politics”. Here it’s personal. And their mannerisms never change: always surreal, always absurd. Whatever the occasion. A world totally bereft of irony. By, among other things, bursting at the seams with it. Lampooning the French ruling class is [apparently] almost as effortless an undertaking as lampooning the prigs in Britain. It’s all just a matter of perspective. And here even the “revolutionaries” are fair game.

In short, everything is blown up all out of proportion. Until [at last] we begin to see how futile it is to take any of it seriously at all. Except that “out in the world” the various factions do take “it” seriously. Along with themselves. After all, it’s not like they have much choice. Though the brutal consequences would not be described [by many] as surreal and absurd.

And then there is the question of what to put in its place. Is there anything at all that isn’t also subject to satirical romps? Bunuel…the nihilist?

Or just think of it as a dream within a dream within a dream.

Look for the French connection.

IMDb

In his autobiography, My Last Sigh, Luis Buñuel said he had difficulty finding a title for the film. On the last day of writing the script, he came up with A bas Lénine, ou la Vierge à l’écurie - Down with Lenin, or The Virgin in the Manger. Someone suggested Le Charme de la Bourgeoisie, and the adjective “discret” was eventually added. Buñuel said he and co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière never once thought of the word “bourgeoisie” while working on the screenplay.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discre … ourgeoisie
clips from movie: youtu.be/YOsobfjQt7k

THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE [Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie] 1972
Written in part and directed by Luis Buñuel

[b]Rafael: No system can give vthe masses the proper social graces. But you know me, I’m no reactionary.

…

Bishop: I’m delighted to meet you. We have an important mission in Bogota.
Rafael: Bogota is in Colombia.
Bishop: That’s right, Colombia. Sorry, I got mixed up. I’ve never been to Miranda, but I hear it is a magnificent country: the Great Cordillera, the pampas…
Rafael: The pampas are in Argentina, monsignor.
Bishop: The pampas. Of course. I should’ve known that. Recently I saw a book on Latin America. There were photos of your ancient pyramids.
Rafael: Our pyramids? We have no pyramids in Miranda. Mexico and Guatemala have pyramids. We don’t.
Bishop: You’re sure?
Rafael: Absolutely.

…

Colonel: Marijuana isn’t a drug. Look at what goes on in Vietnam. From the general down to the private, they all smoke.
Mme. Thevenot: As a result, once a week they bomb their own troops.
Colonel: If they bomb their own troops, they must have their reasons.

…

M.: Any news from Miranda?
Rafael: Yes.
M.: The situation?
Rafael: Quite calm.
M.: And the guerrillas?
Rafael: There are a few left. They are a part of our folklore.
Alice: You have problems with the students?
Rafael: Students are young. They must have some fun.
Mme. Thevenot: How’s your government treating them?
Rafael: We are not against the students, but what can you do with a room full of flies? You take a fly-swatter and Bang! Bang!
Mme. Thevenot: No more flies!

…

Colonel: I didn’t know that chivalry still existed in your semi-savage country.
Rafael: Sir, you just insulted the Republic of Miranda!
Colonel: I don’t give a damn about the Republic of Miranda!
Rafael: And I shit on your entire army!

…

Peasant: Father? I want to tell you something.
Bishop: Then tell me, my child.
Peasant: I really don’t like Jesus Christ. Even as a little girl I hated him.
Bishop: But such a good, gentle God? How is it possible?![/b]

There are folks out there who know just how realistic this movie is. Well, I’m not one of them. Is it basically the exception or basically the rule?

Famous crime novelist and LAPD specialist James Ellroy described the movie as “a complete waste of time”. IMDb

One would imagine however there is a rather significant gap between how the the city of Los Angeles would like citizens to view their police department and the way it actually functions instead.

My own reservations stem from the manner in which some argue this is the only realistic way in which to approach narcotics in the Big City; but the plain and simple truth is this: it hardly seems to be working. Drug use is as rampant as ever and the prison industrial complex still revolves around it. At best they might argue that things would be considerably worse if the Alonzos – the “system” – weren’t around. And maybe that’s true. One thing for certain: in narcotics there is an enormous amount of cash involved. Who wouldn’t be tempted?

He fucks with everybody though. That means you’re on his side with some folks but not with others. And it’s hard to tell if he is really being himself or is just playing this character he invented on the job. Or when he is even telling the truth for that matter. But one thing is for sure: it’s a goddamned dangerous world that he does these things in. By the book? Right.

It’s all about the means to an end. Sooner or later it has to be. It’s just that we live in an imperfect world. Sometimes the result is justice and sometimes it’s not.

And it goes without saying: Don’t fuck with the Russians.

IMDb

When the movie came out, many viewers and critics were skeptical of the scenes where Jake Hoyt smokes marijuana laced with PCP and Alonzo’s explanation of how a cop who didn’t take drugs offered to him on the street would be ID’d as police and murdered. David Ayer responded in an interview by holding up a highlighted section of the LAPD’s rules and regulations; it stated that officers were allowed to use narcotics in very specific undercover situations, and hewed closely to what Alonzo told Jake.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training_Day
trailer: youtu.be/gKTVQPOH8ZA

TRAINING DAY [2001]
Directed by Antoine Fuqua

[b]Alonzo: Tell me a story, Hoyt.

…

Alonzo: Today’s a training day, Officer Hoyt. Show you around, give you a taste of the business. I got 38 cases pending trial, 63 in active investigations, another 250 on the log I can’t clear. I supervise five officers. That’s five different personalities. Five sets of problems. You can be number six if you act right. But I ain’t holding no hands, okay? I ain’t baby-sitting. You got today and today only to show me who and what you’re made of. You don’t like narcotics, get the fuck out of my car. Go get you a nice, pussy desk job, chasing bad checks or something, you hear me?

…

Alonzo: Why do you wanna be a narc?
Jake: I want to protect the streets by ridding it of dangerous drugs.
Alonzo: Yeah, but why do you wanna be a narc?
Jake: I wanna make detective.
Alonzo: There you go. You stick around with me, you’ll make it. Unlearn that bullshit they teach you at the Academy. That shit’ll get you killed out here.
Jake: I’ll do anything you want me to do.
Alonzo: My nigga.

…

Alonzo: To be truly effective, a good narcotics agent must know and love narcotics. In fact, a good narcotics agent should have narcotics in his blood.
Jake: Are you gonna smoke that?
Alonzo: No, you are.
Jake [laughs]: Hell if I am.
Alonzo: You not gon’ smoke it?
Jake: Naw, man. I became a narc to rid the streets of dopers, not to be one.
Alonzo: Come on, man, take a hit.
Jake: Naw, man.
Alonzo [slams on brakes, then puts a gun to Jake’s head]: Yeah, right. If I was a drug dealer, you’d be dead by now, motherfucker. You turn shit down on the streets, and the chief brings your wife a crisply folded flag. What the fuck’s wrong with you? Talking about - You know what? I don’t want you in my unit. I don’t even want you in my division. Get the fuck out the car. Go back to the Valley, rookie.
Jake: All right, I’ll smoke it.

…

Alonzo: Didn’t know you liked it wet, though.
Jake: What’s wet?
Alonzo: Butt-naked. Ill. Sherm. Dust. PCP. Primos. P-dog. That’s what you just had.

…

Roger: Here’s a joke, boy. One day this man walks out of his house to go to work. He sees this snail on his porch. So he picks it up and chucks it over his roof, into the back yard. Snail bounces off a rock, cracks its shell all to shit, and lands in the grass. Snail lies there dying. But it doesn’t die. It eats some grass. Slowly heals. Grows a new shell. And after a while it can crawl again. One day the snail up and heads back to the front of the house. Finally, after a year, the little guy crawls back on the porch. Right then, the man walks out to go to work and sees this snail again. So he says to it, ‘What the fuck’s your problem?’
Jake [bursts out laughing]: That wasn’t funny.
Alonzo: Then why are you cackling like a jackal?
Jake: I dunno.
Roger: Figure that joke out and you’ll figure the streets out.

…

Alonzo: You know about this place?
Jake: It’s the Jungle, right? They say don’t come with anything less than a platoon.
Alonzo: This is the heart of it. The jungle. Damu headquarters. Stoners. A lot of murder investigations lead here. One way in, one way out. Don’t ever come here without me. I’m serious.

…

Jake: How much money was in that bag?
Alonzo: 40 G’s.
Jake: What was that for?
Alonzo: You really wanna know?
Jake: Yeah. I asked, didn’t I?
Alonzo: Nothing’s free in this world, Jake. Not even arrest warrants.
Jake: Shit, I didn’t wanna know.

…

Alonzo [after killing Roger and shooting Jeff]: It’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove.

…

Jake [to Alonzo]: That is the second time you have pointed a gun at me, there will not be a third.

…

Jake: That man was your friend, and you killed him like a fly.
Alonzo: Why is he my friend, because he knows my first name? Son, this is the game. I’m playing his ass. That’s my jub. That’s your job. Roger sold dope to kids. The world is a better place without him. This man was the biggest major violator in Los Angeles. I watched that cocksucker operate with impunity for over 10 years, and now I got him. The shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers. What, we all of a sudden gonna roll up in a black-and-white? Come on, man, take the money.

…

Alonzo: All right, burn it, barbecue it, fish-fry it, I don’t give a fuck, but it’ll make the boys feel better…
Jake: Fuck their feelings.
Alonzo: You’re not makin’ them feel like you’re part of the team.
Jake: Team? You guys are fuckin’ insane.

…

Alonzo [to Jake]: The sooner you match what’s in your head with what’s in the real world the better you’ll feel.

…

Jake [to Alonzo]: Its not so fun when the rabbit has a gun.

…

Jake [to Alonzo]: You wanna go to jail or you wanna go home?

…

Alonzo: What a day. What a motherfuckin’ day.[/b]

Never had to endure all this shit myself. I knew what I wanted in a woman and so I put myself in an environment where the women who wanted much the same thing in a man tended to congregate.

Here though the guy just wants to get laid. It’s on his brain. All the time. And what counts [aside from looks, charm, wit and a bank account of course] is learning all the tricks of the trade. The trade? Being a wolf. Roger, a sophistication Manhattan “player”, wrote the book. On the other hand, Nick, his nephew, is still in high school. But we know where this one is going practically from the start. It just depends on how well it is written. And, for what it is, this one is well written indeed. A gem.

Roger, you see, is pretty much of an asshole. So Nick is there to straighten him out. Unwittingly, as it were. Not that Roger doesn’t have a lot to teach him. It’s just that he [Roger] has a lot to learn himself. About treating a lady, for example. Or, for that matter, his own sister.

Of course, they are all very, very attractive. Beautiful, you might say. Another sex, lies, and videotape ensemble. Hey, few have the balls to scrap that part of the narrative.

IMDb

Jesse Eisenberg received his very first kiss from Jennifer Beals in a scene from this movie.

This was his film debut.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Dodger_(film
trailer: youtu.be/8xWPGxa2vNA

ROGER DODGER [2002]
Written and directed by Dylan Kidd

[b]Roger [at lunch with the gang from work]: Interestingly, a group of scientists in England just announced their intention to fertilize an egg without the use of sperm cells.
Joyce: I don’t understand that.
Roger: Every cell in the human body contains a copy of the genome pattern. The only reason sperm cells have all the fun is that up until now they were the only ones with access. Within our lifetime, artificial insemination will render sperm as useless as an assembly line worker in Detroit.

…

Joyce: Roger, you know that we women make love because we like it. Not just to procreate.
Roger: Yes. But are men absolutely necessary? Think of the structure of the female genitalia. What is the most sensitive part of the vagina? It’s the clitoris. The crown of the clitoris contains 8,000 nerve fiibers. It’s a far great concentration than in any part of the male body even our fiingertips. It is the most effiicient, pleasure-delivery system ever devised by nature. Now, ask yourself why didn’t the clitoris end up inside the vagina so that intercourse would be naturally…compellingly, constantly pleasurable for a woman?
Joyce: I know the answer. Because in primitive time, women often died of childbirth. So for intercourse to be too pleasurable…it wouldn’t make sense from a Darwinian standpoint.
Roger: Absolutely right. What does that tell us? That for women intercourse and sexual fulfiillment were never intended to intersect. New technology just makes it offiicial. Future generations of women will evolve clitorises – ‘‘clitori, clitorati’’ – that are larger, longer, even more sensitive. And a woman’s ability, as well as her desire to self-stimulate will increase exponentially as intercourse is robbed of its procreative utility. Natural selection. That is a principle of nature. Selection. Something has to lose, something has to be defeated in order for something else to be selected.

…

Roger [to woman in a bar]: I could tell you that what you think of as your personality is nothing but a collection of Vanity Fair articles. I could tell you your choice of sexual partners this evening was decided months ago by some account executive at Young & Rubicam. I could tell you that given a week to study your father and the ways in which he ignores you I could come up with a schtick you’d be helpless to resist. Helpless.[/b]

She doesn’t fall for it. But you suspect that many have.

[b]Roger [aloud to the woman as she walks away]: But if you feel compelled to contribute to the pathetic, heartbreaking predictability of it all, by all means…

…

Nick: Like, what do you do all day?
Roger: What do I do all day? I sit here and think of ways to make people feel bad.
Nick: I thought you wrote for commercials.
Roger: I do…but you can’t sell a product without first making people feel bad.
Nick: Why not?
Roger: Because it’s a substitution game. You have to remind them that they’re missing something from their lives. And when they’re feeling sufficiently incomplete…you convince them that your product is the only thing that can fill the void. So, instead of taking steps to deal with their lives, instead of working to root out the real reason for their misery they run out and buy a stupid-looking pair of cargo pants.
Nick: So…is it fun?
Roger: It can be.

…

Roger [teaching Nick the, uh, ways of women]: Do you think women have a clue what goes on up here? What do they think, it’s all stock quotes, drill bit sizes? They don’t know shit! Let’s keep it that way.

…

Roger: I’m gonna get us some drinks. While I’m there, think of a hook.
Nick: What? A hook?
Roger: A hook. A line. An opening salvo. Any minute now, Rosebud is going to be standing right here looking down at you, and you’re going to have one chance…one chance to either hit it out of the park or strike out miserably.

…

Nick: What is this?
Roger: Rum and coke. I told him to mix it weak. We got a long way to go here.
Nick: Okay. I don’t drink. I don’t put alcohol into my body.
Roger: You drink that drink! Alcohol has been a social lubricant for thousands of years. What do you think, you’re going to sit here tonight and reinvent the wheel? Please.

…

Roger [to Nick]: You did one very good thing. You lied. You made something up. Keep that part of your brain working. We get those girls over here, your first instinct is gonna be to open up. To tell the truth. Fight it!

…

Roger: So, the time. 7:00. We’ve got nine hours until closing time. An eternity. Look at me, Nick, and answer me this question. Who is the greatest basketball player in the history of the game?
Nick: Michael Jordan?
Roger: Michael Jordan. Why was he the greatest? Because he paced himself. Because he always had something left at the finish. Magic Johnson called it ‘‘winning time.’’ We are a long way from winning time, so pay attention.

…

Roger: Ask any woman, ‘‘What’s the single most attractive quality a man can possess?’’ And what do they invariably answer?
Nick: Sense of humor.
Roger: Sense of humor. Sense of humor is huge. And yet, if two lean, mean, play-by-their-own-rules motorcycle-riding men strolled up to this booth and beat the shit out of us two humorous guys and asked you out for a ride, you would be weak at the knees.
Sophie: No way.
Roger: Weak at the knees.
Andrea: Well, actually, guys who ride cycles are pretty sexy.
Roger: Thank you.

…

Nick: You said there was a fail-safe.
Roger: What fail-safe?
Nick: Back at the bar. You said there was a fail-safe.
Roger: Did I? I don’t think you want the fail-safe.
Nick: No, I want it!
Roger: You sure?
Nick: Yes, I’m sure.[/b]

Take a wild guess.

[b]Roger: I’m talking about standing out from this guys-only, Star Trek-convention, frankly, homoerotic little group…and introducing yourself to one of these girls.
Nick’s friend: Yeah, but I always get so nervous.
Roger: Why? There’s nothing at stake. If there was a chance of you actually getting laid then you’d have a reason to be nervous. Try working someone in a bar for three hours and then you gotta close the deal right before last call. That’s pressure.

…

Darren: Yeah, but you can’t let a girl know how nervous you are. You gotta let her know you’re in control, right?
Roger: ‘‘In control’’? Who is this guy? You’re in high school. You don’t control anything. Look at your face!

…

Roger [to Nick]: I gotta get home, look for work. As we speak, consumers everywhere need reminding of just how fat and unattractive they are.

…

Angela: Hey, Nick. Some guy…I guess he’s your uncle…he said you had something to tell me. He said it would ‘‘blow my mind.’’[/b]

Revenge is a meal best served cold. By all means, serve it up any way you wish. But know this: In a world without God, it is your only viable option. Otherwise the perceived injustice becomes more than you can bear. Yet there will always be a context and a point of view. No getting around that. So, if you can justify it to your own satisfaction what more do you need?

Here the acts are abominations. And they are committed against children.

Creasy is ex CIA. He did the wet work for them. So, depending on who exactly he dispatched [and your inclination regarding American foreign policy], you like him or you don’t. Now however he is a washed up, over the hill drunk “reduced” to babysitting some rich kid in Mexico.

But as you come to like the kid so does he. In fact, she brings him back from the dead. So when she is kidnapped and the attempt to rescue her is botched she is [presumably] killed. And then one by one Creasy sets about to…even up the score. To me the whole sequence was exhilarating. Just in trying to imagine being able to do it myself. And it is a whole string of [really despicable] folks because corruption is everywhere down in Mexico City. In and out of the government. But especially within the police department. In other words, kidnapping here is organized crime.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Fire_(2004_film
trailer: youtu.be/6s_-O4HglGI

MAN ON FIRE [2004]
Directed by Tony Scott

[b]Creasy: Do you think God’ll forgive us for what we’ve done?
Rayburn: No.

…

Samuel: Your resume is quite impressive. 16 years of military experience, extensive counter-terrorism work. I’m surprised anyone could afford you, what’s the catch?
Creasy: I drink.
Samuel: How does that affect you?
Creasy: Coordination, reaction time. Top professionals try to kidnap your daughter I’ll do the best I can…but the service will be on par with the pay.

…

Pita: Creasy is like a bear too. A big, sad bear.

…

Pita [to Creasy]: There were 24 kidnappings in Mexico City in the last 6 days. Four a day.

…

Sister Anna: Do you ever see the Hand of God in what you do?
Creasy: No, not for a long time.
Sister Anna: The Bible says, “Do not be over come with evil, but overcome…?
Creasy: …but overcome evil with good.”
[then in Spanish]:
Creasy: That’s Romans Chapter 12 Verse 21. I am the sheep that got lost, Madre.

…

Lisa: You read the Bible Mr. Creasy?
Creasy: Yeah, sometimes.
Lisa: Does it help?
Creasy: Yeah, sometimes.

…

Rayburn: Well, you know what we used to say. A bullet always tells the truth.

…

Creasy: There is no such thing as tough. There is trained and untrained.

…

Pita: Creasy! Creasy!

…

Miguel [to Rayburn]: Hospitals can be very dangerous places…especially if you have killed two corrupt cops.

…

Rayburn [looking at a list]: You’re talking war, Crease.

…

Lisa: What are you going to do?
Creasy: What I do best.

…

Mariana: Fuentes is better protected than the president of Mexico.
Creasy: He’s gonna need it.

…

Miguel: I want this man as much as he does.
Rayburn: Creasy will deliver more justice in a weekend than ten years of your courts and tribunals. Just stay out of his way.

…

Rayburn: Pita Ramos…that’s a number to you. You know, one more dead, but a number.
Miguel: What was she to Creasy then?
Rayburn: She showed him it was all right to live again.
Miguel: And the kidnappers took that away, huh?
Rayburn: Right. And they are going to wish they never touched a hair on her head. A man can be an artist…in anything, food, whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasy’s art is death. He’s about to paint his masterpiece.

…

Elderly Man: In the church, they say to forgive.
Creasy: Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting.

…

Creasy: Do you know what this is? It’s a charger used by convicts to hide money and drugs…they tuck it up their rectum. This is pencil detonator, timer, used as a receiver from the pager. This is C4…highly explosive; you put it all together you’ve got a bomb, not very sophisticated, but very powerful.
[whispers in his ear]
Creasy: That’s what you have up your ass right now.

…

Fuentes: You know, I’m really sorry for the girl. It’s just a business. I-I’m a professional.
Creasy: That’s what everybody keeps saying. “I’m just a professional”. Everybody keeps saying that to me. “I’m just a professional”, “I’m just a professional”. I’m getting sick and tired of hearing that. You understand?

…

Lisa [to Creasy of her husband]: You kill him or I will.[/b]

In which we learn the definition of irony. And [for some] how to embody nihilism. You know, like they do out in Hollywood.

Oh, and how, sooner or later, most of us have to make compromises in our lives regarding, well, most everything that is important. And thus how crushing it can be when we come across the folks who don’t. Why? Well, maybe because they’re lucky, maybe because they’re gifted, maybe because they’re just rolling in dough. Or maybe because they worked their asses off to be what they always wanted to be.

It all works here though because it’s just comedy. Or it is until you recognize the parts that weren’t really all that funny when it was your turn to embody them. But lest we forget these are just kids. And things can always get even more complicated when you are no longer.

Reality, in other words, can bite.

To wit:

Lelaina is making a “reality doc” about the true plight of young folks in America. Reality as it actually is for them and not as some McCorporate state would like them to think it is. In other words, allowing folks to find their true Identity. For instance, one you don’t pay for at a mall. These guys are really, really hip. What others would call “cool”. But there it is: That accursed need for money. And what a bummer now that socialism is just a relic from the past. The rest is basically how they cope with it.

IMDb

Despite Lelaina’s anti-consumerism speech at the beginning, this film has a considerable amount of product placement and product references in the dialogue, including Gap, BMW, Diet Coca-Cola, Pringles, 7-Eleven (its Big Gulp drinks are seen throughout the film), Pizza Hut, Domino’s Pizza, Evian, Camel Straight cigarettes, Snickers, McDonalds (Troy mentions a Quarter Pounder with Cheese as one of life’s pleasures), Whole Foods Market, Continental Airlines, Cocoa Puffs, Infiniti (Nissan USA luxury automobile division), Ford Motor Company, and Minute Maid.

Irony you think?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Bites
trailer: youtu.be/xDYGo0UgIVM

REALITY BITES [1994]
Directed by Ben Stiller

[b]Vickie: I’m going to take Sam against his will and straighten him out because I truly believe that if we can get two women on the supreme court, we can get at least one on him.

…

Daddy: And, little darling, after you’ve been in the real world for a while you’re gonna appreciate that car.
Troy: Yeah. Just think of all those starving children in Africa who don’t even have cars.

…

Michael: Do you have a lawyer or something?
Lelaina: No, I don’t have a lawyer. I don’t have a dentist. I’m…You know, I make four-hundred dollars a week.

…

Troy: If I could bottle the sexual tension between Bonnie Franklin and Schneider I could solve the energy crisis.

…

Troy [answering the phone]: Hello, you’ve reached the winter of our discontent.

…

Troy [to Michael at the door]: Are you a collection agent?

…

Troy: I am picking up some very strange vibes in here. They’re of the…“I just got laid” variety. Did he dazzle you with his extensive knowledge of mineral water? Or was it his in-depth analysis of Markie Mark that finally reeled you in? I just would have liked to have been there to watch how you rationalized sleeping with a yuppy-head cheeseball on the first date.
Lelaina: He’s not a yuppy.
Troy: He’s the reason why Cliff Notes were invented.

…

Lelaina: If something’s bothering you that much I wish you could just be man enough to talk to me about it.
[he gets up, walks over to her and cups her face]
Troy: All right, Lelaina. I am really in love with you.
[it’s what she has always wanted him to say…but then]
Troy: Is that what you want to hear? Is it? Well, don’t flatter yourself.
Lelaina: Go to hell.[/b]

Of course he really is in love with her. Or so we are meant to assume.

[b]Troy [in the documentary]: When my father found out that he had cancer he decided to bring me here and he gives me this big pink sea shell and he says to me, “Son, the answers are all inside of this.” And I’m all, like, “What?” But then I realized that the shell was empty. There’s no point to any of this. It’s all just a…a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know…a Quarter-Pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter become a cackle…and I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.

…

Lelaina: I’m not going to work at the Gap for Chrissake!

…

Troy: Now if you’ll come this way, please we will continue our short but happy walking tour of the career of Troy Dyer. And here we have the newsstand where Troy dared to ask the question “Are employee snacks subsidized?” The answer…tragically…no.

…

Lelaina: I thought the ad said that this was a job for a production assistant.
Boss: Yes. You will be assisting me…in the production of videotapes, all right? You’re going to make copies for me…many copies.
Lelaina: Oh, is this like a…like a pirate operation?
Boss: Do I look like a pirate to you?

…

Editor: Define irony.
Lelaina: Irony. Uh…Irony. It’s a noun. It’s when something is…ironic. It’s, uh…Well, I can’t really define irony…but I know it when I see it![/b]

Later…

[b]Lelaina: This day has been the biggest nightmare. I mean, these job interviews, Troy…the word vivisection, a staggering understatement. I mean, can you define irony?
Troy [looking up from Heidegger’s Being and Time]: It’s when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning.

…

Charlane [Mom]: Why don’t you get a job at the Burgerrama? They’ll hire you! My Lord, I saw on the TV - they had this little retarded boy working the register.
Lelaina: Because I’m not retarded, Mom. I was the valedictorian of my University!
Wes [step-father]: Well you dont have to put that on your application.

…

Vickie: Lainie, what are you doing? What are you doing? You lay on that couch all day. Those pajamas are like your uniform. You run up a four-hundred dollar phone bill. You watch TV. You chain-smoke. You don’t go outside. You don’t do anything. Man, you are in the bell jar!

…

Vickie: All right. We’re just trying to pay bills here, OK? So, Troy, if you got any money…
Lelaina: Money? Oh, but what’s money to an artist? To a philosopher? It’s just green-colored paper that floats in and out of his life like snow. It’s nothing you actually have to, I don’t know, work for…is it, Troy?

…

Michael: Have I stepped over some line in the sands of coolness with you? Because excuse me if somebody doesn’t know the secret handshake with you.
Troy: There’s no secret handshake. There’s an IQ prerequisite, but there’s no secret handshake.

…

Michael [to Lelaina after an MTV clone butchers her documentary]: It’s, like, you have this great piece of work and we have this audience, these kids… and it’s like trying to feed them meatloaf or something and they don’t want to eat it, right? So you have to give them, like, “Here comes the plane. It’s coming into the hangar. Open up the hangar.” But it’s still meatloaf.[/b]

I know: huh?

[b]Michael: Look…I’ll make them take the pizza thing out, OK?

…

Lelaina: I just don’t understand why things just can’t go back to normal at the end of the half hour like on the Brady Bunch or something.
Troy: Well, 'cause Mr. Brady died of AIDS.

…

Michael: You know what happens to him? They find his skull in a grave, and they go…“Oh, I knew him, and he was funny.” And the guy, the court jester, dies all by himself.
Troy: Where’d you hear that, a Renaissance festival? Besides, everyone dies all by himself.
Michael: If you really believe that…Who are you looking for out here?

…

Troy [on answering machine]: At the beep, please leave your name, number, and a brief justification for the ontological necessity of modern man’s existential dilemma, and we’ll get back to you.

…

Dad [leaving a message on phone]: Uh, Lelaina, this is your dad. Give me a call when you get this. I need you to explain something. I just got a nine-hundred-dollar bill on my gas card![/b]

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

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

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

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

SUBMARINE [2010]
Written and directed by Richard Ayoade

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

…

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

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

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or maybe not. It’s just purely conjecture.

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

Look for Walter Reilly.

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

IMDb

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

First cinema film of David Gulpilil.[/b]

WALKABOUT [1971]
Directed by Nicolas Roeg

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

Narrator:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rest is scripting.

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

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

USHPIZIN [2004]
Directed by Giddi Dar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

He’s with the big boys now.

IMDb

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

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

The film was shot in sequence.[/b]

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

SWEET SIXTEEN [2002]
Directed by Ken Loach

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

Bob: I…am not…a spoon.

…

Bob [aloud to himself]: The bitch lied!

…

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

…

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

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

Who could resist this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IMDb

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

…

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

Needless to say, it didn’t work.

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

…

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

…

Yu: Listen! All perverts are created equal!

…

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

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

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

So, what do you think?

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

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

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

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

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

IMDb

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

Max: War does funny things to men.

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE NINES [2007]
Written and directed by John August

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

Oblivion approaches.

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BIG FISH [2003]
Directed by Tim Burton

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

Too late. The real crooks beat him to it.

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

…

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

If you want to call it that.

Insect. Incest.

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

And there are other organs equally as treacherous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

IMDb

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

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

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

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

Well, we’ll soon see about that.

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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