Raxivace's 2018 List of Movies or (Neo-General Chat: The Second Raid)

[Raxivace]

225. Tokyo Drifter (1966, Dir. Seijun Suzuki) - A former yakuza tries to escape his old life but keeps being targeted by old enemies.
I gotta admit that the plot and characterization here seem kind of thin (While somehow also being convoluted) to the point that the story itself feels more like a way to loosely connect the various set pieces with action and some laughs along the way.

Hot damn though the set pieces are just gorgeous though, and are by far the reason to watch this. The colors just pop the whole entire movie, even in the stylized black and white prologue.

There's also a lot of singing and songs throughout here too, to the point that you could make a legit argument, I think, that Tokyo Drifter is primarily a musical. There's a lot of genre influence all over this movie overall, not just the obvious connection between the noir and gangster/yakuza stuff but even a lot of westerns. The shootouts feel like something out of Ford's western (Or perhaps Leone), and one of the bars in the movie is even themes after old West saloons.

Tokyo Drifter is a great aesthetic experience though I think a weak story prevents it from even approaching an all-time classic.

226. Rain or Shine (Sound version, 1930, Dir. Frank Capra) - Another one of those weird circus movies. This one is about some kind of circus manager that just likes to troll people out of their money. Toward the end of the movie there's a strike at the circus (Apparently people expect to get paid for their work!), but we're meant to side with the troll against them.

I don't have much to say about this one, other than it had a couple of decent laughs. Not one of my favorite Capra films by any means.

[Raxivace]

What stuck with me with his review is the quotation about BOAN being like witnessing the birth of melody, and that great quote that that it's not a bad film because it argues for evil, but a great film that argues for evil, and to understand how it does so it is to understand a great deal about film and evil.

Ah I remember the latter part here but I thought it was from his Triumph of the Will review for some reason. I certainly agree with the notion.

I've been starting to notice something of a movement in recent years to argue that BOAN shouldn't even be taught in film schools or film history programs (Some of these people of course arguing that it be replaced with Intolerance as "the" Griffith movie altogether, a notion I understand but still disagree with. I think both should be taught and canonized), and it just kind of irks me.

One argument I've heard goes something like this: "It's wrong to force POC to watch BOAN because of its racism. They don't need the film to "understand evil" because they have experienced the evils of racism themselves already". While I'm sympathetic to these feelings being expressed, I feel like the point is missed about about how film and evil intersect. That's the point at the heart of that Ebert line in my understanding of it, and gets to a point broader than just personal experience.

Personally speaking, I had to watch Triumph of the Will twice in college (And it was about as fun as it sounds), and while my family isn't Jewish...the Nazis weren't exactly kind to physically disabled and mentally retarded people like my little brother. They murdered several hundred thousand people like him, something not often talked about.

Having to watch Triumph (Twice) didn't offend me though, because I think its vitally, crucially important to understand how that kind of evil thinking erupts and is catered to in the first place.

Yeah, that thread was about stuff people didn't like in NGE. J_Faulkner was pretty rabidly against anything he considered remotely fan-service, and he (stupidly) included the EOE hospital scene, hence the discussion of Asuka's boobs. I don't know if that thread started the omnislashing thing, but it was definitely my general interactions with JF that provoked it.

Yeah I still don't understand how anyone could think that scene was meant to be titillating. There are scenes in NGE that I think are meant to be little more than fun horniness that way, but holy shit the hospital scene is one that is absolutely not.

Since you find it unusual too, do you think you could articulate why? For me, I was coming at it from literature where the most infamous example is Chekov's Gun: if you show/mention/talk about a gun, that gun should be used later in the plot. To me, you transfer that to NGE and it becomes, if you show a cross, a cross should be used later to crucify someone.

The frustrating thing for me right now is that I can't actually think of why it was odd to me at first. Maybe I'm just more used to dialogue being foreshadowing? Like the line in 2.22 about Urashima Taro and how that mirrors Shinji's reappearance in 3.33 clicks in my brain immediately, but something likes the crossplosions I just had to think about for a bit before deciding it actually does make sense to me.

Everyone also agrees that Misato's "not going to put the moves on the kid" line is foreshadowing, but in neither of the last two instances is there any more evidence/proof (compared to the crossplosions I mean) that Anno had originally planned it as foreshadowing.

I think that Misato line is a little different though because even before that dialogue we've already seen something to call her words into question: the sexy photograph she sends to Shinji, so we already have a contradiction between her actions and her words to Ritsuko. She's already "put the moves on him" to an extent. Though even the lipstick kiss here can be read as foreshadowing for the actual kiss in EoE (Even if only in "mining early episodes for something to reuse in the big finale" way).

Man, I never noticed (or heard about!) that orange thing in The Godfather! Typically, foreshadowing is more intuitive (gun->something that will shoot someone, cross->something that will crucify someone), but I guess it's perfectly fine to create foreshadowing by the repetition of any device/object that's connected to some event. It's also fascinating that what Coppola said about it's usage ("“It started out as an accident", but once we realized we had used oranges so frequently in the first movie, we used them purposefully in the others.") is precisely what I suggested numerous times in that thread about "retro-foreshadowing" and stuff where an artist can go back, look at the "accidental" motifs they've created, and start using them intentionally. Nobody in that thread even seemed to realize this was possible!

Yeah I found that whole part of the EGF thread weird. You don't have to be some hypergenius to do this (Coppola certainly isn't, if his post-Apocalypse Now career is any indication), and it itself is not necessarily some proof of brilliance.

Jordan Peterson

Okay this dude does sound a bit familiar to me- I may have heard Dillahunty actually talk about debating him when I listened to the podcast version of his show several years back. I stopped really following him though when I started distancing myself from the internet atheism groups altogether after the whole Elevatorgate/Atheism Plus debacle(s).

The alt-right parallels with Peterson are definitely troubling (Especially the transgender thing, I've definitely seen people make that leap from being "PC" to nightmare fascistic government before), even if he isn't consciously trying to be an influence on their way of thinking.

Anyways thanks for the writeup. Maybe its worth expanding into its own thread too- I'm sure other posters have some thoughts about the guy.

EDIT: Also I think some would argue that even in America that slavery still continues. Some of that might be more rhetoric than anything (Like when some Marxists say that anyone who has to earn a wage for a living is actually a slave), though there's also things like the prison industrial complex being compared to slavery and that's a comparison I'm pretty sympathetic toward.

I'd probably find all that stuff surrounding it interesting too. The whole mystery of Shakespeare's life and the plays is part of the allure, after all.

Yeah its interesting. Personally I find the thing about his will and the "second best bed" most mysterious and also kind of hilarious in its potential pettiness.

Henry VI is just really, really pulpy. I guess the equivalent of that day's dime novels or Transformers movies or whatever. It's hard to know how much Shakespeare wrote, but if Richard III is any indication of his solo work around that time, then it couldn't have been much. The more character-driven II Henry VI seems to me the most Shakespeare-like. That said, Shakespeare did also write Titus Andronicus, but it's so ridiculously over-the-top it seems more like a satire on all that stuff (that's how Taymor's version played it as).

Well I'm cool with pulp so that alone isn't a problem for me if I know to take it on the right terms.

I haven't seen that adaptation of Titus- my impression of the play itself was never that it was really parody or anything but just a silly, overly violent story. Maybe the Friday the 13th of its day.

Hah, I remember some comedian making a joke about this in that we should replace all the "thank you, God/Jesus" with "thank you medical science!" Also reminds me of a porn I once saw where the woman was saying "Oh, Jesus!" and the guy said "My name's Manuel, not Jesus." She laughed, and later he was saying "Oh God" and she said "My name's (whatever it was, I forgot!), not God!"

Reminds me of a meme.

t's just that, the entire finale of 24 is Kaworu going to the basement and seemingly being surprised to find Lilith and not Adam, so how in the world could they insert a scene where SEELE tells him where Adam is? Thing is, that entire scene just really made confusing what in the world Kaworu's plans were, what SEELE's plans were, and what the hell they were planning together. Just none of it makes any sense, and it's all because of one damn scene they inserted afterwards. It's just utterly bizarre.

If its not just a bizarre mistake then I dunno. Maybe they wanted us to think Kaworu was pulling a Jesse James? Suicide by EVA?



Perhaps "This isn't Adam, but Lilith" is just the Kaworu version of "Don't that picture look dusty?".

No matter what the answer is, Anno is a troll.

[Raxivace]

Also maybe Kaworu is like, just real dumb. Maybe he just forgot he was already told about Adam.

[Raxivace]

227. The Miracle Woman (1931, Dir. Frank Capra) - Another early Capra movie with Barbara Stanwyck. In this one Stanwyck plays a young churchgoing girl who becomes disillusioned with Christianity after her priest father isn't treated well by his Church after his death. She ends up working with a shady businessman in retaliation, becoming a radio evangelist who is conning people out of their money (A modern equivalent being those televangeists from the megachurches and so on that make millions of dollars).

A suicidal blind man hears one of her radio sermons, however, and is so moved that he decides to live. He meets up with Stanwyck, they fall in love, and in true Capra fashion Stanwyck becomes so moved that she actually ends up dedicated to Christianity again and ends her con-artist ways.

Anyways I actually thought this was a pretty good movie, especially for an early talkie. As far as early Capra goes it seems more fully formed than either Ladies of Leisure or Rain or Shine does (And it doesn't have some of the weird early sound film pacing that some of those movies do, despite only being from 1931 itself), and The Miracle Woman is certainly much more recognizably in Capra's style. It a lot of ways it's the same basic story even as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Just with religion instead of politics), though the focus is kept on the female lead who finds her idealism again instead of the man who inspires the change within her.

Stanwyck's performance is also way stronger than her role in Ladies of Leisure, but its also just a better part in general too.

228. Personal Shopper (2016, Dir. Olivier Assasayas) - Kristen Stewart plays a spirit medium who wants to contact her dead brother. Except, she's also a “personal shopper"- someone who does “everyday shopping" kinds of things for rich and famous clientele. She's also jealous of her boss (Who works in, of all fields, the fashion industry) and tired of her own life without any fancy clothes like her boss has. These two narrative strands seem kind of at odds with each other to begin with to me.

The thing loosely connecting them is that after trying to do some really silly séance bullshit to meet some spooky ghosts, Stewart thinks maybe her phone is haunted as she starts getting mysterious text messages that start interrogating her about her life, her fears, her personality etc. Except maybe it isn't a ghost, maybe it's a stalker! Also somebody murdered the boss lady. Is Stewart going to get arrested for that? Also maybe the stalker is a ghost oooooh scary.

I just don't think any of this works. The movie wants to be Vertigo, but it also wants to be Cache with text messages instead of video tapes, but it also wants to be Blow-Up, but it also wants to be an episode of fucking Ghost Hunters. None of it really come together at all.

EDIT: Holy hell Personal Shopper is in the Criterion Collection. It honestly gives A Safe Place some stiff competition as their worst entry.

EDIT 2: Thinking about it some more, A Safe Place is probably worse overall in its execution though its probably also the one grasping higher overall.

[Raxivace]

So I've been watching the new Sword Art Online season, and while it's not especially good this week's episode took a...weird direction.

[Raxivace]

This makes, what, a Hepta-Post?

229. A Star is Born (1976, Dir. Frank Pierson) - This seems to have the worst reputation of the four different versions of A Star is Born but I dunno, it didn't seem that bad to me. Changing the story from Hollywood to country music is inspired, and Kristofferson does great.

Barbara Streisand I think though doesn't quite have the acting chops of Judy Garland or even Janet Gaynor, though I think her actual musical performances are solid. The Oscar for her performance of Evergreen was well deserved.



I'm not familiar with director Frank Pierson at all, but it seems he was a writer on Cool Hand Luke and Dog Day Afternoon. Very different movies from this.

230. Searching (2018, Dir. Aneesh Chaganty) - A widowed father's (David) teenaged daughter (Margot) goes missing one day. David realizes that Margot left her laptop at home, and searches through her social media accounts and the internet to try and understand where she went and, if possible, save her. David isn't so technologically literate though, and finds out he may not understand Margot as well as he thinks…

The main thing to talk about here is the filmmaking style. Perhaps similar to that horror movie Unfriend (Unfortunately I have not seen this yet. Definitely curious about it though), the film is “shot" from the surfaces of computers and other modern technology (In a way, this might be to Facetime and webcams and the like what the handheld movie camera was to The Blair Witch Project).

EDIT: Apparently it wasn't actually recorded directly on computer screens, but digital recreations of them.

From the family's older PC nostalgically running Windows XP…







To a more modern Mac, which is the kind of screen that most of the movie is spent on.



The overuse of FaceTime is perhaps unrealistic (I'm not the first to point this out), though I think it works as a dramatic conceit for the movie, to keep a human face on what we're looking at.

I think older people, or perhaps those that just don't use much technology, will find themselves a bit bored by staring at so many computer screens. I think younger people though (Like, younger than 50) will have a way easier time getting absorbed by this, especially because this movie was made by people that seem to actually get the internet.



Like, of fuckin' course Reddit would think they could find a missing person and would not at all succeed.

Thematically though I think the movie is kind of ambivalent about the internet. While David eventually saves his daughter using information he got from Google, the crucial evidence he needed end up actually being some of the first things he found out but wasn't able to properly contextualize. Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter etc. end up largely being distractions that more or less overload him and prevent him from finding the truth as easily as he could. This works as both as a traditional mystery genre element with David as our detective gathering early clues that don't pay off until much later (Hell I think this movie probably follows all of Ronald Knox's 10 Commandments), but also as commentary on the internet itself being filled with a lot of worthless and even some outright mean bullshit.

Also apparently there's an alien invasion subplot in this movie: https://io9.gizmodo.com/an-alien-invasi ... 1830338767 I completely missed this when I watched the film, though I think this is more of a gag than anything.

Anyways this is just a cool little thriller (And if you're someone gets nostalgic over things like Windows XP, there's that angle to the movie) that I really recommend.

[Eva Yojimbo]

What stuck with me with his review is the quotation about BOAN being like witnessing the birth of melody, and that great quote that that it's not a bad film because it argues for evil, but a great film that argues for evil, and to understand how it does so it is to understand a great deal about film and evil.

Ah I remember the latter part here but I thought it was from his Triumph of the Will review for some reason. I certainly agree with the notion.

I've been starting to notice something of a movement in recent years to argue that BOAN shouldn't even be taught in film schools or film history programs (Some of these people of course arguing that it be replaced with Intolerance as "the" Griffith movie altogether, a notion I understand but still disagree with. I think both should be taught and canonized), and it just kind of irks me.

One argument I've heard goes something like this: "It's wrong to force POC to watch BOAN because of its racism. They don't need the film to "understand evil" because they have experienced the evils of racism themselves already". While I'm sympathetic to these feelings being expressed, I feel like the point is missed about about how film and evil intersect. That's the point at the heart of that Ebert line in my understanding of it, and gets to a point broader than just personal experience.

Personally speaking, I had to watch Triumph of the Will twice in college (And it was about as fun as it sounds), and while my family isn't Jewish...the Nazis weren't exactly kind to physically disabled and mentally retarded people like my little brother. They murdered several hundred thousand people like him, something not often talked about.

Having to watch Triumph (Twice) didn't offend me though, because I think its vitally, crucially important to understand how that kind of evil thinking erupts and is catered to in the first place.

I think he cited Triumph of the Will in the BOAN review, so that's probably why you're mixing them up.

I'm definitely with you on showing BOAN in film classes. In addition to what you've said, I also think the notion that people who've suffered actual racism would be... what's the word? Hurt? or something, by a 100+ year old film that everyone already recognizes (and was recognized at the time) as being explicitly racist seems rather nonsensical. I think most kids studying film would be intelligent enough to separate the subject matter from the historically important technical aspects.

Yeah, that thread was about stuff people didn't like in NGE. J_Faulkner was pretty rabidly against anything he considered remotely fan-service, and he (stupidly) included the EOE hospital scene, hence the discussion of Asuka's boobs. I don't know if that thread started the omnislashing thing, but it was definitely my general interactions with JF that provoked it.

Yeah I still don't understand how anyone could think that scene was meant to be titillating. There are scenes in NGE that I think are meant to be little more than fun horniness that way, but holy shit the hospital scene is one that is absolutely not.

I've known a few people online like JF that were just completely tone-deaf when it came to the intentions/themes/etc. behind film and art. Perhaps the one that stuck with me the most besides the JF/hospital scene was harry on the 2001:ASO board who argued that Black Swan was anti-feminist because it portrayed a female professional who went crazy, thus it argued that all females who tried to be professionals were crazy. He never let the pesky fact that the film featured another prominent (almost co-lead) female character in the SAME profession who wasn't crazy, and he seemed to completely miss every clue in the film about what actually drove the lead protagonist crazy, which was in itself society's ridiculous standards about female perfection.

Since you find it unusual too, do you think you could articulate why? For me, I was coming at it from literature where the most infamous example is Chekov's Gun: if you show/mention/talk about a gun, that gun should be used later in the plot. To me, you transfer that to NGE and it becomes, if you show a cross, a cross should be used later to crucify someone.

The frustrating thing for me right now is that I can't actually think of why it was odd to me at first. Maybe I'm just more used to dialogue being foreshadowing? Like the line in 2.22 about Urashima Taro and how that mirrors Shinji's reappearance in 3.33 clicks in my brain immediately, but something likes the crossplosions I just had to think about for a bit before deciding it actually does make sense to me.

Actually, that could very likely be it! Like I said, I was coming at it from a literary background where the most famous example is Chekov's Gun, so I was pretty used to the idea of how symbols/objects could be foreshadowing. However, I do think in film/TV it's far more common to have dialogue be foreshadowing, and it's also more obvious. That might be why nobody in that thread had a problem saying the Misato line was foreshadowing.

Everyone also agrees that Misato's "not going to put the moves on the kid" line is foreshadowing, but in neither of the last two instances is there any more evidence/proof (compared to the crossplosions I mean) that Anno had originally planned it as foreshadowing.

I think that Misato line is a little different though because even before that dialogue we've already seen something to call her words into question: the sexy photograph she sends to Shinji, so we already have a contradiction between her actions and her words to Ritsuko. She's already "put the moves on him" to an extent. Though even the lipstick kiss here can be read as foreshadowing for the actual kiss in EoE (Even if only in "mining early episodes for something to reuse in the big finale" way).

Good points.

Jordan Peterson

Okay this dude does sound a bit familiar to me- I may have heard Dillahunty actually talk about debating him when I listened to the podcast version of his show several years back. I stopped really following him though when I started distancing myself from the internet atheism groups altogether after the whole Elevatorgate/Atheism Plus debacle(s).

The alt-right parallels with Peterson are definitely troubling (Especially the transgender thing, I've definitely seen people make that leap from being "PC" to nightmare fascistic government before), even if he isn't consciously trying to be an influence on their way of thinking.

Anyways thanks for the writeup. Maybe its worth expanding into its own thread too- I'm sure other posters have some thoughts about the guy.

EDIT: Also I think some would argue that even in America that slavery still continues. Some of that might be more rhetoric than anything (Like when some Marxists say that anyone who has to earn a wage for a living is actually a slave), though there's also things like the prison industrial complex being compared to slavery and that's a comparison I'm pretty sympathetic toward.

IIRC, the Dillahunty debate was pretty recent, like earlier this year. *Checks* Yeah, it was published on YT in May: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmH7JUeVQb8 I do know Dillahunty discussed the interview afterwards, though. I've never been a big fan of Dillahunty--I think he'd get crushed by more sophisticated theist debaters, and his reliance on deductive logic that's thousands of years old shows he hasn't read much of the recent literature on the topic--but he is pretty good at cutting through blatant BS and clarifying certain points and making them digestible for average viewers/listeners, and some of that clarifying is needed when talking to Peterson.

What's funny is that Peterson has repeatedly and publicly denounced the alt-right and has claimed that they actually hate him. I believe that he actually hates them, and I think he believes they hate him, but I don't think it's quite as mutual as he thinks. Though, like I said, it could just be that many of the anti-PC types are latching onto his superficial messages.

I'm pretty sure everyone around here would hate him, lol. I find him interesting if only because unlike most public intellectual types these days he doesn't fit neatly into any box. He's actually talked about this before saying that there's a huge problem on both the left/right with groupthink and a lack of individualism, so if he's talking to either side he could replace them with someone else on that same side and get the same points/questions. His emphasis on individualism does have a kind of Romantic Idealism feel to it that I can appreciate in this Postmodern age.

I'd probably find all that stuff surrounding it interesting too. The whole mystery of Shakespeare's life and the plays is part of the allure, after all.

Yeah its interesting. Personally I find the thing about his will and the "second best bed" most mysterious and also kind of hilarious in its potential pettiness.

LOL, I always bring up the "second best bed" thing to people who don't know anything about Shakespeare. There's something about it that's so absurdly nonsensical yet strangely humanizing.

I haven't seen that adaptation of Titus- my impression of the play itself was never that it was really parody or anything but just a silly, overly violent story. Maybe the Friday the 13th of its day.

Here's how Ebert put it (citing Harold Bloom): ""Titus" as "Scream 1593"? Bloom cites the scene where Titus is promised the return of his sons if he will send Saturninus his hand--only to find the hand returned with only the heads of his sons. Grief-stricken, Titus assigns tasks. He, with his remaining hand, will carry one of the heads. He asks his brother to take the other. That leaves the severed hand. At this point in the play, his daughter Lavinia has no hands (or tongue) after being raped and mutilated by Queen Tamora's sons, and so he instructs her, "Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth." Bloom invites scholars to read that line aloud without smiling, and says Shakespeare knew the play "was a howler, and expected the more discerning to wallow in it self-consciously.""

I got to admit, it's hard to imagine Shakespeare wrote that line with a straight face.

t's just that, the entire finale of 24 is Kaworu going to the basement and seemingly being surprised to find Lilith and not Adam, so how in the world could they insert a scene where SEELE tells him where Adam is? Thing is, that entire scene just really made confusing what in the world Kaworu's plans were, what SEELE's plans were, and what the hell they were planning together. Just none of it makes any sense, and it's all because of one damn scene they inserted afterwards. It's just utterly bizarre.

If its not just a bizarre mistake then I dunno. Maybe they wanted us to think Kaworu was pulling a Jesse James? Suicide by EVA?



Perhaps "This isn't Adam, but Lilith" is just the Kaworu version of "Don't that picture look dusty?".

No matter what the answer is, Anno is a troll.

Also maybe Kaworu is like, just real dumb. Maybe he just forgot he was already told about Adam.

Did you ever read that epic ep. 24 plot hole/fanwank thread? I participated throughout much of it, and lots of interesting ideas/theories were bandied about. Nothing definitive ever came of it, but I remember lots of interesting stuff. Kaworu's amnesia was one theory.

I think the one I ended up finding most convincing was SEELE sent Kaworu after Gendo. This would've killed two birds with one stone for them; eliminate Gendo who was starting to turn against them, and retrieve the Adam embryo that they needed for 3I. Kaworu essentially thinks SEELE is going to turn the Earth over to him and the Angels and that they all want death. Kaworu meets Shinji and starts to question his mission/purpose, and while at NERV he senses a presence down in Terminal Dogma (Angels showed a propensity for being able to sense Adam/Lilith). So he goes down to investigate, and is shocked to find Lilith there. When he says "chigau (it's different)" he's not saying "I'm shocked this is Lilith instead of Adam," he's saying "it's different from how I thought/imagined everything was going to be." So he realizes that instead of just wiping out humanity and having the Angels take over, SEELE was actually trying to reunite with Lilith.

225. Tokyo Drifter (1966, Dir. Seijun Suzuki)

This is the only one I've seen of your recent watches. I mostly agree with your assessment though I don't think I was quite as thrilled. I enjoyed the aesthetics but didn't think it held together well as a whole. You can see its influence on Tarantino in its genre-bending stuff, but it just seemed rather scattershot. I think I gave it a 6.5 or something. Don't think I reviewed it, though. I actually saw several Suzuki's around the same period and came to the same general opinion, though they've kinda run together in my mind by now.

[Raxivace]

I think most kids studying film would be intelligent enough to separate the subject matter from the historically important technical aspects.

Believe me, there are plenty of dumb kids in these kinds of programs. I should know, I was one of them.

Eventually I did get some sense beaten into me by it though, and I'm grateful for that, though my professor seemed surprised that I improved lmao.

I've known a few people online like JF that were just completely tone-deaf when it came to the intentions/themes/etc. behind film and art. Perhaps the one that stuck with me the most besides the JF/hospital scene was harry on the 2001:ASO board who argued that Black Swan was anti-feminist because it portrayed a female professional who went crazy, thus it argued that all females who tried to be professionals were crazy. He never let the pesky fact that the film featured another prominent (almost co-lead) female character in the SAME profession who wasn't crazy, and he seemed to completely miss every clue in the film about what actually drove the lead protagonist crazy, which was in itself society's ridiculous standards about female perfection.

Ah of course, your arch-nemesis harry.

But yeah these are exactly the kinds of righteous attitudes that I find frustrating, especially because there are times where I'll absolutely agree with these people on certain films/games/shows/etc. in regards to problematic themes and other times where I think they get tripped up by even the slightest detachment between a filmmaker's morality and a protagonist's morality or actions or fate or whatever. I haven't seen Black Swan but it sounds like someone like harry is especially missing the point if there are other female professionals that aren't driven crazy in the film (Though you may not even need such a character if the point is that society did this to the protagonist woman).

It kind of reminds me of the dumb "Wolf of Wall Street endorses Jordan Belfort" argument.

Actually, that could very likely be it! Like I said, I was coming at it from a literary background where the most famous example is Chekov's Gun, so I was pretty used to the idea of how symbols/objects could be foreshadowing. However, I do think in film/TV it's far more common to have dialogue be foreshadowing, and it's also more obvious. That might be why nobody in that thread had a problem saying the Misato line was foreshadowing.

Yeah maybe I stumbled on the right answer here.

I'm going to start paying more attention to verbal vs. visual foreshadowing in films/TV and see what I notice.

IIRC, the Dillahunty debate was pretty recent, like earlier this year.

Ah okay, I definitely missed this one then. I like the guy but he does struggle sometimes...I remember him having trouble with TAG in a debate with Matt Slick IIRC, though that was maybe a decade ago at this point and I'd hope he's better with those kinds of arguments now.

Actually watching Dillahunty debate people is what got me out of watching these kinds of live debates period, because it made me realize most of these arguments are more about theater anyways, about overloading your debate opponent with more information/questions than they can possibly respond to, intentionally peppering arguments with logically fallacious but emotionally appealing reasons etc.

I got to admit, it's hard to imagine Shakespeare wrote that line with a straight face.

Okay maybe it is parody.

Did you ever read that epic ep. 24 plot hole/fanwank thread? I participated throughout much of it, and lots of interesting ideas/theories were bandied about. Nothing definitive ever came of it, but I remember lots of interesting stuff. Kaworu's amnesia was one theory.

I did years ago but it was long and complicated and I don't remember the specifics too well.

I think the one I ended up finding most convincing was SEELE sent Kaworu after Gendo. This would've killed two birds with one stone for them; eliminate Gendo who was starting to turn against them, and retrieve the Adam embryo that they needed for 3I. Kaworu essentially thinks SEELE is going to turn the Earth over to him and the Angels and that they all want death. Kaworu meets Shinji and starts to question his mission/purpose, and while at NERV he senses a presence down in Terminal Dogma (Angels showed a propensity for being able to sense Adam/Lilith). So he goes down to investigate, and is shocked to find Lilith there. When he says "chigau (it's different)" he's not saying "I'm shocked this is Lilith instead of Adam," he's saying "it's different from how I thought/imagined everything was going to be." So he realizes that instead of just wiping out humanity and having the Angels take over, SEELE was actually trying to reunite with Lilith.

Having not seen the episode recently that sounds plausible enough, though it seems like it relies a lot on the "chigau" line being translated a certain way. Again, I have no idea how accurate that line is/isn't.

[Raxivace]

You know I just remembered that I myself have argued before that the first shot of Asuka in NGE...



...Told us basically everything there is to know about Asuka in a broad sense- not only that she sees herself as a giant, that she's hotheaded (Her hair really looks like fire here- it even seems to be erupting directly from the Sun in a sense), but also that her face being covered in shadow like this is an early hint that there's a darker element to her character that she keeps at bay that we won't see for a while in the series.

That's absolutely a kind of visual foreshadowing that I put forth in that argument with that last part, so now I'm doubly not sure why I was confused by the idea of crossplosions as foreshadowing at first.

[maz89]

224. A Star is Born (1954, Dir. George Cukor) - It feels weird to say this but this was only my second Judy Garland. I've seen Wizard of Oz so many times over the course of my life though that it sure doesn't feel like only my second one.

Anyways I generally found this to be superior to the 1937 version, largely because of Garland. She's just fantastic here from beginning to end. That extended film within the film sequence right before the interlude in particular is just dazzling. James Mason and the rest of the cast are good too of course but I found myself tapping my foot in enjoyment often to Garland's songs.

The ways this version differs from the previous one is curious though. We don't see Esther's life before coming to Hollywood, and the entire grandmother character is cut out of the film entirely. In a sense, the '54 version actually has a more limited narrative scope because of this, despite the 3-hour run time in the version I watched (It's a shame they had to resort to using audio over production stills to help restore the movie to Cukor's intended vision but I appreciate the effort).

I also didn't like the use of the lipstick Cupid heart in the movie as much. I feel like the use of the Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the '37 version is just way more poignant and fitting as not only a sort of “message of encouragement from beyond the grave", but the ironic repetition of is just much stronger in general (In a sense it confirms the grandmother's bittersweet prophecy from the beginning of the film about how Esther will end up with her heart broken. She's not the naïve newcomer to Hollywood anymore but despite the loss of her husband she has gained so much as a person). It also doesn't invite any goofier questions of “Really? Nobody wiped the lipstick off the wall after all this time?" either.

EDIT: I've been calling it a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame but looking at that image I posted earlier again I guess its just Norman Maine's signature and foot prints in the cement in the '37 version. Even though it IS outside the Grauman's Chinese Theater, and even though there ARE Stars and such as a part of the Walk of Fame outside of where the Chinese Theater is now (Which is also now under a different name too)...the actual Star system didn't become a thing until the late '50's based on what I'm seeing on Wikipedia.

The basic idea of what I'm saying is the same though, and I still feel its superior to what the '54 version uses.

I preferred the 1937 version for sure. As much as I enjoyed the musical numbers here, I got tired of them because of the film's damn three hour run time. The reason for this is that most of the numbers felt like they were simply slapped onto the 1937 story - I mean generally, I did not get the impression that thought was put into how each song informed or added to the themes/story (towards the latter half of the film, that is). It just felt like filler in that last hour.

In terms of acting performances, I can't pick, but may give a slight edge to the duo in the 1937 version. Perhaps, the knowledge of what would happen in the remake story-wise made me less excited about it, especially as the things they changed/removed (like the grandmother's prophecy, the stuff behind the scenes in the 1937 version where they come up with Esther's on-screen name) I wish they hadn't and the things they copied I felt were just executed better in the original.

I think this was also my second Judy Garland... she reminded me a bit of Liza Minnelli looks-wise. BTW, watching A Star is Born and its remakes make me feel like putting on New York, New York. That film has aged beautifully in my mind.

[Raxivace]

I don't think Judy Garland looking like Liza Minnelli is that surprising considering she's her mother (Director Vincent Minnelli of course being the father). I don't think I'll ever be fully on board with New York, New York though I respect the attempt at doing such a weird idea.

As far as Star '54 goes, I dunno. I felt like the three hours just whizzed by and the songs never really felt filler-ish to me. I'd have to watch that last hour again to see if I really agree or not. I do absolutely agree about the grandmother character being an unfortunate cut though, I felt she added a lot to the 1937 version.

Have you seen all four versions now? I've watched the newest one too though I won't have a post up about until the morning probably.

[maz89]

HAHAHA. I had no idea Judy Garland was Liza Minnelli's mother!!!!

No, I still have to see the 1976 and 2018 ones. Will go back to your posts when I do. :)

[Raxivace]

Criterion just announced they're doing a release of Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour. Absolutely check this one out if you haven't seen it before. Its really grown in my mind over the years.

[maz89]

I don't think I'll ever be fully on board with New York, New York though I respect the attempt at doing such a weird idea..

This just caught my eye - how was it weird?

[Raxivace]

Mix of naturalistic acting with the kind of artificial sets that Old Hollywood used. I don't think I've ever seen another movie try that.

[maz89]

Ah, gotcha. Maybe Jimbo can comment.

[Raxivace]

I doubt Jimbo will even see it. He's been lost to video games as it is...

[Raxivace]

I'm very happy because my MOBILE FIGHTER G GUNDAM ULTRA EDITION BOXSET came in the mail today. It's a very good boxset because like all good blu-ray sets it literally comes with a shotglass.



I love the Tequila Gundam (Actual name of that robot on the shotglass).

[Raxivace]

Bah, I fell behind on updates again. A lot of Frank Capra and Barbara Stanwyck today, plus a classic mecha anime.

231. A Star is Born (2018, Dir. Bradley Cooper) - And at last I'm finally here with the final version of A Star is Born.

I think this one is pretty interesting for a variety of reasons, since it seems like its largely a riff on the 1976 version with the focus on the music scene, though having Lady Gaga's character “surpass" Bradley Cooper's character with a different type of music altogether (Her's is a far more pop-y music with more sexual overtones compared to his music being more country-ish in origin) and I feel this really changes the dynamic between the characters in a way that the three other versions didn't have.

We also have the family themes from the 1938 version coming back, though the Gaga has a bit of an overbearing but still well-meaning father instead of the completely supportive grandmother, and Cooper's character gains a brother that none of the other versions has, and their own backstory revolves around a father character that has since died and haunts over a lot of the movie, particularly a lot of Cooper's own self-destructive actions throughout the movie.

These are some interesting changes (I can't help but think of the brother describing how all music is just reinterpreted versions of the same 12 notes) that keep the movie feeling fresh despite this particular basic storyline being told many times before.

232. Sorry, Wrong Number (1948, Dir. Anatole Litvak) - Leona (Barabara Stanwyck) is a woman with physical disabilities living in a large house. One day while talking on the phone, she accidentally gets patched into a phone call she shouldn't have been and hears about a murder plot. Her husband has yet to come home tonight, and she desperately spends the rest of the movie calling people on her phone to try and figure out where her husband is and if he's okay.

In Reinventing Hollywood Bordwell talks about this film and mentions that the radio play its based on has the interesting gimmick of never leaving the Stanwyck character's perspective- we're limited to what she says and what she can physically hear through her telephone conversations. That makes an interesting parallel to that Searching movie I mentioned earlier, where in that film we're limited to technology the David character of that film has set up (For the most part anyways. There's at least one specific scene toward the end of Searching that breaks this central conceit of the film).

The film version of Sorry, Wrong Number is done more conventionally though- we're often getting subjective flashbacks of other characters that Stanwyck is talking to, we're seeing objective shots of them etc. In return the story is expanded compared to the radio version by the sound of it (heh), though I have to wonder what someone like Hitchcock would have done with this material. Could he have kept the story limited to Stanwyck's bedroom? Movies of his like Lifeboat and Rope make me think he probably could have.

Anyways I liked the movie we got (And it has a fairly grim ending), though I dunno that it will ever be one of my favorite noirs or anything.

233. Forbidden (1932, Dir. Frank Capra) - This is a real unusual one for Capra, especially following something like Miracle Woman. It starts out as a light-hearted love story with a younger woman (Babarbara Stanwyck) meeting an older man. They hook up, have some good times, things seem to be going well. The man announces that he has to leave Stanwyck one day…because he's married. And also a rising politician. Stanwyck is mad, and they split.

We soon find out Stanwyck is pregnant…with his child. A few years go by and she and him concoct a plan for him to adopt the baby without his wife finding out that it's his biological child, that its actually just some random child that was discovered on the streets that he's taking in just because he's such a good guy etc.

A reporter coworker of Stanwyck's that was in love with her has a thing against the politician though, and has been looking for an excuse to sink his career. He suspects something off about the child, and goes on vendetta for like 20 fuckin' years to find the truth about the kid and ruin the man. Stanwyck finds out and marries the reporter to try satiate him away from the investigation. He finds the truth about the affair and her part of it, and plans to run the story. They wrestle a bit over some documents with proof he has and she gets hurt during the ordeal.

So Stanwyck decides to just fuckin' murder the guy in their apartment right then and there, holy shit. She just gets a gun out of the other room and shoots him dead straight through their kitchen door. She goes to prison for a year for this, and gets pardoned by her former lover, who she is still loyal to

Again, this is Capra we're still talking about here which makes this all weird, and that he keeps us sympathetic to Stanwyck the entire time through these insane 85 minutes is something. Pre-Code movies sure were a thing.

I kind of get how Stanwyck's star image could change enough to get cast in movies like Double Indemnity now, and of course develop further on from there. She's not quite playing the sexy femme fatale of that movie in this one (Her murder and even her attempt to string a man along in Forbidden are still ultimately done for relatively noble reasons…or at least reasons that are defensible), but a movie like this does work as a sort of missing link between Stanwyck as a kind of proto-Jean Arthur of these older Capra movies and the independent Stanwyck with the stronger personality of these 40's noir movies (It's even in Sorry, Wrong Number).

234. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932, Dir. Frank Capra) - After trying to save a group of orphans, Christian missionary Megan Davis (Played by Barbara Stanwyck) is saved by one General Yen. In taking care of her, Yen falls in love while Megan tries to resist her own feelings.

Oh man I am probably not the person to untangle the racial politics on display here but I shall try to give a take anyways. On the one hand, General Yen is played by a white actor in yellow face. On the other hand, similar to Griffith's Broken Blossoms I think part of the point of the movie is that being against Yen and Davis being romantically involved because of their race is wrong, and unlike Broken Blossoms there's more of a genuine attempt to give the Yen character a reason amount of psychological complexity (For 30's Hollywood anyways).

Even with that in mind though, there is some uh loaded imagery in this movie, like this dream sequence (Already somewhat unusual for a 30's film, since with a few exceptions 30's Hollywood movies largely portrayed objective events instead of subjective ones) that the Megan character has.



She first dreams of General Yen as a kind of Chinese Nosferatu…and then her savior in the dream is a far more handsome version of Yen whom she totally wants to fuck. I do think its a good sequence, though in my view I think we're meant to take Yen-as-Nosferatu only as a visualization of Megan's own fears about the Chinese and not necessarily the POV of the film's- perhaps we could look at it as her older view of the Chinese being replaced with a more humanized view of them (Or at least humanized to the point of imagining being attracted to them). I would never say The Bitter Tea of General Yen is "woke" by modern standards of course but in its own way I think this is even kind of progressive for its era of Hollywood filmmaking...in terms of the actual onscreen story anyways, and not really the casting itself, which undermines the message a bit.

I found an article online that has a pretty even handed take on the movie, and a gives a better, more nuanced take than I'm able to provide.

The film's stylistic merits are easy enough for everyone to accept; what's harder to accept, for viewers now as well as back then, is the film's contentious views on both Chinese and Christian American culture and the possibility of love and understanding between them. The film's attempts to appeal to its contemporary audience - the frequent aspersions towards Chinese culture, the exoticisation of China as an exciting, lawless wasteland where life is cheap and morals are scarce, and the casting of a Caucasian actor as the Chinese lead in accordance with Production Code taboos - are enough to compel today's culturally sensitive viewers to write the film off, as many have. And yet these concessions to the demands of its era still weren't enough - the mere suggestion of erotic love between a Chinaman and a white woman was enough to keep audiences away in droves.

[...]

The film continues battering away at the contradictory impulses of Western Orientalism; as the film progresses, it becomes evident that Christian morality is under equal fire for its own naivete and hypocrisy in embracing other peoples and cultures. This becomes evident when Davis makes an eloquent plea to save Mah-Li (Toshia Mori), a sweet-faced girl captured for spying against the General. The missionary's argument for the transcendent power of unconditional love moves the General to release Mah-Li (though he holds Davis as her substitute). In the zeal of her missionary sermon, Davis proclaims that all of them are of one blood - upon which the General touches her for the first time, hand on hand, and asks, “Do you really mean that?" Davis retracts her hand impulsively - and surely enough, Mah-Li betrays both of them, passing information that leads to a total rout of Yen's army and his own undoing.

[...]

The film's subversion of Western values is still insufficient for contemporary film scholars, especially those critical of the institutional racism of Hollywood production that persists today. Floyd Cheung and David Palumbo-Liu have purposefully argued how, by having General Yen kill himself even as Davis seems to offer herself, the film effectively “contains" the Asian male within a socially (read: sexually) unthreatening space (2). They go on to identify this same containment strategy in contemporary Hollywood films such as the Chow Yun-fat vehicle The Replacement Killers (1998), arguing that effectively nothing has changed in Hollywood representations of interracial sex. Though to be fair, this same problem can be seen elsewhere, most notably in the Australian feature Japanese Story (2003), a film I find particularly frustrating because fundamentally it's so damn safe, so respectful of the Other culture so as to leave it lingering at an inscrutable distance, rather than to venture a connection, offensive or otherwise.

This is what I find to be of such value in The Bitter Tea of General Yen; that it risks offence for the sake of constructing a dialogue, one fraught with so many perils in the realms of politics, religion, cultures and sex, that it would not be worth it if it weren't necessary. Despite the social prejudices that informed its production, it dared to carve out a space where two people might live not as Chinese and American, heathen and Christian, man and woman, but just “you and me" - while reckoning soberly with the impossibility of achieving such a space. Whatever faults it may have, its daring puts contemporary films of similar subject matter to shame.

Source: http://sensesofcinema.com/2005/cteq/bitter_tea/. The whole article is worth taking a moment to read.

I do think there is an interesting movie in here buried under the problematic elements (Which themselves are worth discussing), though it does make me wonder how much of what we do and say now will be seen as horribly outdated and offensive in 50 or 100 years. If that time comes, perhaps its for the better.

235. Suspicion (1941, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, Rewatch) - Woman thinks her husband might be a murderer blah blah blah. I'm assuming that anyone here that ever wanted to watch this has seen it by this point.

Suspicion is still a good movie, though this time around I tried paying more attention to Cary Grant's performance as Johnnie. A lot of the glances and looks Johnnie is giving throughout the movie really does make it seem like he is just playing him as a murderer that just flatout doesn't like his wife Lina (Joan Fontaine) that much.

Looking at the censored ending again too, I think I like it even less than I did before. I completely forgot about the Johnnie had been considering suicide but just decided not to go through with it angle and frankly I like that even less than Johnnie just not being a murderer. I don't know that I completely buy the idea that you can still interpret this ending as her simply being fooled by Johnnie, that he's still planning to kill her but eh.

-----------------------------------------------

Also I finished the classic 1983 mecha anime Armored Trooper VOTOMS. VOTOMS is probably the fourth biggest mecha franchise after Gundam, Evangelion, and Macross (Though it is a distant fourth after those three), and while its not as prolific as the others (Even NGE probably beats it here considering the insane amount of spinoffs and dopey video games and such it has received), it still does some interesting things. For one the mecha themselves are fairly secondary in the setting- there aren't really any obvious hero robots or anything, the mecha of the setting are really more glorified tanks than anything, and fairly disposable throughout the entire 52 episode runtime.

Wikipedia's summary of the basic premise seems pretty apt, so I'll just quote it here.

The Gilgamesh and Balarant nations had until recently been locked in a century-old galactic war whose cause was long ago forgotten. Now, the war is ending and an uneasy truce has settled. The main weapon of the conflict is the common Armored Trooper, a mass-produced humanoid combat vehicle piloted by a single soldier. Both the Armored Troopers and their pilots are also known as VOTOMS (Vertical One-man Tank for Offense & ManeuverS). However, since Armored Troopers have extremely thin armor, and use a highly combustible liquid in their artificial muscle, their pilots have a very low chance of survival, and are commonly referred to instead as "Bottoms", the lowest of the low ("Votoms" and "Bottoms" are written and pronounced the same way in Japanese).

The series follows a main character named Chirico Cuvie, a special forces Armored Trooper pilot and former member of the Red Shoulder Battalion, an elite force used by the Gilgamesh Confederation in its war against the Balarant Union. Chirico is suddenly transferred to a unit engaged in a suspicious mission, unaware that he is aiding to steal secrets from what appears to be his own side. Chirico is betrayed and left behind to die, but he survives, is arrested by the Gilgamesh military as a traitor, and tortured for information on their homeworld. He escapes, triggering a pursuit extending across the entire series, with Chirico hunted by the army and criminals alike as he seeks the truth behind the operation. He is especially driven to discover the truth of one of the objects he was assigned to retrieve in that operation: a mysterious and beautiful woman who would become his sole clue to unraveling the galactic conspiracy

It's a good show. I think one thing that helps VOTOMS set itself apart from a lot of other 80's mecha anime is each of its own four arcs have a pretty distinct setting and tone.

1. Woodo Arc - It's kind of like First Blood I guess, but in a Blade Runner-ish city. A lot of this arc also revolves around an underground battling ring with mechs, though that's not really a First Blood thing.

This arc is pretty heavy on the action, though it also has to set up the entire setting, most of the main cast, the larger plots etc.

2. Kummen Arc - Set on the jungle planet of Kummen, this entire arc seems to basically be a tribute to American Vietnam War films, particularly Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter (One episode even revolves around Russian Roulette). A civil war is brewing here between the the mercenary band "Assemble EX-10" and the "Veela Guerillas". Chirico joins EX-10 simply to make ends meet, though upon learning that a woman he is searching for may have been captured by the Veela, he embarks on an operation alongside EX-10 to find her.

The whole upriver journey of this arc is fun, though I wish the equivalent character to Colonel Kurtz was a little more strongly realized.

3. Sunsa Arc - I'm not really sure what I would compare this arc to. The first part of this arc revolves around Chirico waking up on a mysterious spaceship, not sure how he got there. He can't seem to change the destination of the ship either. Every so often on the ship starts blasting music, and every video monitor on the ship forcibly plays archival footage of the Red Shoulders, the military unit Chirico used to be a member of (That he's the final living member of them is brought up a few times earlier but not really elaborated much upon until now).



Turns out the Red Shoulder's whole schtick was killing civilians, burning them alive, and generally being a terrorizing menace. The ironic juxtaposition between this PTSD-inducing footage our protagonist is forced to confront and the triumphant music that plays is interesting.



The music for these sequences is used is from, of all things, a later Buster Keaton movie I haven't seen yet called "War Italian Style". Being able to take music from a comedy movie and play it for horror is a bold and interesting choice- kind of reminds me of the usage of "Singin' in the Rain" in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Even without that connection though the juxtaposition still works as the song still can play as an arguably jingoistic military piece.

Anyways that spaceship of course ends up taking Chirico to the planet Sunsa, which in the past was devastated so badly by the Red Shoulders that it was turned into almost entirely desert. A woman on the planet realizes Chirico was a former member, and seeks to get revenge on him


-I bet you can't figure out where the Red Shoulders got their name from.

This arc actually does a fair amount for Chirico's character, and was probably my favorite bit of the show. It ends on a somewhat bitter irony that Chirico himself had never been to Sunsa before, but it doesn't matter because he himself personally helped ruin several other worlds anyways. He's still a war criminal, even if he's trying to redeem himself now.

Gee I wonder why they were called the Red Shoulders.

4. Quaint (lol there's not quaint about it) Arc - This arc is just insanity. It reminded me a lot of Xenogears, despite coming 15 years before, since it largely revolves around gods (Maybe) and ancient conspiracies and ruined civilizations and so on, putting the entire show in a grander scale than it really was in before. I'm almost certain VOTOMS was an inspiration on that game (Though Xenogears is largely a mecha love letter in general).

There's also an interesting Eva parallels in this final arc since we find out that Chirico is basically proto-Rei Ayanami. Not only because of the blue hair, general silence etc., but it turns out he's even something of a science experiment from the military. He even rejects "God" at the end.

Chirico has a somewhat similar arc to Rei too, in terms of becoming increasingly humanized as time goes on. Unlike Rei though, a lot of Chirico's arc revolves around not only him being used as a kind of human weapon but whether he himself is becoming addicted to violence as he gets dragged further and further in violent wars.

Anyways the show is good. Could have probably used some stronger atmosphere in some parts considering some of those influences I listed, but its about what I expect from this era of mecha anime. Still a series I highly enjoyed overall- its sure as hell at least better than that Aura Battler Dunbine show I watched earlier this year and previously posted about in this thread, which interestingly also started in 1983.

There are several short films, OVA's, and a few spinoffs from VOTOMS too and I'll be getting to those eventually.

[maz89]

Oh, I've got Sorry, Wrong Number downloaded and had made up my mind to watch it this week. What are the odds...

Curious about this Frank Capra film that you've written so much about (I did not read to avoid spoilers). Something I'll come back to later.

[Raxivace]

Oh, I've got Sorry, Wrong Number downloaded and had made up my mind to watch it this week. What are the odds...

A-are you pirating movies? What the fuck...

Curious about this Frank Capra film that you've written so much about (I did not read to avoid spoilers). Something I'll come back to later.

Forbidden or Bitter Tea of General Yen? Both are worth checking out IMO.

[maz89]

Oh, I've got Sorry, Wrong Number downloaded and had made up my mind to watch it this week. What are the odds...

A-are you pirating movies? What the fuck...

*nervously chuckles and evades gaze*

Curious about this Frank Capra film that you've written so much about (I did not read to avoid spoilers). Something I'll come back to later.

Forbidden or Bitter Tea of General Yen? Both are worth checking out IMO.

Both. (OK FINE, just Forbidden then. I thought you had posted one long-ass review of Forbidden until you mentioned the second one just now. )

[Raxivace]

Oh, I've got Sorry, Wrong Number downloaded and had made up my mind to watch it this week. What are the odds...

A-are you pirating movies? What the fuck...

*nervously chuckles and evades gaze*

All joking aside it is kind of frustrating that these days if you want to be a cinephile that you basically have to resort to piracy, even if you subscribe to 8 bajillion streaming services. Even then, something like Netflix seems to suck for even mainstream movies made before like, 1990.

Though even pirating can't you get you everything, like I was talking about with those Edward Yang movies with Jimbo.

Both. (OK FINE, just Forbidden then. I thought you had posted one long-ass review of Forbidden until you mentioned the second one just now. )

Well I hope you check out General Yen at some point too. It's an equally unusual entry in Capra's oeuvre as Forbidden is, and its something he even considered to be his best film for a while (Though he ended up changing his mind and deciding It's a Wonderful Life is his best).

[Derived Absurdity]

]All joking aside it is kind of frustrating that these days if you want to be a cinephile that you basically have to resort to piracy, even if you subscribe to 8 bajillion streaming services. Even then, something like Netflix seems to suck for even mainstream movies made before like, 1990.

Though even pirating can't you get you everything, like I was talking about with those Edward Yang movies with Jimbo.

Yeah. Eva wants me to watch Paranoia Agent and I can't find it anywhere online. Anywhere. Legally or illegally. If I want to watch it I'll have to shell out like fifty bucks for it or sail the seas. Lame.

[Raxivace]

]All joking aside it is kind of frustrating that these days if you want to be a cinephile that you basically have to resort to piracy, even if you subscribe to 8 bajillion streaming services. Even then, something like Netflix seems to suck for even mainstream movies made before like, 1990.

Though even pirating can't you get you everything, like I was talking about with those Edward Yang movies with Jimbo.

Yeah. Eva wants me to watch Paranoia Agent and I can't find it anywhere online. Anywhere. Legally or illegally. If I want to watch it I'll have to shell out like fifty bucks for it or sail the seas. Lame.

For Paranoia Agent specifically I see a torrent on TPB, though its from 2007 so who knows how good the quality is.

BakaBT has a better looking torrent from the looks of things, but they went private a year or two ago and private trackers are a huge pain in the ass.

At this point you might have to just hope for a re-release to come out and at a reasonable price. Perfect Blue is getting a new blu-ray and has even had some theatrical screenings across the U.S. recently, so hopefully it'll generate some new interest in the rest of Kon's work.

[Eva Yojimbo]

]All joking aside it is kind of frustrating that these days if you want to be a cinephile that you basically have to resort to piracy, even if you subscribe to 8 bajillion streaming services. Even then, something like Netflix seems to suck for even mainstream movies made before like, 1990.

Though even pirating can't you get you everything, like I was talking about with those Edward Yang movies with Jimbo.

Yeah. Eva wants me to watch Paranoia Agent and I can't find it anywhere online. Anywhere. Legally or illegally. If I want to watch it I'll have to shell out like fifty bucks for it or sail the seas. Lame.

If you can play Region 2 DVDs you can get from Amazon.UK for $25: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Paranoia-Agent ... 004HARL4C/ Even if your player can't play Region 2 discs there are options; the easiest way is to get either MakeMKV or DVDShrink (or probably many other programs) and rip the discs to MKVs or ISOs and then either transfer the MKVs to flash drives or burn the ISOs onto DVD-Rs. You could also probably use them to watch on your PC, though I never do this.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I think most kids studying film would be intelligent enough to separate the subject matter from the historically important technical aspects.

Believe me, there are plenty of dumb kids in these kinds of programs. I should know, I was one of them.

Eventually I did get some sense beaten into me by it though, and I'm grateful for that, though my professor seemed surprised that I improved lmao.

I have a hard time imagining you as dumb! Anyway, even for the others I don't think it's anything a brief preliminary discussion couldn't fix; though perhaps it would almost be better to let them react to it without knowing all that stuff just to see what happens.

I've known a few people online like JF that were just completely tone-deaf when it came to the intentions/themes/etc. behind film and art. Perhaps the one that stuck with me the most besides the JF/hospital scene was harry on the 2001:ASO board who argued that Black Swan was anti-feminist because it portrayed a female professional who went crazy, thus it argued that all females who tried to be professionals were crazy. He never let the pesky fact that the film featured another prominent (almost co-lead) female character in the SAME profession who wasn't crazy, and he seemed to completely miss every clue in the film about what actually drove the lead protagonist crazy, which was in itself society's ridiculous standards about female perfection.

Ah of course, your arch-nemesis harry.

But yeah these are exactly the kinds of righteous attitudes that I find frustrating, especially because there are times where I'll absolutely agree with these people on certain films/games/shows/etc. in regards to problematic themes and other times where I think they get tripped up by even the slightest detachment between a filmmaker's morality and a protagonist's morality or actions or fate or whatever. I haven't seen Black Swan but it sounds like someone like harry is especially missing the point if there are other female professionals that aren't driven crazy in the film (Though you may not even need such a character if the point is that society did this to the protagonist woman).

Yeah, the frustrating thing about harry is that he was often extremely insightful on other films. We (along with several other posters) also had an extremely fruitful and interesting discussion about all the various themes in Eyes Wide Shut, and harry was quite insightful about all the feminist themes that film explored.

Black Swan is probably more interesting to discuss than to watch. The film is OK but I think Aronofsky fails when his technique veers more towards this verite/naturalistic mode as opposed to his more Romanticized/stylized approach (The Fountain, Noah), and the latter would've been a much better fit for Black Swan anyway (at least with Requiem and The Wrestler the naturalistic approach makes sense). It's also interesting because of how similar it is to Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, though Aronofsky denied the influence, even though he apparently copied PB's bathtub scene in Requiem for a Dream.

I'm going to start paying more attention to verbal vs. visual foreshadowing in films/TV and see what I notice.

Should be interesting!

IIRC, the Dillahunty debate was pretty recent, like earlier this year.

Ah okay, I definitely missed this one then. I like the guy but he does struggle sometimes...I remember him having trouble with TAG in a debate with Matt Slick IIRC, though that was maybe a decade ago at this point and I'd hope he's better with those kinds of arguments now.

Actually watching Dillahunty debate people is what got me out of watching these kinds of live debates period, because it made me realize most of these arguments are more about theater anyways, about overloading your debate opponent with more information/questions than they can possibly respond to, intentionally peppering arguments with logically fallacious but emotionally appealing reasons etc.

Dillahunty is fine with the average callers on his show, though even there I think he's rather too quick to frustration/anger. I know he's expressed interest in debating William Lane Craig, but Craig would destroy him, even if Dillahunty diligently prepared.

I will say, though, the Dillahunty/Peterson thing (like the Peterson/Harris thing) was more discussion than debate, which I vastly prefer. I agree that actual debates are more about theater. It's actually more like a game where you have a set amount of time and the goal is to get the most points in as efficiently as possible and dismantle your opponent's points, or point out their flaws, as efficiently as possible. It can be fun when viewed as a game, but as a format for getting at any kind of truth it's terrible because you just don't have the time to do deep-dives into stuff. Compared to, say, the Harris Peterson talks where there were 3 or 4 conversations that were like 2+ hours each. There's so much more time to really get into the source of disagreements. The biggest problem with any Peterson discussion, though, is going to be first getting everyone on the same page with what he means by "God" and "religion." There's even something of a meme about this on his various videos with people saying stuff like "It depends on what you mean by Jordan Peterson."

Did you ever read that epic ep. 24 plot hole/fanwank thread? I participated throughout much of it, and lots of interesting ideas/theories were bandied about. Nothing definitive ever came of it, but I remember lots of interesting stuff. Kaworu's amnesia was one theory.

I did years ago but it was long and complicated and I don't remember the specifics too well.

You and me both!

Having not seen the episode recently that sounds plausible enough, though it seems like it relies a lot on the "chigau" line being translated a certain way. Again, I have no idea how accurate that line is/isn't.

"Chigau" in Japanese basically means "no, it's different." The question is whether that's referring to the being in front of him, or whether it's referring to what Kaworu had been talking about. I actually think the latter is more plausible, though it makes sense why everyone would assume the former.

235. Suspicion (1941, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, Rewatch) - Woman thinks her husband might be a murderer blah blah blah. I'm assuming that anyone here that ever wanted to watch this has seen it by this point.

Suspicion is still a good movie, though this time around I tried paying more attention to Cary Grant's performance as Johnnie. A lot of the glances and looks Johnnie is giving throughout the movie really does make it seem like he is just playing him as a murderer that just flatout doesn't like his wife Lina (Joan Fontaine) that much.

Looking at the censored ending again too, I think I like it even less than I did before. I completely forgot about the Johnnie had been considering suicide but just decided not to go through with it angle and frankly I like that even less than Johnnie just not being a murderer. I don't know that I completely buy the idea that you can still interpret this ending as her simply being fooled by Johnnie, that he's still planning to kill her but eh.

This is the only one I've seen of your recents (though I enjoyed reading everything; especially that stuff on General Yen! I wonder if Fassbinder's Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant was based on it?). Anyway, Suspicion is a really frustrating film. On the one hand, I love how Hitch maintains the is he/isn't he tension and how well Grant plays and toys with the same idea in his performance. Like in Hitch's best there's just so much turmoil bubbling under the surface, but you're right that the ending feels utterly cheap. It really feels like a non-ending. It doesn't release or resolve the tension, and not even in a good way like how many Hitch films end on ambiguous notes that leave you feeling like the underlying themes weren't resolved even though the superficial plot was (I especially think of his masterpieces here: Vertigo, Rear Window, Marnie, Psycho, Notorious, The Birds). In those films, the plots tend to resolve quite nicely, but the underlying themes linger and lurk in the mind long afterwards because you realize there was much more going on that resolving the plot didn't fix--very Shakespeare-esque. In Suspicion, it's almost like a case of cinematic blue balls on both levels. Still, I think it works well while it plays.

Criterion just announced they're doing a release of Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour. Absolutely check this one out if you haven't seen it before. Its really grown in my mind over the years.

I'll add it to my list. I'm hoping to get back to movies after football season's over and I have more free time to spend on something besides gaming.

You know I just remembered that I myself have argued before that the first shot of Asuka in NGE...

...Told us basically everything there is to know about Asuka in a broad sense- not only that she sees herself as a giant, that she's hotheaded (Her hair really looks like fire here- it even seems to be erupting directly from the Sun in a sense), but also that her face being covered in shadow like this is an early hint that there's a darker element to her character that she keeps at bay that we won't see for a while in the series.

That's absolutely a kind of visual foreshadowing that I put forth in that argument with that last part, so now I'm doubly not sure why I was confused by the idea of crossplosions as foreshadowing at first.

That's a cool analysis of that Asuka shot! I'd never really considered it before, but you're absolutely right about it. Anyway, one might could quibble whether that's foreshadowing or just visual characterization, but I think it's basically the same idea in terms of using visuals to tell us something about where the story/characters are going.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Ah, gotcha. Maybe Jimbo can comment.

I doubt Jimbo will even see it. He's been lost to video games as it is...

I've actually seen New York, New York. I thought it excellent and, frankly, I don't recall having a problem with its mix of naturalism with Classic Hollywood musical artificiality. In fact, it was exactly this quality I thought that made it unique/memorable. As for a film that's done something similar, the first that came to mind was Punch Drunk Love, which, despite not being a musical, also had that mix of naturalism with a candy-colored, Classic Hollywood musical design to its visuals.

[Raxivace]

I have a hard time imagining you as dumb! Anyway, even for the others I don't think it's anything a brief preliminary discussion couldn't fix; though perhaps it would almost be better to let them react to it without knowing all that stuff just to see what happens.

Perhaps. Truthfully my faith in young people's ability to critically engage with media is still pretty low at the moment.

Yeah, the frustrating thing about harry is that he was often extremely insightful on other films. We (along with several other posters) also had an extremely fruitful and interesting discussion about all the various themes in Eyes Wide Shut, and harry was quite insightful about all the feminist themes that film explored.

I really need to rewatch Eyes Wide Shut again. Its been popping up in my head again lately...

Black Swan is probably more interesting to discuss than to watch. The film is OK but I think Aronofsky fails when his technique veers more towards this verite/naturalistic mode as opposed to his more Romanticized/stylized approach (The Fountain, Noah), and the latter would've been a much better fit for Black Swan anyway (at least with Requiem and The Wrestler the naturalistic approach makes sense). It's also interesting because of how similar it is to Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, though Aronofsky denied the influence, even though he apparently copied PB's bathtub scene in Requiem for a Dream.

This talk of verite/naturalism in Aronofsky is curious to me, because the three movies of his I have seen (Pi, Noah, mother!) definitely do not swing into that direction. Of those three Pi is probably the closest but even that gets pretty batshit.

I've heard that about the influence from Perfect Blue before but I did not know Aronofsky denied any influence on Black Swan. Curious, the broad plot you're describing in it seems very similar to Kon's movie. Reminds me of how people debate whether Inception was inspired from Paprika or not.

Dillahunty is fine with the average callers on his show, though even there I think he's rather too quick to frustration/anger. I know he's expressed interest in debating William Lane Craig, but Craig would destroy him, even if Dillahunty diligently prepared.

Yeah the thing about him getting angry could be funny sometimes but was probably not for the best. It also made him easy to troll- I remember one guy on there prank called The Atheist Experience for like a month straight, pretending to be some member of a local church.

I will say, though, the Dillahunty/Peterson thing (like the Peterson/Harris thing) was more discussion than debate, which I vastly prefer. I agree that actual debates are more about theater. It's actually more like a game where you have a set amount of time and the goal is to get the most points in as efficiently as possible and dismantle your opponent's points, or point out their flaws, as efficiently as possible. It can be fun when viewed as a game, but as a format for getting at any kind of truth it's terrible because you just don't have the time to do deep-dives into stuff. Compared to, say, the Harris Peterson talks where there were 3 or 4 conversations that were like 2+ hours each. There's so much more time to really get into the source of disagreements.

Yeah an honest discussion is great but seems like an exceedingly rare thing now a days. Even debate-as-game can work if there's mutual understanding between both opponents- if there's not, it seems like toxicity erupts more often than not, at least online.

The biggest problem with any Peterson discussion, though, is going to be first getting everyone on the same page with what he means by "God" and "religion." There's even something of a meme about this on his various videos with people saying stuff like "It depends on what you mean by Jordan Peterson."

I see a lot of people do this kind of "use an uncommon definition of a word and act shocked that people misunderstand you" thing before in internet discussions and its always super tedious to read, let alone engage with.

"Chigau" in Japanese basically means "no, it's different." The question is whether that's referring to the being in front of him, or whether it's referring to what Kaworu had been talking about. I actually think the latter is more plausible, though it makes sense why everyone would assume the former.

Interesting. When the Netflix release of NGE drops it'll be interesting to see how they translate that scene.

(though I enjoyed reading everything; especially that stuff on General Yen! I wonder if Fassbinder's Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant was based on it?)

I haven't looked too deeply into this but IMDb says the Fassbinder movie was inspired by it. I'll have to find a copy of it at some point.

Anyway, Suspicion is a really frustrating film. On the one hand, I love how Hitch maintains the is he/isn't he tension and how well Grant plays and toys with the same idea in his performance. Like in Hitch's best there's just so much turmoil bubbling under the surface, but you're right that the ending feels utterly cheap. It really feels like a non-ending. It doesn't release or resolve the tension, and not even in a good way like how many Hitch films end on ambiguous notes that leave you feeling like the underlying themes weren't resolved even though the superficial plot was (I especially think of his masterpieces here: Vertigo, Rear Window, Marnie, Psycho, Notorious, The Birds). In those films, the plots tend to resolve quite nicely, but the underlying themes linger and lurk in the mind long afterwards because you realize there was much more going on that resolving the plot didn't fix--very Shakespeare-esque. In Suspicion, it's almost like a case of cinematic blue balls on both levels. Still, I think it works well while it plays.

Yeah this is a really good way of putting it.

Even if you want to keep the "Johnnie wants to commit suicide" angle there has got to have been a better way to use that idea. Maybe Hitch should have had him actually go through with it (If the Hays Office would have even let him), that might have been something.

That's a cool analysis of that Asuka shot! I'd never really considered it before, but you're absolutely right about it. Anyway, one might could quibble whether that's foreshadowing or just visual characterization, but I think it's basically the same idea in terms of using visuals to tell us something about where the story/characters are going.

Yeah I could understand someone making that quibble.

[Raxivace]

236. Meet John Doe (1941, Dir. Frank Capra) - EVEN MOAR CAPRA/STANWYCK!

By this point Capra had become the Capra he's remembered as today, though he's still good at doing that. Stanwyck seems to be working as a more traditional Capra female lead (Smart cynical girl moved by idealism of male love interest) which is something I guess, though there's some weird subtext with her character this time.

There's just this weird Oedipal thing in the movie though where Stanwyck's character is trying to reshape Gary Cooper (Playing a homeless man in this movie who needs some cash) into the image of her dead populist father (Kind of a reverse Vertigo I guess)- it starts simply as a political scheme and such by remaking Cooper as a kind of political activist tired of corruption which can be sold and manipulated by big business, though Cooper becomes more genuine in these beliefs as time goes on, turns against the corporate people trying to control him, and Stanwyck becomes more attracted to him because of it. IOW, she makes Cooper into his a façade of her father and starts to love him once he actually begins to genuinely represent her dead father's views.

That's kind of weird for Capra, and I wonder how much of it was conscious on his part.

237. Die Hard (1988, Dir. John McTiernan, Rewatch) - It's Die Hard. I found myself thinking about race representation of all things watching the movie this time- like it's interesting that there are four African-American characters in the movie (The limo driver Argyle, the police officer that talks to McClane on the radio, the FBI agent, and of course the safecracker working for Hans Gruber), and all of them are fairly distinct characters. The police officer character even has a whole arc.

There's been a lot of talk about race representation in Hollywood recently, and it makes me wonder how many similar action blockbusters today stack up to Die Hard in this aspect. Not that I'm saying Die Hard of all things is the bastion of racial equality (While I think we're meant to be sympathetic to the maid character who gets threatened with deportation, she's still just kind of there), its also way less white of a movie than I really remember it being.

238. The Cocoanuts (1929, Dir. Robert Florey & Joseph Stantley) - I had never actually seen a Marx Brothers movie before, so this was my first. I was surprised by how well it held up- the fast-witty dialogue is still very funny and I think it's interesting how quickly sound cinema came to this kind of rapid-fire banter.

We often hear about how early sound cinema stifled visual expression, but a movie like this really makes dialogue gags work in a way that you couldn't really do well in the silent cinema. It really plays up an advantage that talkies actually had.

[Gendo]

For the record, my list is only things I hadn't seen before. Would probably be 50% more if I included rewatches. I don't, because often with a rewatch, it's more something in the background while I'm doing something else; sometimes takes multiple days to finish.

I can't remember which 2 Marx Brothers movies I've seen; not sure if I've seen Coconuts. I liked what I've seen, though.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I really need to rewatch Eyes Wide Shut again. Its been popping up in my head again lately...

I think I've settled on it being my 4th favorite Kubrick behind 2001, Strangelove, and Barry Lyndon. There's just so much there to digest and discuss, and aesthetically it's almost on par with BL (2001, of course, has a completely different kind of aesthetics so it's difficult to compare).

Black Swan is probably more interesting to discuss than to watch. The film is OK but I think Aronofsky fails when his technique veers more towards this verite/naturalistic mode as opposed to his more Romanticized/stylized approach (The Fountain, Noah), and the latter would've been a much better fit for Black Swan anyway (at least with Requiem and The Wrestler the naturalistic approach makes sense). It's also interesting because of how similar it is to Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, though Aronofsky denied the influence, even though he apparently copied PB's bathtub scene in Requiem for a Dream.

This talk of verite/naturalism in Aronofsky is curious to me, because the three movies of his I have seen (Pi, Noah, mother!) definitely do not swing into that direction. Of those three Pi is probably the closest but even that gets pretty batshit.

I've heard that about the influence from Perfect Blue before but I did not know Aronofsky denied any influence on Black Swan. Curious, the broad plot you're describing in it seems very similar to Kon's movie. Reminds me of how people debate whether Inception was inspired from Paprika or not.

I haven't seen mother!, but certainly Pi is extremely stylized. I'd actually say Noah is kind of a middle-ground between the hyper-stylized Fountain and the very verite (lol) The Wrestler and RFAD. And forget about seeing any of the naturalistic Aronofsky's if you haven't seen The Fountain and see that immediately! One of my favorite films of this century, even if I do readily admit it's flawed and that its reach exceeds its grasp somewhat. Aestehtically it's just on another level to anything else he's done.

The biggest problem with any Peterson discussion, though, is going to be first getting everyone on the same page with what he means by "God" and "religion." There's even something of a meme about this on his various videos with people saying stuff like "It depends on what you mean by Jordan Peterson."

I see a lot of people do this kind of "use an uncommon definition of a word and act shocked that people misunderstand you" thing before in internet discussions and its always super tedious to read, let alone engage with.

One thing I'll say in Peterson's defense is that he has written/talked about his views a lot, especially with his online lecture series, so it's not like he's being secretive or dishonest about it, but I think he has to realize that he just has to reiterate his unorthodox views every time he enters any new forum where the audience will be made up largely of people unfamiliar with him. In his discussion with Harris he did give a rather quick rundown of his "definition" that thankfully someone transcribed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comm ... _peterson/

I'm guessing it probably sounds like gibberish to most people, and it is helpful if you're familiar with the sources he's drawing from (especially Jung). Essentially, I think he thinks about God like this: if you don't believe in the fundamentalist version of God as a conscious, external being with agency--basically a "perfect" human without all the biological flaws and stuff--then you realize that God must just be a symbol. The next logical question is: a symbol for what? For that you basically have to analyze religious texts on the level of metaphor and try to figure out what "God" is representing, and it would be immediately obvious that God has represented a lot of (often very different) things to a lot of (often very different) people and cultures. Not only that, but even in something like The Bible "God" can represent very different things depending on what book you're reading, or even which part of which book. So in Genesis you can say it starts out with God representing consciousness, language, and the creative act ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." -- as a wannabe-poet I've always loved the idea of thinking of God as creativity and language, because, if you think about it, language does play a crucial role in how we represent and think about reality); later on he can represent the authority figure (it was the authoritarian OT God that William Blake despised); or, in the Jungian/NGE version of Genesis, God is like the mother, Eden's the womb, the "original sin" is the arise of consciousness that separates us from that collective state. Blake loved Jesus because Jesus was basically God-as-man, no longer this immaterial concept, but flesh-and-blood man; and what's more it was God as the "truth-speaking" rebel that overturned what Peterson calls "pathological hierarchies," and it was also God as artist/storyteller/parable-maker and moral leader.

It's rather funny to me that most Peterson fanboys seem to love all his anti-SJW and anti-far-left rhetoric, but a great many of them balk at his religious stuff; while I'm more the reverse. I think Peterson is on the right track with religion/God, but I disagree with a good chunk of his politics (though i do think some of his criticisms of the left are valid).

(though I enjoyed reading everything; especially that stuff on General Yen! I wonder if Fassbinder's Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant was based on it?)

I haven't looked too deeply into this but IMDb says the Fassbinder movie was inspired by it. I'll have to find a copy of it at some point.

FWIW I only know the title, but I haven't seen that Fassbinder.

Even if you want to keep the "Johnnie wants to commit suicide" angle there has got to have been a better way to use that idea. Maybe Hitch should have had him actually go through with it (If the Hays Office would have even let him), that might have been something.

Yeah, I also think it would've been better if they'd had Johnnie go through with it, but I'm pretty sure the Hays Office wouldn't have let him. I think with that ending it would make more sense to look back and try to see how--if at all--the film had played up this angle as well. I think one of the problems is that the film DOESN'T really play up that angle. It's pretty hard to interpret these scenes that once seemed menacing as Johnnie just being depressed. At least if he'd gone through with it there would've been some kind of conviction behind the concept.

236. Meet John Doe (1941, Dir. Frank Capra)

237. Die Hard (1988, Dir. John McTiernan, Rewatch)

I've seen these two. I remember really liking Meet John Doe while not remembering a ton about it by this point. It did seem a bit less sentimental than most Capra to me, and maybe a bit more cynical. Your Oedipal angle was interesting. Die Hard's an old favorite, like "I haven't seen it since childhood" old favorite. Never thought about the racial elements in the film, but you're definitely right about that!

[Raxivace]

For the record, my list is only things I hadn't seen before. Would probably be 50% more if I included rewatches. I don't, because often with a rewatch, it's more something in the background while I'm doing something else; sometimes takes multiple days to finish.

I can't remember which 2 Marx Brothers movies I've seen; not sure if I've seen Coconuts. I liked what I've seen, though.

Eh, start posting your rewatches anyways next year. It could still spark some good discussion.

[Raxivace]

I think I've settled on it being my 4th favorite Kubrick behind 2001, Strangelove, and Barry Lyndon. There's just so much there to digest and discuss, and aesthetically it's almost on par with BL (2001, of course, has a completely different kind of aesthetics so it's difficult to compare).

For me I always swing between 2001, Barry Lyndon, Eyes Wide Shut, and The Shining. It kind of depends on my mood which one I like best.

It's nice that they're four fairly different films too.

I haven't seen mother!, but certainly Pi is extremely stylized. I'd actually say Noah is kind of a middle-ground between the hyper-stylized Fountain and the very verite (lol) The Wrestler and RFAD. And forget about seeing any of the naturalistic Aronofsky's if you haven't seen The Fountain and see that immediately! One of my favorite films of this century, even if I do readily admit it's flawed and that its reach exceeds its grasp somewhat. Aestehtically it's just on another level to anything else he's done.

I'll get to it next year!

Very Verite sounds like the name of a Stan Lee character.

One thing I'll say in Peterson's defense is that he has written/talked about his views a lot, especially with his online lecture series, so it's not like he's being secretive or dishonest about it, but I think he has to realize that he just has to reiterate his unorthodox views every time he enters any new forum where the audience will be made up largely of people unfamiliar with him. In his discussion with Harris he did give a rather quick rundown of his "definition" that thankfully someone transcribed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comm ... _peterson/

I'm guessing it probably sounds like gibberish to most people, and it is helpful if you're familiar with the sources he's drawing from (especially Jung).

Yeah I can respect that from like a poetic or artistic point of view, I just don't see why you agree to debate someone like Sam Harris if that's the kind of definition you're going to put forth.

Like what is it that he expects to happen? At least your run of the mill theist knows they're defending some kind of claim of the natural universe ("God is real, we need to embrace Him to save humanity, etc."). I'm not really sure what Peterson wants to get out of it though.

It's rather funny to me that most Peterson fanboys seem to love all his anti-SJW and anti-far-left rhetoric, but a great many of them balk at his religious stuff; while I'm more the reverse. I think Peterson is on the right track with religion/God, but I disagree with a good chunk of his politics (though i do think some of his criticisms of the left are valid).

Yeah I almost certainly disagree with the guy's politics based on what I'm hearing from you. Maybe another day we can go into what his criticisms of the left are, I'm not sure I'm up for it now at the moment.

Btw, is "SJW" being used as a sincere term now? For the longest time I only saw right wing people use it to mockingly refer to the left, though I feel like I've seen some people on the left try to embrace it.

Someone suggested to me once that "SJW" is popular as a term because of how suspicioulsy it looks like the word "Jew" and I've never been able to separate that in my mind. If it is meant to be coded anti-semitism I'm not sure the targets of the term should be adopting it themselves.

Yeah, I also think it would've been better if they'd had Johnnie go through with it, but I'm pretty sure the Hays Office wouldn't have let him. I think with that ending it would make more sense to look back and try to see how--if at all--the film had played up this angle as well. I think one of the problems is that the film DOESN'T really play up that angle. It's pretty hard to interpret these scenes that once seemed menacing as Johnnie just being depressed. At least if he'd gone through with it there would've been some kind of conviction behind the concept.

Yeah it doesn't really make sense in retrospect. That's probably why I flatout forgot about it before my rewatch.

Part of me wonders what a Far from Heaven style remake of Suspicion that really plays into the suicide thing would look like too...though part of me thinks what we now understand depression and related things to be now would work even less well with the general premise of the movie than it even did in 1941.

I've seen these two. I remember really liking Meet John Doe while not remembering a ton about it by this point. It did seem a bit less sentimental than most Capra to me, and maybe a bit more cynical. Your Oedipal angle was interesting. Die Hard's an old favorite, like "I haven't seen it since childhood" old favorite. Never thought about the racial elements in the film, but you're definitely right about that!

MJD is still pretty sentimental (Come to think of it the climax even revolves around Gary Cooper potentially jumping off a building, another Vertigo parallel...), though like I've been saying before I think Capra at his best balances out his sentimental tendencies with some cynicism. When done well I think they can play in harmony together.

Yeah the Die Hard thing is weird. I remember one of my film books has like an 50+ page analysis on the movie, I should go back to that at some point and see if it talks about the race stuff at all.

[maz89]

I saw Roma a few days ago, and I fell in love with its utter visual gorgeousness. I've always been a huge fan of Cuaron, so maybe I was biased going in, but goddammit if Roma doesn't prove he is one of the best filmmakers alive today. I don't know if it is a masterpiece (maybe it could have digressed more often into the mysterious, as one critic noted), but it certainly seemed to have the weight of one. In the contrast Cuaron draws between the rich, married woman and her poor maid - their personalities, unique problems, attempts at solutions - it might have been easy to fall into generalizations about class elitism, but Cuaron, I feel, wants us to equally focus on what connects the experiences of these women rather than only what sets them apart. In the end, the real reason to watch this film, the one that brings its themes to life, is Cuaron's cinematography - those deep focus shots brimming with life, the slow paced pans delicately capturing the motion of Cleo as she moved with purpose from room to room, the trademark Cuaronesque long take/dolly shot combo that almost left me breathless in the way they synced with the characters running across the plane. And then there are those intimate, surreal Fellini-like diversions (I count three) that reel you in and leave you simultaneously perplexed and hypnotized.

Also, Jimbo, you should check out mother!. Raxi, what did you think of it? I don't recall you mentioning it here. I was impressed! And are you really saying you don't think mother! goes entirely batshit? Hullo?

[Raxivace]

I loved mother!. I do think it goes crazy at the end, but I thought it was pretty weird from the beginning which is in contrast to the verite stuff me and Jimbo were talking about.

[maz89]

Ah, okay - yep, I misread.

You should really check out The Fountain. I'd be curious to hear your take. I'm a bigger fan of it than Jimbo here.

[maz89]

This makes, what, a Hepta-Post?

229. A Star is Born (1976, Dir. Frank Pierson) - This seems to have the worst reputation of the four different versions of A Star is Born but I dunno, it didn't seem that bad to me. Changing the story from Hollywood to country music is inspired, and Kristofferson does great.

Barbara Streisand I think though doesn't quite have the acting chops of Judy Garland or even Janet Gaynor, though I think her actual musical performances are solid. The Oscar for her performance of Evergreen was well deserved.

I'm not familiar with director Frank Pierson at all, but it seems he was a writer on Cool Hand Luke and Dog Day Afternoon. Very different movies from this.

I thought it was good too. I think Judy Garland might be the better actress too but I much preferred Streisand's voice and performances here. Kris Kristofferson is indeed excellent, and I'm curious about what other movies he's starred in. Not much more to say beyond that, except that I liked the relaxed 70s vibe here as well as their re-interpretation of key scenes from the earlier films.

Just another one of these ASIB flicks to watch, looking forward to see Gaga's performance.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I think I've settled on it being my 4th favorite Kubrick behind 2001, Strangelove, and Barry Lyndon. There's just so much there to digest and discuss, and aesthetically it's almost on par with BL (2001, of course, has a completely different kind of aesthetics so it's difficult to compare).

For me I always swing between 2001, Barry Lyndon, Eyes Wide Shut, and The Shining. It kind of depends on my mood which one I like best.

It's nice that they're four fairly different films too.

The Shining is a weird one for me because my first exposure to it was as a young horror fan who didn't even know who Kubrick was, and ever since I've had a hard time breaking out of that mind-set of "this is just a horror movie" when watching it, even though I know there's a lot more going on there as with all Kubrick. Like, once you start looking for all the details about it being an allegory for the Native American genocide it's hard to NOT see that stuff everywhere.

Yeah I can respect that from like a poetic or artistic point of view, I just don't see why you agree to debate someone like Sam Harris if that's the kind of definition you're going to put forth.

Like what is it that he expects to happen? At least your run of the mill theist knows they're defending some kind of claim of the natural universe ("God is real, we need to embrace Him to save humanity, etc."). I'm not really sure what Peterson wants to get out of it though.

He and Sam disagreed about more than just that, though. Their original Podcast was mostly about truth--and this is one area where I think Peterson's thinking is really muddled in general. Like, he doesn't seem to have any kind of grasp on basic epistemology at all. They also had a lot to discuss about ethics, because Peterson disagrees with Sam that you can get objective morality without belief in God (poetic/metaphoric or not). I frankly think both of them are wrong on that subject.

As for why discuss God with someone like Sam when your definition is so different, I think one point to be made is that many atheists--especially the "celebrity atheists" types--spend so much of their time fighting against the fundamentalist view that it's very easy for them to become blinded to the psychological aspects of religion. Peterson is, first and foremost, a psychologist, so it makes sense that that's his primary interest and focus when it comes to God and religion, and I guess he thinks it would be helpful if people like Sam could also look at it from that angle and talk about that aspect more. But I also see the point that these two views are so radically different that it almost seems like two different subjects. I think there's value both in combating the fundamentalist view and in promoting the more psychological/metaphorical view, but given the influence the fundamentalist view has, I'm more inclined to say combating it is the more important thing.

Btw, is "SJW" being used as a sincere term now? For the longest time I only saw right wing people use it to mockingly refer to the left, though I feel like I've seen some people on the left try to embrace it.

Someone suggested to me once that "SJW" is popular as a term because of how suspicioulsy it looks like the word "Jew" and I've never been able to separate that in my mind. If it is meant to be coded anti-semitism I'm not sure the targets of the term should be adopting it themselves.

I really don't know. I know it started out as a right-wing term of mockery, but I've always thought it sounded more innately like a positive term. Like, why would you NOT want to be a warrior for social justice? Seems strange to think someone would be a warrior for social injustice, or apathetic to social justice, in general. So I have no problem using it sincerely/embracing it. I certainly haven't felt offended when people have called me a SJW.

Never thought about it looking like "Jew," tbh. I also doubt that's why it became popular. At least, I'd wager a small fraction of people even think about it looking like "Jew" and a fraction of that fraction would actually care if it did.

MJD is still pretty sentimental (Come to think of it the climax even revolves around Gary Cooper potentially jumping off a building, another Vertigo parallel...), though like I've been saying before I think Capra at his best balances out his sentimental tendencies with some cynicism. When done well I think they can play in harmony together.

Yeah the Die Hard thing is weird. I remember one of my film books has like an 80 page analysis on the movie, I should go back to that at some point and see if it talks about the race stuff at all.

It could just be that I'm remembering the more cynical aspects. For some reason with Capra I seem to remember the more sentimental aspects, but you're right that all of his films (that I've seen) do mix the two.

80-page analysis on Die Hard? And here I was telling maz that The Last of Us wouldn't warrant such an analysis, yet an action film starring Bruce Willis did! I guess I shouldn't be surprised since I have a book by Helen Vendler that has 50+ page analysis on a poem (Keats's To Autumn) that's only 33 lines long!

[Eva Yojimbo]

I saw Roma a few days ago, and I fell in love with its utter visual gorgeousness.

When you said this I thought you were talking about the Fellini film! Didn't know Cuoron had a new one out.

Also, Jimbo, you should check out mother!

It's certainly on my list. I've seen all of Aronofsky's other films.

You should really check out The Fountain. I'd be curious to hear your take. I'm a bigger fan of it than Jimbo here.

Really? I gave it a 9/10 and have it as one of my favorite films of this century. I do think it's flawed, but it does some things so amazingly well that it makes up for them.

[maz89]

I saw Roma a few days ago, and I fell in love with its utter visual gorgeousness.

When you said this I thought you were talking about the Fellini film! Didn't know Cuoron had a new one out.

It's on Netflix (was produced by them too!). When you, ehh, take a break from the gaming, this and mother! should be among the first few you check out. ;)

Really? I gave it a 9/10 and have it as one of my favorite films of this century. I do think it's flawed, but it does some things so amazingly well that it makes up for them.

For me, it's closer to a 9.5.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I saw Roma a few days ago, and I fell in love with its utter visual gorgeousness.

When you said this I thought you were talking about the Fellini film! Didn't know Cuoron had a new one out.

It's on Netflix (was produced by them too!). When you, ehh, take a break from the gaming, this and mother! should be among the first few you check out. ;)

Duly noted.

Really? I gave it a 9/10 and have it as one of my favorite films of this century. I do think it's flawed, but it does some things so amazingly well that it makes up for them.

For me, it's closer to a 9.5.

Haha, well, I guess you do like it a bit more! I could easily justify a 9.5 if I was just going with my gut reaction. There's also a lot to admire there as well; I remember when it came out discussing on IMDb about its various motifs (the orange/white light dichotomy, tunnels, certain repeated camera movements/angles, rings/circles, etc.) and how classically designed it was. It really is a shot of old-school Romanticism in a very postmodern age. Score is awesome as well, probably my favorite of any film this century.

[maz89]

Haha, well, I guess you do like it a bit more! I could easily justify a 9.5 if I was just going with my gut reaction. There's also a lot to admire there as well; I remember when it came out discussing on IMDb about its various motifs (the orange/white light dichotomy, tunnels, certain repeated camera movements/angles, rings/circles, etc.) and how classically designed it was. It really is a shot of old-school Romanticism in a very postmodern age. Score is awesome as well, probably my favorite of any film this century.

I get goosebumps just thinking about Clint Mansell's Death is the Road to Awe. That climax packed such a visceral punch because of it, that combination of image and sound had me soaring through space. What an imaginative, creative way to render one man's grieving process.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Haha, well, I guess you do like it a bit more! I could easily justify a 9.5 if I was just going with my gut reaction. There's also a lot to admire there as well; I remember when it came out discussing on IMDb about its various motifs (the orange/white light dichotomy, tunnels, certain repeated camera movements/angles, rings/circles, etc.) and how classically designed it was. It really is a shot of old-school Romanticism in a very postmodern age. Score is awesome as well, probably my favorite of any film this century.

I get goosebumps just thinking about Clint Mansell's Death is the Road to Awe. That climax packed such a visceral punch because of it, that combination of image and sound had me soaring through space. What an imaginative, creative way to render one man's grieving process.

All I can say is: