well, nobody needs a "reminder", these are basic things everyone knows.

the question is not whether we should remember. the question is: given that the world and people are shit: how does one deal with that?

but that isn't the right question really, because the shittiness of life does not operate at an abstract, conceptual level like some platonic idea of the shitty. it is always real and specific and concrete, and complex, and complicated. the concept of shittiness derives from that concrete experience, not the otjer way around.

so it is good for all of us (who have to deal with the shit of life) to see a complex and complicated scenario of specific shittiness without actually being a part of it. that is the relief and the medicine. you witness it, but you are not in it. there is distance.

and witnessing it one might boohoo or haaahaaa, depending. but whatever happens, it's not you, the spectator, who is in it. lucky it's not you! it is someone else, a character, who is being tragic or ridiculous. relief!

and so, from the detachment of purged emotions, the ability to process and the freedom to think about how to deal with shitty things like that. which is not a luxury the trapped have amidst their suffering.

and that there has been theatre since the greeks.

Haha, this site is so cool.


I just watched October Sky. That's actually a lie, I haven't yet but I will tomorrow.


Also, Stockholm.

It's almost like a ballet. Some scenes are truly phenomenal. I loved the roundabout scene at the very end

yes, this movie is on YT, but I only found out just now.






and also:





which was more annoying than entertaining actually

I watched Neighbors (which was actually pretty fun and dumb) and Neighbors 2 (which was less funny and more dumb).

I watched 65 and it was meh, l but I’d watch Adam Driver in anything.

Also Uncle Buck! Holds up despite that child abuse scene

Watched THE VERDICT, classic noir. super awesome.

watched Born Yesterday again. My wife's fave. old classic.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and call those first two animated Spider-Man movies the best Spider-Man related audiovisual media out there. Spectacular Spider-Man is an amazing series too, but those movies are downright GORGEOUS. From all the little visual details to the amazing scenery, the kinetic action and the clever plotting and writing - there's very little to criticize. The sequel even manages to up the ante in the humor department. Looking forward to the third one next year.





What can I say? I have a soft-spot for Wes Anderson movies. So I'm far from unbiased here. But I enjoyed it a lot. What I've been seeing throughout his latest two movies (the previous one being The French Dispatch) is a director who's gotten so confident in his visual style and particular type of storytelling, that he's willing to take chances that might put off some people but really cater to others.


Anderson's interest in the media - be it print media or as is the case here, stage plays, has taken the driver's seat in the last few years. He's crafted another loving homage to a medium that seems antiquated to some. If anything bogs it down a bit, it's the sheer scope he's going for here. There are so many characters in there he clearly intends to have some sort journey that in the grand scheme of things it might be a bit muddled. Given some very meta-observations within the movie, this might have been at least partly intentional though. The jury's still out on whether the themes were established stringently enough or if they were a tad undercooked. A re-watch will help.


However, what is there is gorgeously shot, really well-acted and just really charming in its embrace of camp. And the themes touched upon - being stuck in limbo, loneliness and not quite being able to "figure life out" are certainly timely ones that are bound to strike a chord with quite a few.


Anderson movies always had a very particular look to them, but it's noticeable just how many layers have been added to his scene compositions over the years. It's astounding how much is going on on the screen simultanously in Asteroid City. It's a spectacle. That alone is worth the price of admission.

I turned off French Dispatch.

too fey

It was just kind of a shite movie really

Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge

watched UNDER THE VOLCANO with Finney.

drunk gets drunker til he dies drunk.

It was way better than Innisherin.

Innishrin is my new low.

I used to praise middling movies by saying "its better than Darkman."

Then I would say "It's better than The Thief, his wife, her cook, ad the lover"

Now I say, "It is better than Innisherin"

After Hours

haaaahaaaahaaaaa! these are quality jokes.

i'll reuse (and change the titles). "it's better than guardians of the galaxy" (or whatever).

finney is fucking great in under the volcano btw. i mean he was usually great, but here--whoa! out of this world (literally, in the end).

i wanna read the novel, i do.


ooooh that one is great fun, very 80s, i want to rewatch (seen a few times)

I never watched Under the Volcano because I thought it was Joe vs The Volcano which is FUCKING HORRIBLE

hhahahahaaaaaaa! fuck, i hated tom hanks most of the time. he used to look like a fucking giant baby. he's more tolerable in old age.

anyway check title #11 listed here:

https://sites.prh.com/modern-library-top-100

Vamps.

I do not trust a list that does not include Moby Dick as # 1

oh but it's a 20th century list (now i notice the website itself doesn't mention it but yeah, time-bracketed)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOSf9f5_qZ8

That makes sense.

A technical achievement. The movie is really well-shot and quite a spectacle. The performances were great too.


However, I feel like Nolan's tendency to accentuate the spectacular over the more subtle notions once again was a bit of a detriment. To be fair, he seems to have gotten better at depicting emotional interaction, there were only a few pieces of dialogue that felt stilted. But his baffling decision to check off most of Oppenheimer's liaisons as well as a lot of points of interest in his biography without actually giving them enough time to breathe and develop, made the movie seem quite bloated.


The sequence depicting the Trinity test and the aftermath - as seen from the perspective of Oppenheimer, were quite powerful. But leading up to that was a methodical checklist of events in Oppie's life that would have been interesting, if only some of the consequences of the subjects touched upon were actually shown or explored more.


And after the Manhattan Project section, the movie turns into Twelve Angry Men with a constant overbearing score in the background and a ton of exposition. Also: None of the quiet discomfort of Twelve Angry Men.


I wished someone had told Nolan to dial it down a bit and actually focus on what kind of movie he wants to make - because when it was good, it was REALLY GOOD. Cillian Murphy is great in the lead and the performances in general did lend a lot of personality to the overall atmosphere. But the way the story was told seemed a tad disjointed.

Is there a Richard Feynman character?

Yeah. He had like, I wanna say 2 or 3 minutes of screentime altogether - like most of the characters that weren't Oppie himself.

funny you should say that, i felt the similarly about dunkirk. have not seen oppenheimer yet.

but in dunkirk i was immediately impressed by the pure spectacle of the thing.... visual, audio, camera... the action... and then... it ended? i was immersed in that world and then i was like... wait a minute! is this all?? did i miss something?

it's not that "i wanted more", it's more like... i didn't get a solid sense of narrative.

maybe nolan is actually the memento guy lol. i mean the character. maybe he forgets things :D

-

compare to 1917. i loved 1917. it was also an immersive film about an old timey war. there was realism but there was also a beginning, a middle, and an end. tension and release/relief. a story proper. it feels like a dream and you go in those tunnels, but you're going somewhere, and you get there in the end.

with dunkirk there were some great characters and situations, but i did not see them come together in a cogent way. there are snippets, things happen, more things happen, all impressively, and then it ends. memento!

Watched William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996), and fuck that's my stuff. Blatant homoeroticism, overbearing Christian imagery, hook it to my veins.

well! baz luhrmann will baz luhrmann. and isn't he your compatriot? check out all of his work. "strictly ballroom" is actually a fun indie (i was surprised by it).

now anyone please tell me what happened to poor juliet lol

anyway i came here originally to say i watched AMERICAN FACTORY yesterday



and holy shit, chinese communism is SOOOOOOOOO FUCKING CREEPY. so fucking creepy!

everyone who wants "communism" should watch. goddamn! bone-chiling.

don't get me wrong, all those militarized workers put on a happy face, but... that's precisely the scary part.

fuck! i'm traumatized for life. you like "horror" movies? watch this one. it creeps up slowly and suddenly... BLAM!

I just rewatched Dunkirk and I think it’s pretty much perfect. I feel like that movie almost intentionally diverted from too much connection with specific characters to drive home the point of, “Hey, war, amirite? It’s bloody chaos and I don’t mind telling you.”

Also I love the 3 different timeframes/speeds. Really well executed. Honestly it’s probably his best film. But Interstellar is probably the one I love the most on an emotional level, and Dark Knight is the one I watch the most, as you know.

I haven’t seen 1917.

Haven’t seen Oppenheimer either.

the fragmented war thing and multiple perspectives i get implicitly of course, it's not a new device. and i love some of these small narratives, the pleasure yacht one was my favorite, very thrilling. and they all connect with each other of course, so it's not like they are meant to happen separately. they are multiple perspectives on the same thing.

but i come out lacking an overall sense of unity in the work. a sense of an ending not for this or that story but for the film itself, and from the larger story overall. there is a larger story of course, churchill wants his 30,000 but gets 300,000, the british army could have been annihilated right there but was rescued by a myriad small ships, and that is just told with words. i would have liked to see it. we see a few small pieces, and the pieces connect, but where the pieces fit in the overall scheme remains invisible; we're just told how things ended.

i have not seen interstellar, but my favorite of his movies continues to be memento. it is gritty, heartbreaking, philosophical, and well acted. when it came out it was like nothing else out there. it still feels like that. for me nolan is and will continue to be the memento guy until he blows my mind again with something else. but the thing is, artists tend to have their themes and they revisit them over and over. for example, scorsese is the guy from taxi driver and raging bull and goodfellas. he's made a lot more but those 3 rise very high and sort of define the rest of the work. similarly, yeah, memento ftw, for me.

anyway, 1917 is fucking great. there is a terrible chaos and much confusion as well, most of the time you don't know what the fuck is going on, but what brings it all together is the mission that drives through the middle of it. for this at times it feels like a video game, and i'm sure there is an influence of fps games in it, but it's not limited by that in any way, it just uses the device very very well. holy fuck, i love that film. i'd rewatch it this second.

i found a cogent and erudite review of dunkirk that connects it with memento!

https://cinema-scope.com/cinema-scop...special-event/

seems i was not hallucinating after all. the author finds also something missing in the end--he's disappointed by the british patriotism being the closer, i'm just missing the larger shape of it i guess, rather than the concept. we all want different things so that's to be expected.

HJAHAHAHAA!!!

watched Clive Barker's the Lord of Illusions.

Surprisingly good. wuold have been much better if they had not cast scott bakula in the leasd, or the guy that played Mr. Kruger in Sewinfeld as the bad guy.


terrible casting.

I'm really tired, so I misunderstood and thought:

Was Freddie Krueger ever in Seinfeld? Must have missed that episode!

hahahaha

Mystery Date from 1991.

Starship Troopers

the movie is OK-ish, but it's got some truly horrific music

what! nooooo :(

fucking orson welles is selling tainted antibiotics because he regards people as nothing! it's a classic movie. brilliant.

here some votes of support:
https://youtu.be/r9yyDEDGlr0

just last night i watched "the big short." it's the same thing, only worse. those bankers should have watched "the third man." they probably did, in fact, but learned the wrong lessons.

Fantastic movie and an absolutely iconic soundtrack. And I'm not just saying this because Karas was allegedly born a few blocks from where I live. ;)


That tune is so fucking catchy. I think it actually was one of the first instances that made me reconsider my distaste for what they call "Volksmusik" a bit - around here that term usually gets attributed to dismal "Schlager"-music that is either evoking idyllic rustical vapidness or antiquated vapid courtship shenanigans. However, true "Volksmusik" also exists and can be good from time to time -in spirit not unlike British Folk in let's say the 60s and 70s - played differently, but similar vibes in tone and content. I think Karas' soundtrack kind of planted that thought that just because something is played in a rustic and dare I say "quaint" way, it doesn't necessarily have to be bad.


Also, the song perfectly fits what they call the Viennese character - a chipper and easygoing temper in the face of doom. I think there'd have been no better way to score the gloomy atmosphere of post-war Vienna than a chipper ditty like that one. It taps right into Viennese humor - very morbid, but delivered with ease and tranquility, also a good bit of silliness.

finally watched WITHNAIL & I. I loved it. I had never seen it, because I thought it would be like My Dinner With Andre, which I also watched recently as well, and liked. Old me likes things young me found boring.

haha, great! i love both movies. also glad to see the evolution in your tastes.

and i can't help it with vizzini, lol. everytime i see that actor in any role, his famous catchphrase invades my mind xD

wallace shawn! that's his name. my brain only knows him as "inconceivable" hahaha.

i think i discovered "my dinner with andre" from watching "community" (abed has an episode with jeff...) i was shocked at how much i liked it.