[!@#$%!]

watched 2 things today so far:

1) THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN. sounds like a funny premise! danny de vito is in it! but the story & execution were meh (de vito directed). this wanted to be darker maybe but it ended up being too sweet/mainstream or somethign, i don't know, bad screenplay i think. i laughed a couple of times but would not recommend.

2) SPECTRE. the latest james bond finally made it to my tv. it was a nice spectacle! the initial sequence is great fun in spite of the CGI destruction. monica bellucci is ageing fantastically (how nice to see a hot woman getting older without silicon puffs and botox), and blue is the warmest color (the fancy one) was the other girl. the story a bit meh-- "the dangers of surveillance"-- a bit obvious for the times. and it was just too long. but good spectacle and action worthy of the multiplex visit ha ha ha ha. hm, multiplex.. no thanks.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

watched 2 things today so far:

1) THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN. sounds like a funny premise! danny de vito is in it! but the story & execution were meh (de vito directed). this wanted to be darker maybe but it ended up being too sweet/mainstream or somethign, i don't know, bad screenplay i think. i laughed a couple of times but would not recommend.

2) SPECTRE. the latest james bond finally made it to my tv. it was a nice spectacle! the initial sequence is great fun in spite of the CGI destruction. monica bellucci is ageing fantastically (how nice to see a hot woman getting older without silicon puffs and botox), and blue is the warmest color (the fancy one) was the other girl. the story a bit meh-- "the dangers of surveillance"-- a bit obvious for the times. and it was just too long. but good spectacle and action worthy of the multiplex visit ha ha ha ha. hm, multiplex.. no thanks.

Oh man, I love Throw Mama from the Train. There's a great frying-pan-to-the-head moment in that movie. Maybe one of the best ever.

ETA: ... One of the best ever frying-pans-to-the-head. Not, like, movies.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Severian

Oh man, I love Throw Mama from the Train. There's a great frying-pan-to-the-head moment in that movie. Maybe one of the best ever.

ETA: ... One of the best ever frying-pans-to-the-head. Not, like, movies.

ah ha ha. hm, no that wasn't very funny. the best thing about that movie probably was that the girl from brazil was in it, and janeway in the 8os was hot! the mom was a great cartoon but i don't know if she was well used either. not really my thing. in any case...

also watched

HUEVOS DE ORO (GOLDEN BALLS) - bigas luna directs a tragicomedy with javier bardem, maria de medeiros, maribel verdú (y tu mamá también), and a small part by benicio del toro. really great, i loved it really, great characters and story, and his usual surrealist approach to sex and ideology is hilarious here. brutal, primitive, satirical, disturbing, etc.

don't know why bigas luna never made it bigger. maybe he's hard to understand outside of spanish-speaking countries. to me he was brilliant. the dvd transfer however is pretty meh and one of the audio sountracks is a dubbing... in spanish! aaa ha haaa haaa haaa. who the fuck dubs a spanish movie into spanish? haaa haaa haa haa. so strange. anyway, a memorable film regardless.

 

[demonrail666]

Yeah, I love Bigas Luna. I don't know why he wasn't bigger. Maybe with Almodovar, the World Cinema industry could only find room for one Spanish superstar. Have you seen his horror film, Anguish. An interesting one. Pre-dates the Scream films in lots of ways.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

ah ha ha. hm, no that wasn't very funny. the best thing about that movie probably was that the girl from brazil was in it, and janeway in the 8os was hot! the mom was a great cartoon but i don't know if she was well used either. not really my thing. in any case...

The movie may be shit. It's been probably 17 years since I last saw it. But the frying pan scene was funny.

The only frying-pan-to-the-head gag that I can think of that matches it is in Ed Wood, when Patricia Arquette chucks one at Johnny Depp while he's running away in full drag and high heels. She really conks him, and he's down for the count.

It's the little things.

[MellySingsDoom]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

ah ha ha. hm, no that wasn't very funny. the best thing about that movie probably was that the girl from brazil was in it, and janeway in the 8os was hot! the mom was a great cartoon but i don't know if she was well used either. not really my thing. in any case...

also watched

HUEVOS DE ORO (GOLDEN BALLS) - bigas luna directs a tragicomedy with javier bardem, maria de medeiros, maribel verdú (y tu mamá también), and a small part by benicio del toro. really great, i loved it really, great characters and story, and his usual surrealist approach to sex and ideology is hilarious here. brutal, primitive, satirical, disturbing, etc.

don't know why bigas luna never made it bigger. maybe he's hard to understand outside of spanish-speaking countries. to me he was brilliant. the dvd transfer however is pretty meh and one of the audio sountracks is a dubbing... in spanish! aaa ha haaa haaa haaa. who the fuck dubs a spanish movie into spanish? haaa haaa haa haa. so strange. anyway, a memorable film regardless.

 

(The following post was written by erstwhile "Flesh And Blood" magazine contributor Peter Lynch, and ghost-posted by this user. The views held by Peter Lynch do not necessarily correspond to those held by MellySingsDoom. All right reserved by P Lynch. Down with Media Publications!)

Hmm yes, Bigas Luna - an important, nay vital, player in post 1960's cinema, I think you'll find. Mister Luna, or "Maestro", as he should be called, is an important auteur in the field of erotic cinema, who truly understands the undercurrents of desire and pleasure in the society we live in today. Such fine artistry, which he developed following his apprenticeship with LEGENDARY Italian director Tinto Brass (or "Maestro", as he should be called), can be seen in such films as the afore-reviewed "Huevos de Oro" (released in the UK under the title of "Bacon and Eggs").

In this 1993 film, the sheer quality and vision of this Castillian director shines through, not least for the palpably brilliant decision of having Javier Bardem resemble John Travolta's brother. And yes, another fine ensemble cast has been gathered here, with the cameo role of Benicio del Toro (who played the attorney guy in Terry Nation's "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas") being a fine addition to the overall psycho-sexual erotic stew.

It's good that, as always, our Stateside friends are able to witness such fine artistry in the way it was intended to be seen, unlike the state of things in this country, where the Dark Ages continue to exist in Soho Square (DO YOU HEAR ME, JAMES FERMAN???), so we have to endure a SAVAGELY CUT version of this otherwise vital piece of cinematic excellence.

I would like to recommend to all members of the Sonic Youth Gossip forum to see forthwith Luna's peerless "La Teta Y La Luna" (shown in UK Cinemas under the title "The Female Mammary Gland And Keith Moon"), where Luna's concerns of eroticism and personal relationships hits it peak, with the wonderful Mathilda May in the leading role as the titular Teta. Truly heart-warming stuff for the hot-blooded cineaste (just don't take your missus to see it though, eh lads? Eh?)

Ms May's effortless acting abilities betray her having a tough apprenticeship in her early years, where she started out with small roles in zero-budget efforts such as Joe D'Amatos notorious "Antropophagous Beast" [Melly intervention: Lynch, you idiot, that wasn't Mathilda May - that was Serena Grandi! You should have consulted Julian Grainger's database before writing this post. Thank God I'm being paid in Luncheon Vouchers to type this out!], and later on in Tobe Hooper's "Lifeboat", where a certain young Peter Lynch certainly "came of age" when Ms May revealed her talents to the world! Once again, though, the UK has to suffer the OUTRAGE of watching these films at home in the much-loathed PAN AND SCAN format. When will film companies realise that the true cinema watcher demands Widescreen at every turn, anything else is a SHEER ATROCITY!

So to summarise: Bigas Luna is a total cinematic master, and about a million times better than the appalling likes of that so-called "director" who did "All Ladies Do It" (original Italian title: "Cosi Fanni Tutti Frutti"). Forget Truffaut, Hitchcock and Ferrara - Bigas Luna stands head and shoulders in today's cinema world!

[ilduclo]

symbols, Amazon is on a boycott list now, they are advertisers on Brietbart and other right wing sites.

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/amazon-stop-supporting

https://www.facebook.com/slpnggiants/

[Severian]

Originally Posted by ilduclo

symbols, Amazon is on a boycott list now, they are advertisers on Brietbart and other right wing sites.

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/amazon-stop-supporting

https://www.facebook.com/slpnggiants/

Yep. Also, they're kind of an awful company. I say this not only as a Pacific Northwesterner who has seen young tech money flood into Seattle, leading to an incremental gentrification of a city that used to have a giddily abnormal culture of eccentric artists, musicians and folksy homeless dudes, but also as a former account administrator for a large commodity brokerage company that may or may not have had direct dealings with ... well, I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to say.

But I managed accounts for a certain client, and that client had a bit of a reputation for treating its administrative, data entry, and sales employees very poorly. If you're gunning for a constant expansion in services, and complete dominion over a substantial chunk of the internet distribution market, you don't care much about the people who are picking up phones and entering numbers. If speed, efficiency and expansion are your goal, you might lay off entire departments and tap into the brokerage pool to handle said departments' duties. So you put people out of work in your immediate vacinity, and replace them with a bunch of glorified temps you've never met. They'll make less money because they're being paid by a company that won a contract, not by you and your empire. There is no direct oversight, and silly little things like employee benefits are no longer a concern of yours.
The SUPER disposable brokers work remotely and report to some asshole whose salary depends on keeping your account alive. As such, any problems that come up with metrics are easily "handled" by firing one of the jokers who works for the brokerage firm -- you don't even have to be aware of it. You're "expanding" by playing into a massive outsourcing scheme that is shady as hell in a million different ways. It's also kind of the backbone of modern commerce, which is depressing as fuck:

So... yeah. I thought it was hilarious when the Fire Phone tanked. Hahaha. That thing was about as popular as mad cow disease.

Baaaahahaha!!

/iPhone guy

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by ilduclo

symbols, Amazon is on a boycott list now, they are advertisers on Brietbart and other right wing sites.

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/amazon-stop-supporting

https://www.facebook.com/slpnggiants/

jeezus fucking christ. not them. fuck!

but the washington post is doing good work...

ima look into this and think about it

i watch futbol on a fox website though

yes. i deal with satan and i have limits.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by MellySingsDoom

(The following post was written by erstwhile "Flesh And Blood" magazine contributor Peter Lynch, and ghost-posted by this user. The views held by Peter Lynch do not necessarily correspond to those held by MellySingsDoom. All right reserved by P Lynch. Down with Media Publications!)

Hmm yes, Bigas Luna - an important, nay vital, player in post 1960's cinema, I think you'll find. Mister Luna, or "Maestro", as he should be called, is an important auteur in the field of erotic cinema, who truly understands the undercurrents of desire and pleasure in the society we live in today. Such fine artistry, which he developed following his apprenticeship with LEGENDARY Italian director Tinto Brass (or "Maestro", as he should be called), can be seen in such films as the afore-reviewed "Huevos de Oro" (released in the UK under the title of "Bacon and Eggs").

In this 1993 film, the sheer quality and vision of this Castillian director shines through, not least for the palpably brilliant decision of having Javier Bardem resemble John Travolta's brother. And yes, another fine ensemble cast has been gathered here, with the cameo role of Benicio del Toro (who played the attorney guy in Terry Nation's "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas") being a fine addition to the overall psycho-sexual erotic stew.

It's good that, as always, our Stateside friends are able to witness such fine artistry in the way it was intended to be seen, unlike the state of things in this country, where the Dark Ages continue to exist in Soho Square (DO YOU HEAR ME, JAMES FERMAN???), so we have to endure a SAVAGELY CUT version of this otherwise vital piece of cinematic excellence.

I would like to recommend to all members of the Sonic Youth Gossip forum to see forthwith Luna's peerless "La Teta Y La Luna" (shown in UK Cinemas under the title "The Female Mammary Gland And Keith Moon"), where Luna's concerns of eroticism and personal relationships hits it peak, with the wonderful Mathilda May in the leading role as the titular Teta. Truly heart-warming stuff for the hot-blooded cineaste (just don't take your missus to see it though, eh lads? Eh?)

Ms May's effortless acting abilities betray her having a tough apprenticeship in her early years, where she started out with small roles in zero-budget efforts such as Joe D'Amatos notorious "Antropophagous Beast" [Melly intervention: Lynch, you idiot, that wasn't Mathilda May - that was Serena Grandi! You should have consulted Julian Grainger's database before writing this post. Thank God I'm being paid in Luncheon Vouchers to type this out!], and later on in Tobe Hooper's "Lifeboat", where a certain young Peter Lynch certainly "came of age" when Ms May revealed her talents to the world! Once again, though, the UK has to suffer the OUTRAGE of watching these films at home in the much-loathed PAN AND SCAN format. When will film companies realise that the true cinema watcher demands Widescreen at every turn, anything else is a SHEER ATROCITY!

So to summarise: Bigas Luna is a total cinematic master, and about a million times better than the appalling likes of that so-called "director" who did "All Ladies Do It" (original Italian title: "Cosi Fanni Tutti Frutti"). Forget Truffaut, Hitchcock and Ferrara - Bigas Luna stands head and shoulders in today's cinema world!

ha ha ha--thanks melly. forgot to answer due to being traumatized by politics

yeah, la teta y la luna is the first bigas luna movie i saw like 20 years ago i think

jamón jamón was also great, but i could never find the golden huevos (ha) till now

mathilda may IS estrellita though, there is no "teta" except for the big one in the sky ha ha ha ha...

dont know about what missus peter lynch talks about-- my wife loved the movie when i showed it to her some years ago. teté's theory of milk economics, was it brilliant or what? so childish, and yet.. so true ha haha. sex as a milk exchange.

damn, the guy was a real artist. a pity he's dead.

[MellySingsDoom]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

ha ha ha--thanks melly. forgot to answer due to being traumatized by politics

yeah, la teta y la luna is the first bigas luna movie i saw like 20 years ago i think

jamón jamón was also great, but i could never find the golden huevos (ha) till now

mathilda may IS estrellita though, there is no "teta" except for the big one in the sky ha ha ha ha...

dont know about what missus peter lynch talks about-- my wife loved the movie when i showed it to her some years ago. teté's theory of milk economics, was it brilliant or what? so childish, and yet.. so true ha haha. sex as a milk exchange.

damn, the guy was a real artist. a pity he's dead.

Why thank you good sir It's nice to know that you appreciate my typing efforts on behalf of Peter Lynch, otherwise SYG-viewers will assume that the whole thing was simply some random keyboard-bashing that I put together myself. I agree with you about Bigas Luna - a shame he never got quite the recognition he deserved over here (unless Mark "I could've been in Gallon Drunk, you know!" Kermode has started banging on about him in more recent times), but I think his work stands up to repeat viewing to this day.

Seeing as Lynch mentions Tinto Brass (sorry, I mean Maestro), if you're interested, check out some of his late 60's films, such as "L'Urlo". They make absolutely no sense whatsoever - even the late Warhol would have judged them as being "too random" - but they're still great fun to watch. Not too sure what you better half would make of them, though!

Does anyone here want to read my review of "I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle?"

Yours always, Melly (currently building a shrine to Claudia Kroll) SingsDoom.

[LifeDistortion]

You guys remember when I said I was unimpressed with the last Alien Covenant poster? This is more like it.

 

[Severian]

Originally Posted by LifeDistortion

You guys remember when I said I was unimpressed with the last Alien Covenant poster? This is more like it.

 

Have you seen the trailer though? It really looks, like, exactly like a classic Alien franchise setup. Looks virtually indistinguishable from the first one... or maybe more like the first mixed with the second. Not at all like a continuation of the Prometheus storyline with more oblong heads, which is what I was honestly hoping for.

Here, check it. In case you haven't seen it. Think this is the right one...

Alien: Covenant trailer

Looks like [(Alien+Aliens)/new special effects]. I'm sure it will please the folks who didn't like Prometheus, but I thought that one had a lot of promise, and was the most interesting Alien-related film since the first one.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by MellySingsDoom

Why thank you good sir It's nice to know that you appreciate my typing efforts on behalf of Peter Lynch, otherwise SYG-viewers will assume that the whole thing was simply some random keyboard-bashing that I put together myself. I agree with you about Bigas Luna - a shame he never got quite the recognition he deserved over here (unless Mark "I could've been in Gallon Drunk, you know!" Kermode has started banging on about him in more recent times), but I think his work stands up to repeat viewing to this day.

Seeing as Lynch mentions Tinto Brass (sorry, I mean Maestro), if you're interested, check out some of his late 60's films, such as "L'Urlo". They make absolutely no sense whatsoever - even the late Warhol would have judged them as being "too random" - but they're still great fun to watch. Not too sure what you better half would make of them, though!

Does anyone here want to read my review of "I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle?"

Yours always, Melly (currently building a shrine to Claudia Kroll) SingsDoom.

oh i. just realized you were correcting lynch about antropophagous beast not la teta y la luna sorry ha ahaha. my bad.

of "the maestro" (this reminds me of seinfeld... who was it?) i've only seen the infamous caligula. now i wanna look again... preferrably at his non-chopped up works

[demonrail666]

Life's too short to give Tinto Brass a 2nd chance. I say this as someone who's given him about half a dozen and regretted every one.

[MellySingsDoom]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Life's too short to give Tinto Brass a 2nd chance. I say this as someone who's given him about half a dozen and regretted every one.

God, thank the good lord that someone else round these parts thinks that "Caligula" is pointless drivel! (I know we should also credit/blame Guccione as well, of course). I remember seeing an uncut version of that nearly 2 decades ago (thanks to the good people at Vestron video), and (honestly, I'm not making this up) I ended up throwing empty cans of Kronenbourg at my TV towards the end, in addition to shouting at said TV too. "Fermo Posta Tinto Brass" is fairy dull, all being told, although one of the actresses was very striking looking. "All Ladies Do It" is a highly entertaining trainwreck (and at least more bearable than Jesus Franco's late 70's onwards erotica efforts), and "Monella" could have been worth a viewing, but the script and, I'm afraid to say the principal actors/actresses let it down. So yeah, more misses than hits, I guess. Not too sure why Peter Lynch keeps on with all this "Maestro" business, either - still, I got my Luncheon Vouchers off him, so all good!

And to finish off: RIP to Tomas Milian, who I believe passed on to the great Cinecitta film set in the sky a couple of days ago.

[evollove]

Originally Posted by Severian

Alien: Covenant trailer

That trailer made me pee my pants.

But why is Danny McBride in this? And I thought that chick was headed to the alien planet carrying a robot head? I guess all will be revealed soon.

---

I've been sick as shit for a week. But only watched two movies.

WHIPLASH- Didn't realize LALALand dude made this. He likes to shoot instruments, I guess. Like that flick, good scenes don't seem to add up to a great movie. Loved the ending though.

HELL OR HIGH WATER - I wasn't going to see this, then I realized Ben Foster was in it, who is my favorite contemporary actor. As it turns out, he was just okay.

I'm getting too old. I can't stand watching nice people get shot in the head anymore. It really fucks with me for days afterward.

Nice snapshot of contemporary economics, though, which I wasn't expecting. It's not a straightforward cops n' robbers film at all.

Otherwise I just watched "old" (2008-2012) Daily Shows and Colberts. Made dying seem not so bad.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by MellySingsDoom

Not too sure why Peter Lynch keeps on with all this "Maestro" business, either

I suppose there are certain similarities with Fellini, but as is usually the case with any director who tries to dabble in the Fellini-esque, the results are invariably a disaster. The best argument for just how good Fellini actually was might well be in how terrible most Fellini-esque films are.

[MellySingsDoom]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I suppose there are certain similarities with Fellini, but as is usually the case with any director who tries to dabble in the Fellini-esque, the results are invariably a disaster. The best argument for just how good Fellini actually was might well be in how terrible most Fellini-esque films are.

I think I see what you mean with the Fellini reference, but to me, Brass was, up until the mid-70's, very much a try-any-genre-going director, kind of like a higher-rent (but not much) version of Aristide Massaccessi** It was with his attempt to jump aboard the whole "Night Porter-meets-Cabaret" thing with "Salon Kitty", that he stumbled upon the whole erotica angle. I think he used to refer to his, er, style as "vulgar" - maybe that specific word means something different in Italian? Anyway, I think we can all agree that he ain't no Bigas Luna, that's for sure, let alone Pedro Almoldovar.

**Those eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed that Massaccessi turns up in a cameo appearance in Massimo Dallamano's "What Have You Done To Solange" (he's the Director of Photography in this film). Puffing constantly on a Silk Cut, and sporting a trimmed beard and a blue Pringle jumper (no, really), he's first seen hanging around in Regent's Park (probably looking for Laura Gemser and George Eastman), then appears again in Inspector Barth's office, as one of the pressmen asking a bunch of (badly-dubbed) questions.

[MellySingsDoom]

OK, some actual-by-me-this-time film reviews - I wasn't too sure whether to stick these in Non-Sonic Sounds instead, but seeing as some of these in both past and present times have had UK and/or US cinema screenings, I think these qualify for being placed here. This is basically a round up of stuff I've seen over the past 6 months or so, and are DVD releases unless otherwise indicated, so here goes:

"Jimi Plays Berkeley" (1971, dir. Peter Pilafian) (Blu-Ray release, all regions) - finally, Experience Hendrix get round to officially releasing this live footage, a good couple of decades after a blink-and-you'll-miss-it VHS release in the mid-80's or so (and subsequently heavily bootlegged). This straight-ahead live performance/documentary of Hendrix's first set at the Berkeley Community Theatre (more on the second set later) captures a pretty exhausted-looking Hendrix during his tenure with his final (and to my mind, best) group, and sees him playing a set which refers to a couple of the hits, whilst very much looking forward to the future. Highlights for me include a then-embryonic version of "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)", a version of "Machine Gun" which at one point references Albert Ayler (seriously, check it out), and the final number of "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)", where the Cox/Mitchell duo really lock things down, allowing Hendrix to whip out some truly heart-stealing guitar.

The documentary side includes some truly hilarious stuff of student hippies protesting a screening of "Woodstock", and of Hendrix running through new material with Billy Cox (and Mitch Mitchell too). The footage has been restored as much as possible, and the audio quality is overall impressive. The greedy fucks who own the rights to the original footage refused to let Experience Hendrix any access to the full archive reels, so no new additional footage, I'm afraid. The Blu-Ray contains a couple of extras, including the audio version of the full Berkeley second set, which had been for many years very heavily bootlegged (I used to own two vinyl bootlegs of this performance myself). This second set finally sounds the way you wish those bootlegs would have done, and contains a (surprise) airing of "Hey Joe" (maybe a nod to Arthur Lee there?). There is no audio commentary from the director, unfortunately (the booklet notes outline how Pilafian got totally fucked over by Mike Jeffrey), but the ever-reliable Eddie Kramer handles audio presentation and restoration duties overall.

All in all, "Live In Berkeley" is maybe not the DVD/BR release for the curious/interested to check out first. For those familiar with Hendrix's work, though, this comes very highly recommended indeed.

(reviews to be continued)