excuse me is the babe movie an actual movie?? the uncut version? someone help
oh its the happy feet guy
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lol yes the happy feet guy
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George Miller just felt a swell of irrational seething anger and doesn’t know why
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I recently got around to seeing a few movies that had been on my list for years:
Lancelot of the Lake
Not even the library had this one, and all of my searches over the years have come up empty. But I tried one more time the other day and finally found it. A critical review that I read long ago was right that you see backs of legs a lot. This film is different in some interesting ways.
The Sender
This was entertaining. Some good character interactions and imagery. It has its weaknesses, too, but I’m glad I saw it.
The Hospital
I enjoyed this a lot. The chaotic hospital makes such a good setting. I’ve become a fan of the writer Paddy Chayefsky (Altered States, Network, and this).
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that part right at the start of bresson’s lancelot where the guy gets his helmet and head caved in by a sword has always stuck with me. Also the terrorising noise of dudes walking around in armour even when nothing violent is happening. Just clanking through doorways and corridors.
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i watched new rose hotel. it starts super cool and cyberpunk minus everything obnoxious. just harshly cut clothes and hair, green text and video projected onto palm pilots, skylines at night, dark rooms where people rub against eachother, VIDEO FOOTAGE VIDEO FOOTAGE
the shot of sandiis legs next to willem dafoes upper body where hes wearing a space shirt was cool. i should screencap more.
I get what they were doing in the last third where hes putting two and two together through recollection. of course he’s going to remember details in the straight guy way, and the erotism isnt going to be weird bodies mashing together and hands touching skin but it got to be kind of a lot of cinemax fucking. and clips too! LIKE I GET WHY but still.
it started strong though
ive also never read anything by gibson
oh i really loved how fucking lonely walken was.
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walken being doomed to be a tragic orpheus figure forever chasing THE EDGE in the lack of a eurydice to reanimated with his music thanks to late capitalism is raw as fuck
OK i can't really talk about new rose hotel in any more details without spoilers so you have been warned
sandii is pandora recontextualized for late capitalist america and wielding a research disc, fully embodying the surface expectations of men and punishing them for believing in them. there’s a scene where we get survelliance footage of her and dafoe - who idealizes and objectifies her - at a museum, looking at images of angels embracing, then of the virgin mary, then ancient rome, then finally back into the museum itself. you can change the setting and the time but fundamentally the sexual politics that have come to dominate our social interactions are ancient. like the biblical judith she is a rebel, and she disguises herself as harem girl to seduce an assyrian general and behead him with her sabre. walken’s character, always searching for the edge, fails to read images correctly - this movie is fucking obsessed with images and interpreting them, and interpreting them properly - and misses that sandii possesses it the whole time, because she’s a woman, because he finds her attractive - he leers at her a long time when they first meet - ultimately signing his own death warrant. her betrayal is one of retribution for an eternity of patriarchal abuses and through that betrayal dafoe’s vision of her collapses as well - the last 30 mins are weird and experimental but very important, its brilliant too cuz ferrara makes the viewer relive old scenes with dafoe, makes them question the way they’ve been underestimating her and sexualizing her too - and suddenly our protagonist is emasculated and no longer in control, ending the film masturbating impotently as he thinks of the woman who destroyed him and wondering why she did it. dafoe and walken get what they’ve had coming to them for centuries and didn’t even know it.
listen I completely understand if this sounds like total bullshit to anybody but I’m telling you, it’s all there lmao!!
watched a 4K HDR Remaster of 2001: A Space Odyssey last night. it looked incredible, but it was also my first time seeing the film, ever. just one of those things i never got around to and no one ever sat me down with. anyway, i really enjoyed it, and it’s fun seeing/thinking about how much media borrows from this film.
it’s really watchable; i might watch it again tonight, because why not.
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oh wow yeah
i mean it’s just so good
i don’t really think of myself as much of a kubrick head but 2001 is basically perfect and barry lyndon is in my secret all time top ten for sure
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Watched the new documentary adaptation of Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. I enjoyed it but hated it!
I was very surprised by how stylish and engaging it was. Its editing is frenetic and visually stimulating throughout, lots of rapid-fire montages, geometric patterns of screen-split footage, sequences of colorized historical footage set to pop songs. It was impressive in its ability to make dry economics talk entertaining.
Unfortunately, it was way too shallow. Most of the film’s running time is just a broad, extremely fast-paced narrative of the economic developments of the 20th century. It’s presented on such a basic level that your average lefty has nothing really to take away from it. Like, the stuff in this film is only news to you if you’re a republican or an apolitical normie.
The film talks a lot about rising inequality, both in the US and globally, and talks about the role inequality has historically played in various societies. I did appreciate that part but I wanted it to go a lot deeper.
For some reason, the film barely talks about the Soviet Union. Like, one interviewee off-handedly mentions its collapse once and it’s never elaborated on. You would think that any grand narrative of capitalism’s development over the course of the 20th century would have a lot to say about the development of the Soviet Union, its role as a foil to the capitalist system, and the ways its collapse affected and was affected by capitalism. But nope! Felt like a really weird oversight.
Oh and that reminds me, one of the main talking heads they interview in this is fucking Francis Fukuyama, mister “end of history” himself. Are you fucking kidding me?
Despite the film’s title, it doesn’t have all that much to say about the 21st century. It again gives us a very broad and shallow narrative of our new century so far, and touches on recent economic developments. There are a few interesting policy ideas kind of tossed out there but never elaborated on, like the idea of nations taxing multinational corporations based on which countries they’ve made their sales in rather than their physical location. I wanted more of this!
The film is ONLY concerned with fixing capitalism by reducing inequality. It’s not at all interested in alternatives to capitalism. It wants to preserve private property and capitalist relations, but make the system friendlier and more democratic. There’s almost no mention of global warming, and there’s no reckoning with the fact that you can’t stop it without stopping capitalism. I’m not very familiar with Piketty’s writing, but according to this film the guy’s strategy seems to be to try and convince rich people and political elites to give up some of their wealth in order to save themselves and everyone else. Uh, yeah, that’ll totally work, buddy.
This is the most Elizabeth Warren ass documentary I’ve ever seen. Is Piketty just another liberal!?
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ehhhhh remember me to write a longer response to this at some point because I’m a big Piketty head. it sounds faithful in that he’s not interested in communism at all (neither am I except in terms of how effective the USSR was as a foil to western democracies as you mentioned, tbh), he is a genuinely committed socialist who does not see the elimination of markets as necessary or plausible. I don’t think this is a popular view and I do think it tends to get coopted by liberals who don’t believe in doing enough because their imaginations have been constrained by the US and the EU! but he’s smart & not wrong.
also FYI I don’t think he hesitated to support bernie, even though the warren campaign was more actively citing his work? in a better world etc.
I would definitely like to hear more of your thoughts on this when you have a chance. I haven’t read any Piketty but the film felt like the work of a liberal director trying to adapt a book by a social democrat author. Not a single mention of socialism, marxism, anarchism, etc.
yeah he’s a technocrat he’s just much harder left than most technocrats! that’s part of the appeal
he still got beat to shit by melenchon when he tried running a political campaign in france so I don’t think there’s a movement there
also, he does cite Marx a bunch in the book, and he’s actually very good about saying “this data here was insufficient for the 19th century and therefore actively wrong, this other part was actually very prescient, so let’s see what we have to work with now,” and I personally find it very refreshing that he is not interested at all in the hearts and minds aspect of Marxism, but that seems like a bad omission by the director.
also it’s worth noting that the Elizabeth Warren campaign wasn’t a total failure of policy as much as of the tonal allegiances of a middle class that’s too small to achieve anything, and the respects in which it was a failure of policy were specifically constrained by American political imagination. Piketty is legit but a lot of people who might find him tonally agreeable without the substance of his work are absolutely not.
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i had a profound reaction to barry lyndon the first time i watched it in high school but i can barely remember what the movie was about other than being very beautiful. i should watch it again, it might be the only kubrick movie im particularly interested in revisiting at this point. i like a lot of them though. i still havent seen lolita or any of the super early ones.
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i have never engaged with Barry Lyndon on a level deeper than PICTURES PRETTY AHHH and it’s pretty good lol
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for me I was in high school and just starting to smoke weed, so every high was super intense, and Barry Lyndon was playing on IFC late one night, which I knew nothing about. I was stoned out of my gourd, turned it on right at the scene where Barry and Lady Lyndon have their first kiss / erotic moment while the Chopin is playing, and was utterly transfixed. the pacing in that film is incredible if you’re in the mood for it.
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watch the killing
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