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| marantzo |
 Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2012 7:51 pm |
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Joe, when you use those kind of terms for your own race, it's not racist. When Blacks call some of their friends n***er it isn't racism. When my cousin would address his best friend with "Hey, Jew!" it wasn't racist. If you knew this couple you wouldn't have any doubt that it was racism. They are both obnoxious snots. And the Jungle Music thing was from the 30's and 40's not something that was used by anyone but racists in the 60's and on. Though if someone said, "I love Jungle Music," it might not have been racism.  |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2012 11:43 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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Quote: So why is he necessarily racist for a similar statement?
In the case of racism, context is everything. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 2:39 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| RIP Herbert Lom. He had a long career, but he'll always be remembered as the antagonist of Inspector Clouseau. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 3:06 pm |
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Marc wrote: Quote: So why is he necessarily racist for a similar statement?
In the case of racism, context is everything.
Well said. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 3:35 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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I spent the past week watching movies at Fantastic Fest. In the next few days I’ll be reviewing Red Dawn, Sightseers, Doomsday Book, American Mary, Wake In Fright and more. I’ll also be sharing filmed interviews with some directors I met. But first, I thought I’d cover the high and low point of the festival. In the case of Holy Motors, I was in the majority of people I spoke to who loved it. Regarding Cloud Atlas, I was in the minority, at least at this fest, of people who disliked it. Most of the audience at the Cloud Atlas screening lapped up the film like starving dogs eating vomit. The movie was greeted with roars approval from a crowd whose main source of exercise seemed to come from isometric mouth breathing and high impact masturbation. I ran from the theater in fear of being infected by whatever had gotten into them.
Holy Motors screened several times during the fest and as a result a lot of people got to see it. A good thing for getting the word out on film that is almost impossible to describe without waxing poetic. The most satisfying conversations I got into were the ones in which people were trying to crack the Holy Motor code. While the film has an wonderful aura of mystery about it, the essence of the film is clear - it is a movie about the pleasures of seeing movies and making them. And part of the pleasure of the movies is having them fuck with your head. Holy Motors is a mindbender of a very rare sort. I include it among my favorites: Performance, El Topo and Enter The Void.
Holy Motors
When Holy Motors’ Mr. Oscar (the magical Denis Lavant) is asked why he does what he does, he replies that it’s for “the beauty of the act.” Director Leos Carax might reply similarly in describing why Holy Motors does what it does.
In his exhilarating new film, Carax seems to have tapped into cinema’s Akashic Record and brought it to Earth in distilled form. From the opening scene where Carax unlocks the door that opens onto the theater of his brain to the Amen choir of limousines at the end, Holy Motors is as pure as cinema gets. It is about the thing it is, not the thing it is about. It’s reference point is itself. Carax will pull any rug from under any scene to remind us that we are watching a movie and to glory in the artifice of it all. Holy Motors embraces the history of cinema like a drunken poet throwing his arms around the alphabet.
It’s been 13 years since Carax directed his last feature-length film, Pola X, and he’s returned to film making with the fervor of a man who has a lot to get out of his system. But like Holy Motors’ troll with the perpetual hard-on, Carax hasn’t shot his load recklessly or randomly. Carax is a Tantric Master fucking the sacred machine of his art. He uses cinema like a particle generator creating a red hot beam of alchemical fire directed at the very center of the viewer’s pineal gland. His intent is to get you high and he does. He draws you to the screen like a moth is drawn to light. He draws you to the screen like a camera is drawn to a woman’s face or the stars, in their sparkling suicidal glee, are drawn to blackness. He draws you to the screen with the precision of a Bunuelian razorblade tearing open the curtains of our eyes.
Carax has made a film he obviously had to make. He is getting at something deep within himself and he takes us with him - into a place where others have traveled and are traveling still: Bunuel, Cocteau, Kubrick, Muybridge, Jodorowsky, Noe, Argento, Tarantino, Beineix, Franju, Breton, Lisberger, Melville, Bertolucci, Donen, Godard, Powell and Pressburger, Marker…
Carax has taken a road trip through cinema and we are riding in the catbird seat of his dream machine as delighted as children being handed giant lollipops.
Holy Motors opens in the USA on October 17.
Cloud Atlas
I haven’t read the novel Cloud Atlas so I can’t comment as to whether I would have found the movie it’s based on any less incoherent had I read the book. But I’m a firm believer that a movie should be a stand-alone creation that doesn’t require its source material as a road map for navigation. As a stand-alone experience the movie Cloud Atlas is an absolute mess, a stupendous folly that will be hardpressed to recoup its lavish price tag at the box office. For the handful of scenes that come together and actually engage the viewer, there are dozens that skitter across the screen like blobs of mercury and are just as hard to grasp.
Cloud Atlas attempts to interweave multiple plot threads involving multiple reincarnations of multiple characters across multiple time frames into some kind of cinematic mandala with the intent of raising the consciousness of whoever happens to be staring at it. And that’s what one does while being exposed to Cloud Atlas, you stare at it. In my case, mostly in disbelief. There’s little in this bloated, new agey slop that you can wrap your head or heart around. So you just stare. You stare at the goofy prosthestics the actors are forced to wear as they try to embody various characters you don’t really give a shit about (particularly you, Tom Hanks), you stare at the elaborate CGI that does little to awe or amaze, you stare at the uninspired sets that seem to be recycled bits and pieces from Zardoz, Apocalypto and Blade Runner, you stare at actors mouthing dialog that should be inscribed on Hallmark greeting cards and never ever spoken by living human beings (“Nothing is as eloquent as nothing.”) and you stare at the abrupt fits and starts of the disjointed editing that striate the film like poorly designed comic book frames stitched together with cellophane tape and paper clips. And as the two hour mark comes around you start seriously staring at your watch wondering when will this fucker finally come to an end. About a half an hour later it does. The loaf is pinched, circles the bowl and disappears.
The Wachowski siblings directed two good movies, Bound and The Matrix. The success of The Matrix hurled them into the front ranks of modern movie makers. But their follow through has pretty much sucked. With Cloud Atlas, they’ve made a movie that is so spectacularly stupid that if it weren’t for its grotesque sense of self-importance might have joined Showgirls in the pantheon of big-budget, high gloss camp classics. As it is, Cloud Atlas is a beast so malformed someone should just throw a blanket over it and shoot it.
Cloud Atlas opens in the USA on October 26. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 4:04 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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It's interesting how you condemn Rod because
"Carax has made a film he obviously had to make. He is getting at something deep within himself and he takes us with him - into a place where others have traveled and are traveling still: Bunuel, Cocteau, Kubrick, Muybridge, Jodorowsky, Noe, Argento, Tarantino, Beineix, Franju, Breton, Lisberger, Melville, Bertolucci, Donen, Godard, Powell and Pressburger, Marker… "
You're full of pretentious bullshit up to your eyebrows. Look in the mirror. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| knox |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 9:27 am |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
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Location: St. Louis
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Cloud Atlas sounds unwatchable. Wish the hype could be dialed back a little. Not fond of movies where you need the prior book to figure it out. The "recycled bit and pieces from Zardoz" sounds laughable, but I guess I'll have to go and see it now. Sigh.
I'm not sure what "isometric mouth breathing" is, but if it helps my sinuses in a Missouri summer I wouldn't want to condemn it. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 10:33 am |
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Quote: The success of The Matrix hurled them into the front ranks of modern movie makers. But their follow through has pretty much sucked.
I thought their follow-through sucked, even within the series. The first Matrix was good, but the sequels not so much. Dumbed-down Philip Dick, IMO.
Looking forward to seeing Looper tomorrow. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:47 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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Quote: "Carax has made a film he obviously had to make. He is getting at something deep within himself and he takes us with him - into a place where others have traveled and are traveling still: Bunuel, Cocteau, Kubrick, Muybridge, Jodorowsky, Noe, Argento, Tarantino, Beineix, Franju, Breton, Lisberger, Melville, Bertolucci, Donen, Godard, Powell and Pressburger, Marker… "
You're full of pretentious bullshit up to your eyebrows. Look in the mirror.
How is that pretentious? I've seen the movie. All the directors I mentioned are referenced in the film in one way or the other. And there are more that I probably missed.
And fuck you. |
Last edited by Marc on Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:51 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:50 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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Quote: Looking forward to seeing Looper tomorrow.
Lower your expectations. Looper is a good solid thriller. Not much more. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 4:13 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Marc wrote: Quote: Looking forward to seeing Looper tomorrow.
Lower your expectations. Looper is a good solid thriller. Not much more.
Somehow I intuited this and never put Looper on my have-to-see-immediately list. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 5:54 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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| Seeing as my long-form reviews only serve to generate comments regarding some long-gone member of this Society, I'll refrain from posting them. I'll spare you the suffering and angst of those awful awful memories from yesteryear. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 8:38 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Looper is an entertaining, smart time-travel story that doesn't shy away from paradoxes. Nicely acted too with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels. The movie takes place in 2044. Time travel has been developed by 2074, and organized crime is disposing of victims by sending them into the past to be murdered. By 2074 forensic science will be so advanced that murder is futile. The victims will either not be in the 2044 databases, or the database will show them to be alive. The assassins are called Loopers. Their 2074 selves will eventually be sent back to 2044 to be killed by their younger selves, closing the loop. If they don't their younger selves will be tortured; anything that is done to the younger self is translated instantly to the older self. As I said, the film doesn't shy away from paradox. Gordon-Lovett is Joe, Willis is his older self out for revenge against the person responsible for arranging his murder. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 9:10 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| I would think that if there was one movie that did not need to be remade in 2012, it's Red Dawn, especially since, because they wanted to show it in China, it's North Korea that invades the US. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 11:51 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Looper sounds worth a shot.
I've also added Sound of My Voice to my To-See list.
A mystery-thriller film. Seems lots of cult-related films lately -- Martha May Marcy Master. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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