Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Spring Breakers

Watched it again. Kind of so-so, with all the standard Harmony Korine reservations. James Franco is great, though, and pretty much saves the movie.

I sort of liked Mr Turner. I didn't think it was the in the better ranking of Mike Leigh's movies. It was really pretty for sure. For better Leigh, I'd say Naked, Happy Go Lucky and Another Year. Spall has also been a lot better in other roles.

i saw naked and i did not like it. i'm not saying it was "bad" but it was definitely not for me because a) i couldn't understand a word the fucker was saying, and b) when i could understand him it was dark disturbing shit. i can't sit in front of that for 2 hours. but not saying it was bad, just that it was too successful in doing its thing with me.

other stuff of him i've seen
-a handful of his five minute films. nice sort of slice of life/social.
-life is sweet. saw this recently. iiked it a lot. timothy spall is in it.
-secrets and lies. i really liked this movie when i saw it many years ago. again timothy spall is the central character if i recall (the one who has the climactic speech anyway)
-vera drake. solid. good piece of social realism

haven't seen topsy turvy (want to), happy go lucky or another year, BUT-- my sense of his previous films (well, those i've seen) is that they're all about the dialogue. endless talking, and very good (and disturbing as in naked), but talk-based.

this film however is rooted in silence. not just because turner grunts a lot-- it's in the pace of the film. a lot of quiet moments. a lot is unsaid. i think that poor maid for example says no more than 30 words in the whole film and still you get her whole predicament. brilliant. but also among the "intelligent" characters and in every scene there is a lot of quiet. a lot is said without the dialogue that i'm accustomed to when it comes to a mike leigh film. where secrets and lies or vera drake were good filmed theatre, this one is film.

true i haven't seen the 2 before so maybe he's been testing that out already but this for me was a good big surprise. it's definitely a lot more than "pretty". there is an ecstatic quality about many of those images-- he tries to put you in those paintings, or behind the eyes that saw those paintings. in that, it's really brilliant work.

I think I hate Mike Leigh films because I am unable to draw meaning and intent from facial cues. I have always been horrible at it. My wife constantly has to explain why characters in movies and TV are doing what they do because I miss the non-verbal stuff that seems plain as day to her.

I think that is why I always loved books and written stories and not films, other than hard sci fi, action, and comedy movies. everything that is subtle, facial tics, eye expressions, body language, etc. means nothing to me.

It's also why I HATE dance. I love TO dance, but I fucking HATE watching dance performances. I tune out REAL fast.

maybe a little autissss?

I followed up T2 last night with T3: Rise of the Machines. Will start the 4th one this evening likely.

Topsy Turvey was excellent as was Vera Drake.

When is Dafoe not good in anything? I just saw Red 2, he was fantastic even in that! Ok, Red 2 was pretty good all around but i also have a soft spot for Bruce Willis.. possibly just cuz he looks like my pops

aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh

that explains a lot! i wish you had explained this before.

this kind of thing is the sort of scene that makes almodovar hilarious:



and it's hard to translate the expression in her eyes with the box of pastry (or something) on her lap-- it's like, she's really uncomfortable but putting up with it, which is absurd, and the woman getting fucked there looking like she's having a conversation. because obviously you're either scandalized and walk away or you don't give a shit and just talk-- but she's in that middle space where she doesn't want to be there but she's there and her eyes tell you everything.

i can see also why you like les enfants du paradis-- it's like a play. lots of wide shots and few closeups, everything is spoken outloud. but what about the mime? is it because the mime's expressions are "big"?

so i imagine maybe you liked "a scanner darkly" a lot? (animations, lots of philosophical talk, etc.)

neurological diversity is fascinating. i know a bunch of dyslexics-- all of them happen to be photographers!

I did dig Scanner Darkly. I like words for communication. I fail at non-verbal communication, both coming from me, and being directed at me.

yes, the mime in Les Enfants du Paradis and all great mimes (chaplin, Keaton, Harpo Marx) are always faves of mine. It is because they are intending for you to read their body and facial language, as opposed to most of the movies I cannot stand where the outward actions of the body are actually in conflict with the inner self being shown on the face, like Almodovar.

You should have seen how badly I misunderstood El Sexo y Lucia! That shit made no sense!


because of this "thing" I have in my brain, people's emotions mean very little to me. I see them as ephemral, inconsequential things. emotions are signals, and signals only, to me. They do not "mean" anything. I cannot relate with people whose emotions overrule their reason in their day to day living. I find it very irritating.
This is also why for YEARS my wife and I would argue about all the things I hate about Mexican books, movies, music, etc. It is all melodramatic emotional vomit to me.

it may also be why my idol growing up was Spock.

riiiight. almodovar is all about the melodrama, but also with a huge dose of comedy-- it's camp, but maybe "high camp", because it's so well done. and it's super entertaining-- at the same time heart-wrenching but also not serious. so while the guy loves venezuelan telenovelas, he also takes the form to another level where it becomes really good art-- a place where you can observe the emotion and understand the suffering but also laugh at it like a maniac because you see the absurdity of it all. it achieves aesthetic detachment but it's not aloof in the least. a great dialectic.

he in a way sees the same emotional vomit that you see, but instead of disgust he can laugh, then have great compassion for it, and then have a huge laugh again. it's just brilliant.

sexo y lucia is not his but julio medem's i think (if that's his name). nowhere near as funny/memorable/anything. i saw it but can't remember much now.

and yeah, i was gonna say spock!

you should probably love kubrick then. he was also not much into emotion, he was often accused of using "wooden" actors, and he was suspected of being mildy autistic. he's also one of my favorite filmmakers. i have a lot of favorite filmmakers ha ha ha.

do you like epic ultraviolence? have you tried sam peckinpah? fucking excellent.

The trick to any novels in Spanish is to have a superb translation

I watched Straw Dogs and found it completely tedious and needless.

I do not trust filmmakers that spend weeks and months preparing and filming violent rape scenes. I think they are sick fucks.

straw dogs is not the best intro-- a minor work at best. instead check out THE WILD BUNCH. also, PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (bob dylan has a role in it, hilarious). check those two.

I am not into horror movies, or ultraviolence films too much either. I do not find them entertaining unless the plot or the filmmaking itself lets it rise above.

I get enough ultraviolence and horror from the world around me daily. i do not feel entertained by those movies usually.

I dug Oldboy, and Children of Men, and Starship Troopers and Tetsuo Ironman, because those films were not strictly about the violence, but about violent people. I cannot watch things like SAW, or house of 100 corpses or eli roth's shit, because it makes me feel like those movies are made for sick fucks to get hard and masturbate to.

Wild Bunch was good. Have not seen Pat Garrett

wild bunch i think was sublime.

pat garret is a bit of an unwieldy mess that was chopped up without the director's consent, but it has some great scenes/moments/lines that stay with you. you gotta "hear" them with the right drunken cowboy accent but here's the text for one that gets repeated around my house often for laughs:

You want yourself a woman?... One come in there from Albuquerque around the cat house over... name is Bertha... Got a ass on her like a forty dollar cow... and a tit... I'd like to see that thing filled full of tequila.

The Apartment (1960), with Jack Lemon, Shirley McLaine, others.

Meh.

It's like Billy Wilder got together with a bunch of buddies and said, "Let's make a bawdy movie with hot dames in it, and we can fantasize about what's it like to be businessmen in New York City who cheat on their wives all the time. We'll even show one or two women in underthings, and we'll have them making out with guys all over the place at the office Christmas party. Yeah, I know, it sounds terrible. We'll get away with it, though, because you're all great actors and because there will be some kind of redeeming message about true love."

1960----hmmm

How bout Psycho!
How bout The Magnificent Seven!

Very true. Pat Garret has some of my favourite moments but doesn't quite stand up as a whole, at least compared with the Wild Bunch. And Kris Kristofferson, while good, was always gonna be Kris Kristofferson rather than Billy the Kid. James Coburn's Pat, on the other hand, is fantastic (one of my all-time fave performances in any Western), and I still love the movie, if only for those few choice scenes and for James Coburn.

The blend of comedy and drama, with a dash of both slapstick and social commentary, makes this film something of a groundbreaker. Certainly one of the more "mature" films Hollywood had made up to that point, and its influence stretches to the present day. I can't imagine something like, say, American Beauty without this precedent.

so billy wilder created "mad men," only he was less cynical?


i hate that kind of gore porn too-- unwatchable. also do not like most "horror" movies (mostly about disgusting shit)

i'm not going to recommend you garbage

now peckinpah was ultraviolence maybe in 1970 but not by today's standards. still i think he didn't shrink from a certain realism because before him gun battles were like pointing your finger and saying "bang bang". these days when there's a bomb just *look away from it*. but he was showing people getting properly killed-- but for a good purpose which in service of a plot and to de-romanticize the western. sort of like "unforgiven" did 2 decades later.

wild bunch is a goddamn masterpiece.

watched in the loop last night after a marathon of the thick of it. veep is one of my all time favorite shows already, hence the bingeing. fucking hilarious.

^ Where did you find THICK OF ITs? I had to watch pretty lousy copies on youtube.

Yes, all that stuff is great. The new VEEP started a little disappointing, but that surprise guest star really kicked things into high gear.

Please let me know if you come across something equally biting and funny. I wish whatshisface had more things. Just a film and two great series? Am I missing something?

ripped copy of a torrent, i watched it at my friend's place and didn't really ask. but seems like they're floating around on some torrent sites.

nah, that's pretty much it. i'm in awe of his writing skills and crew. when dan called jonah a "colossal fucking fannypack" sunday night, holy shit, it's so simple but elegantly insulting to jonah. i love it. and yeah, this season got better with the tehran episode. "it's black hawk down with laurel and hardy," tee hee.

evollove, thank you for the context. I think for me it of just didn't seem very believable, or well written. My wife said, "Wow, I didn't know everyone was so loose back then. Didn't all that come later?"

symbol-man, yes! It did remind me of some campy version of Mad Men.

i know, i was speaking tongue-in-cheek, of course it was the same scenario, which is why i was so puzzled as to why you'd think it arbitrary. the thing is that billy wilder had the cojones to speak about it in its time, right when this kind of thing was happening all over america-- not as some exercise in hindsight.

these days of course that would get you slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit faster than you can spell "settlement"-- but it's taken a very long time and many a legislative battle. hey, women are still not getting equal pay in the workplace.

billy wilder was great, he'd alternate comedies and dramas, few directors i think had his range. he was a fantastic writer. "the apartment" is totally a great little movie.


i remember watching them on hulu a couple of years ago. not there anymore?

^ It is! Sweet.

Wait. I've never used Hulu before. How do you download?

---

gmku, you must've been in a bad mood. I mean, your opinion is your birthright, but you are perhaps the only intelligent person with vision who doesn't like The Apartment.

you don't have to download anything-- you can watch right on the browser, free of charge. like youtube.

unless you have an iphone/ipad in which case you need the app but that is for pay (hulu+)

hulu+ is also for full access to their whole everything. regular hulu shows usually expire, etc.

if they have back episodes trapped behind hulu+ they usually offer a 14-day free trial. use it up, binge till you puke, then cancel before they charge you. then after some time they'll come begging you back for another trial. lather, rinse, repeat. tbh, i'd probably get hulu+ if it had no commercials-- but they do.

hulu also has criterion movies-- they struck a deal a few years ago. i think those are shown commercial-free.

anyway call sick at work and have fun with it ha ha ha.

Seriously? Hmm. It didn't have that "great movie" feel for me. Maybe I was expecting more. It's not like it's awful. I greatly admire Jack Lemon and Shirley McLaine, and they're good in this.

The script, though--geeze. The "broads" have that horrible movie-cliche kind of talking that "cheap broads" in movies like this have. The men are cardboard caricatures, not characters--maybe that's the point. Even the Fred McMurry boss, a cliche, affluent family man in the 'burbs, lovely wife on whom he cheats. The writing was cliche after cliche, and predictable.

Maybe I need to watch it again.

In any case, arriving in the mail tomorrow... Only Lovers Left Alive. Yes, I've seen it already, but this movie I loved the first time I saw it. I think this movie is so, so great.

i loved loved loved only lovers left alive. tilda swinton is an ethereal goddess.

i only keep hulu around for the criterion stuff- easier than dealing with streaming sites. actually watching anything else is a pain with the ads.

I liked hulu back before hulu+ ruined it.. but such is everything when its underground. Popularity destroys fun by sheer volume.. apparently soundcloud is moving to subscription. YouTube has a rental option.. for PBS documentaries?? Yeah i get it, shit costs $.. but isn't that what ads are for? Thats why cable tv sucks too.. you pay $ yet still get even MORE commercials than regular TV?? That is why i watch PBS and futbol, no commercials.

renting?! youtube is doing some kind of beta for a subscription type program (i keep getting the pop-up to try it and i guess be able to skip ads) too that just doesn't warrant pay unless one really uses youtube a ton. i only have cable because it comes with the place i'm in; once i move out i'll just get a chromecast and stream sports online.

PBS YouTube asks for 1.99-3.99 to watch a lot of their content

it's a comedy, as i recall. it does flirt plenty with disaster and has its dramatic moments but i remember it primarily as a comedy. i don't think it's meant to be heavy and meditative. the way i see it, he got to be lighthearted while making some serious social criticism and what's virtually a call to arms. double win.

Okay. I'll buy that, symbol-man. Just because it's a great movie, however, does not mean I have to like it.

TRU

DAT