Talk About Movies: Part 4

Great cinematography, Law & Hoult are fantastic, excellent heist scenes, really captured the time & place, and the general aura. It was very interesting reading interviews with the actual FBI guy about.

But can we talk about the utter preposterousness of there being a black female FBI SAC in the rural Pacific NW in the late 70s/early 80s to begin with, who acts & talks like she just walked off the set of CSI, while going into redneck bars and arresting OG white supremacists but never being called the N-word?

SmollettÂ’s a fine actress, and I know they couldnÂ’t have an all white cast (historically accurate as it wouldÂ’ve been), and most viewers wonÂ’t know the difference, it just really threw me. Why not cast Native actors for her role and especially ffs the Tye Sheridan role?

Hey! WhatÂ’s that cloud looking at?

hah but Ribisi's character said he wouldn't testify unless they let his father go out the back door! the movie is very silly in many parts.

it was a very romantic concept that resonated well, an educated child of privilege gave away all his possessions and just became a hermit but failed to take even the most basic preparations

my dad was in the climbing/mountaineering community of that time and literally everyone in that circle read and discussed the book - all were with the "great kid just wish he took it more seriously and then it wouldn't have been such a tragedy"

and obviously, many have tried copycatting him and died as a result as well

Its been a while since i saw it but :

yeah, that character seemed a little out of time/place. The outdoor movie scenery was fabulous. Heist scenes were intense.

You should have waited another month or so... the new 4k uhd should be out in a few weeks. If you're streaming, you might be watching it as they are always released online first before we get that physical disc.

Clint turned down the Bronson role, probably wisely.

*Grizzly Man waves at camera*

Wicked, John Chu, 2024

I was loathe (see what I did there?) to see this because of how it looked in trailers, but I will admit that I was wrong. Wicked was pretty damn wonderful. Looks great, Erivo and Grande are spectacular performers, and the songs were fun. I thought the first half dragged just a little, as it was set in the school and it was too Harry Potterish," but once Glinda and Elphaba travel to the Emerald City, it becomes quite dark and interesting.

Looking forward to part II.

lol I felt the same about Grizzly Man...what a stupid person.

grizly man was an amazing doc - just insane to think it'd never go wrong though

Fall Guy (2024) Surprisingly good. Very cinematic, almost feels like a coral story of cool shots. Has a meta-narrative as well and I like those.

I watched Fall Guy for the 2nd time over the XMas break. Just a fun movie.

Same here - I enjoyed the Bourne books when I read them many years ago. Watched the first movie and it seemed like just one long choreographed fight scene, with camera work that made me dizzy.

I haven't watched the new Dune films because I was turned off by pretty important changes to the story made which I read about. Surprised to hear you say this.

Thanks for this. I would call it sparse in a good way. 2022 Oscar nominee best foreign film. Deserved.
Throw in Never Rarely Sometimes Always and MM:Furiousa over the last couple days, and men not coming off to well

have y'all watched the YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting? The guy made a series of video essays talking about editing techniques, how Refn employs The Quadrant System in Drive. Really changed the way I watch movies. Highly recommend every video. They just returned and will be posting a short film soon.

I forgot how to embed YouTube videos on here. Here's a link to how he edits, it's my favorite video of his. How Does an Editor Think and Feel

to embed take the url, in this case this:

grab the youtube embed link here (it's the middle one)

it'll look like this

and just take the last bit of the url above, in this case it'll be this: 3Q3eITC01Fg

and jam it in between those youtube brackets like so

and boom you got it

A real shame Every Frame a Painting ended. It's such an insightful look into the art of filmmaking. Love his takedown of Michael Bay movies.

There is a reason why the books were regarded for decades as impossible to translate effectively into a movie. I think that changes to the story were inevitable.

If you are remotely interested in the process of turning the story into a movie, I highly recommend the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune.

Every Frame a Painting is a treasure. I rewatced every one of Satoshi Kon's movies after seeing his video. It really heightened my appreciation for technique in storytelling.

It's Not Me

A short film, about forty minutes, by Leos Carax, jams in references to his work and film history. In Histoirse(s) du Cinema, Godard spends eight hours looking at film history compared to Carax's forty minutes, but both films are similar.

Carax has been one of my favorite filmmakers although he hasn't made many films in his long career. Holy Motors and Lovers on the Bridge are great films, but his other films are always interesting.

Not only is It's Not Me a look at film history and Carax's own films, it's political. One section is striking: we see a scene from Sunrise while the narrator comments that God and the grip are part of the following shot. The narrator comments on how the same shot can be made with someone following with a cell phone. Carax shows pictures of dictators, including Putin and Trump.

I haven't put this all together; however, given the film's length, I can watch it over and over again.

And stick around past the credits. You'll see the doll from Annette while referencing Mauvais Sang.

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his Arsehole to talk?

His abdomen would move up and down you dig, farting out the words. It was unlike anything I had ever heard.

This ass talk had a sort of gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound... a sound you could smell.

This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny too, at first. He had a number he called 'The Better Ole' that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, 'Oh, I say, are you still down there old thing?'... 'Nah! I had to go relieve myself'

After a while the ass started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.

Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the Arsehole would eat its way through his pants and it started talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags that nobody loved it, and that it wanted to be kissed the same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the Arsehole said to him: ' It is you who will shut up in the end, Not me. Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and Shyte'.

After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly, like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-DT, Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have amputated spontaneously except for the eyes, you dig. That's one thing the Arsehole couldn't do was 'see', It needed the eyes.

But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died because the eyes just went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eye on the end of a stalk...

I saw Burroughs read one night at Brown when he was promoting Cities of the Red Night. Strange dude.

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk