o man! i was looking for this all over the TV thread

yeah! will reply there

just watched THE INTERNSHIP

which is stupid good. by which i mean: stupid. but good because of it. not great or anything. it's a stupid comedy w/ vince vaughn and owen wilson about being a couple of good salesmen in dead-end jobs who get an internship at google ha ha ha. and it's good with beer and chili-butter popcorn in a hot summer day when you can't think straight or do work worth a shit.

next, some superhero marvel move ha ha haaaa.

is today tuesday or wednesday? i'm lost

wait. it's tuesday. yeah.

I think part of this is true regarding US TV versus European TV. At the very least, European TV was willing to produce some pretty heady stuff in the 70's and 80's. German TV financed Rainer Werner Fassbinder over the course of two decades and series like "World On A Wire", "Berlin Alexanderplitz" and the newly re-restored "Eight Hours Are Not A Day"- besides being proclaimed as masterpieces now- were adventurous attempts for TV series/movies. Likewise, French filmmakers such as Jacques Rivette ("Out 1"), Marcel Ophuls (a host of WW2 documentaries) and Maurice Pialat ("A House in the Woods") all ventured into the TV realm. I know there's alot more I've forgotten.

American TV, during that same time, were content with freakin' "Hunter" or "Cagney and Lacey". Perhaps the most "adventurous" we got was financing Marvin Chomsky's "Holocaust" series or something like "Roots".....ambitious, historically moving ideas wrapped behind a fairly safe and recognizable facade. I suppose "Twin Peaks" in the early 90's was the greatest leap for American production and then followed by HBO's trailblazing one-two punch of "The Wire" and "The Sopranos". Thirty years later.....

i'll reply on the TV thread!

Just watched Advantageous, scifi dystopia. Pretty nicely done in a lot of ways, seems very plausible. Didn't have a lot of backstory for explanation of a few items, which was a bit off-putting, but if you take it as a POV/snapshot of a situation, it doesn't need the deep 'splaining, and can be possibly enjoyed as is. I'd call it a very smart movie....

The Panic in Needle Park

I guess this is mostly of interest for being Pacino's movie debut (putting aside earlier bit-parts). Beyond that it's very much a product of its time and place: equal parts nouvelle vague and Hubert Selby - with a Joan Didion script for extra kudos.



Second up ...



Barfly

Similar theme (a semi autobiographical script by Bukowski) this one loses out due to a far too mannered performance by Mickey Rourke - who I've never been a fan of (The Wrestler aside). Faye Dunaway is great though.

Amy, I love you. <3

She was kind of gross (her character, that is, not Amy herself) in this one, didn't you think?
But yeah, I love her too. Have you ever seen Doubt? Oh my god, she's in a habit throughout the entire film but I still need a cold shower after watching.

I initially gave this movie a fair amount of shit for both its grim violence and its highly stylized aesthetic, which I thought lacked purpose. But I have to admit, the movie has stuck with me. I've thought about it a lot since seeing it. So I think it must had a bit more to it than I assumed.

Also, Michael Shannon really killed it in this movie. I haven't read a single review that's been able to adequately capture the unassuming way in which his presence takes hold of the entire film, and becomes the focal point, but that's exactly what he does. He's the only real hero in the story (either story), and his performance was just gripping. Loved it.

Yeah she was not "the good guy". This movie shocked me. I was so scared and it stuck with me.

Haven't seen Doubt yet but plan to see everything she is in haha.

Oh man. Doubt is tremendous. That's a real actor's movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Viola Davis (who was a relative nobody at the time, but still won an Oscar for her incredible 13 minutes of screen time) just act the hell out of that movie. Hot damn.

had a little movie fest this weekend. bunch of good stuff

POM POKO




awesome! sad. hilarious! sad. awesome!

isao takahata directed and miyazaki cowrote

HENRY AND JUNE



really great and hot thought a bit slow maybe? maria de medeiros was fantastic. too funny to see remo williams as henry miller. i mean fred ward ha ha. he did look the part though and good accent. also, whitnail has a supporting role, playing hugo (anais's husband). uma as june miller was pretty good. but maria de medeiros was just fantastic here.

BLACK DYNAMITE



o man o man o man. 5/5. a++++ will buy again

i might be forgetting something. i've been so busy lately that i hadn't been able to watch a movie in a long time. revenge, at last!

The Graduate

I'm too young to have seen it when it came out but can only imagine the excitement audiences must've felt when 1st seeing it. It's clearly of its time but never feels stuck in it, which I suppose is one of the criteria necessary for a film to qualify as truly great. And this is a truly great film.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

it really is. i think also boomers loved it for the wrong reasons (i only think, not "assert"). in that the end is very telling when you look at it in retrospective it's not "positive". so it's not like finding liberation, but rather, yo get what you want, and now...? ah ha ha ha. in a way it's like the boomers-- their idealist hippies turned into yuppies with empty lives. only here it doesn't get to the 80s-- just to the moment after the empty win

oh, maybe im a cynic. but i love the movie precisely because it shows there's no escape. at least not this way

it shows that even the supposed freedom is a trap. he will be with a woman he doesnt truly love, who doesnt truly love him, and there is no guarantee of happiness ahead.

I love this movie. Ultra-violence like only the late 80's could do.

YES! Predator 2 rules.

if you have access to dropbox, you can download the Predator 2 here from me. https://www.dropbox.com/s/k2cdpppw5c...RARBG.mp4?dl=0

1.7 GB

A lot of people I speak to about the movie don't really register that moment at the end, so I'm glad that it's pop culture common knowledge to you guys.

I think The Graduate is misinterpreted a great deal, and that people miss the significance of that moment because of how pretty and stylized and superbly well crafted the movie is as a whole -- but the films exists around that final look, in which, yes, these two characters realize that instead of escaping the "phony" world around them, they've actually taken their first steps toward being part of it. Loveless marriage and all.

I've always felt that there was some spiritual overlap between The Graduate and Catcher in the Rye; which I won't get into here, again, for everyone's sake. But if you take the thing as a whole, pointedly not-happy ending and all, then it's still just a really fantastic film.

That one would have to be in my all-time favorites list, irrespective of genre or era.

Haha, I agree. Although I'd say the film's attitude to Benjamin's 'freedom' is ultimately ambivalent; we don't believe in the life he goes for, but nor do we believe in the one he wants to escape from.

100%. In lots of ways I'd say Benjamin is just Holden at a slightly later stage in life, with things moving from anger and frustration to something closer to outright despair.