Movies (recently seen)

[Vesnic]

I know right? It really ruins it for those of us that were deranged death mongering assholes before it became trendy for a bunch of fucking hipsters.

Ugh, I'll be fucked sideways and upside-down before I ever become or date or even befriend one of those sub-human elements known as "hipsters". They're nothing but low-class chameleons that suck the life and legitimacy out of everything around them until it all turns into one big melange d'ennui full of the recently re-re-released Allen Ginsburg poetry, sitting in a fucking Starbucks listening to the latest Leonard Cohen feat. Snoop Dogg mash-up while valiantly defending The Man and all his evil ways because, like, that's literally PROGRESS. The fact that they don't even realize they're fascist Nazi swine who have now become too stupid even to fake an interest in the political issues of the day is just really fucking ... funny. Actually I think their distinguishing feature is the complete inability to function on any sort of a level without their smartphones. I know this is retreaded ground and the fucking tire grooves are plain as daylight in the mud, but really, I LITERALLY just had to be on a roadtrip with some of these fuckers and it was so sad to watch them with their weak little drug of choice. If it doesn't kill you (And sadly, that's the one thing these fuckers DON'T do. Why has no one invented the Shoot Me Now app yet? There's gotta be an app for that!) then it's just not worth your time. As the Wise Moran once said, "Being made into the slave of your obsessions is what it means to be alive. It's the definition of your humanity!" But I paraphrase. What was I saying? Oh right. Hipsters. I've hated them since the mid-90's, back when a good percentage of them were in their "goth" phase, and I had to put up with all my blonde friends basically hijacking my own natural good looks and trying to do better artificially what I already did beautifully, naturally. I guess that's pretty much the definition of hipster right there. Poseur. Wanker. Deranged asshole.

I'm sure Bran is still sucking as usual.

Well that could hardly be disputed by anyone. We all know Bran sucks massive crow's cock.

I'm wondering what's going to happen if he doesn't finish writing the series by the time the show catches up to the books.

There's also the danger of Geroge R.R. Martin's ever-shrinking lifespan catching up with the books. The man likes his ortolan stuffed with truffle in a deep beef stroganoff balanced delicately on a rack of lamb simmering in a butter blood-orange marinade dusted over fluffy cakes of deepest cocoa despair. Diabeetus, meet slow, lazy writer. Slow, lazy writer, meet your (sugary) blood-signed contract with Satan. Something's gotta give, man! Something's gotta GIVE!...
...although, they got so far off-book in that last episode, I really think they're setting the stage for getting by just fine without old Porgie once that juggernaut of a show inevitably pulls out in front.

[Vesnic]

Only Lovers Left Alive
3/5: Three of Five Stars

Tonight I saw Only Lovers Left Alive in an outdoor venue in a park, surrounded by people and perhaps also some culturally minded vampires who had come to enjoy this little infusion of everything we think we've lost, as individuals, as a society, as an entity so far detached from itself, it has taken on a new name and identity, new sets of rules and categories of desire. Yet the more strange and eerie this series of sometimes disjointed blue images became, the more undeniably familiar was the message: we all want to go home. Sharp angles, dirty streets, a cold color palette, all these things combined to poke and pinch and prod at the viewer, leaving the audience jittery and unnerved, pulling up every variation of blanket and plumping seat cushions and garden chairs to mirror physically what the characters were attempting by emotional and intellectual means. The story is thin on plot but thick with atmosphere, meaning that the usual exposition, with origin stories and the rule book for this particular band of ghouls was left mercifully for another day's study, choosing instead to suggest and intimate a thousand things so that one could merely guess, and usually guess correctly, how a certain aspect of undead life would manifest in this world. I was not in the least bit surprised when it turns out that for these vampires, the process of drinking blood (from dainty aperitif glasses--also not a surprise), is an experience of the most sensual order, an orgasmic plunge back into the gnawing jaws at the center of every human heart, beating and still. This is a film which simply cannot do without nostalgia, but in this area it falls disappointingly short. I don't mean the verbal "Do you remember when...?" device, but a deeper, more physical connection and intense yearning for an entire world of disappeared sights, sounds, sensations. I wanted to viscerally experience the main character's anguish to the fullest extent possible against the background of Jarmusch's unique visual tapestry. Teasing along the edges, the camera would suddenly come up for air and rest, still and centered, on the main character narrating a surprisingly dull bit of sofa psychology, looking sufficiently despondent but also sufficiently distant and almost a little contemptuous, as if to say to us: "You will never know how I feel. You are too little to know how a superior being like me experiences creation". This might be appropriate coming from the perspective of the 3000-year-old protagonist, but the camera itself can exert its influence as a distinct personality, a task made even easier in a film where everyone is severely separated from everyone else, and by more than the usual degrees of disenchantment. There was no need for that other intelligence to hide so many mysteries from me. The audience was ultimately left wanting, cocooned but cold, unsure of the identity of the soul whose funeral we were all attending. Mood won out over substance just a few times too many, but the movie was otherwise so masterful as to merit a generally positive response. For similar viewing, the obvious choice is Wings of Desire (horrible English title for a great German movie), directed by Wim Wenders.

[Locke]

Still caught up - and waiting - in terms of ASOIAF books, but just now watching the new season. Haven't read and can't comment on those posts (yes, it's an emoticon - now called "emoji?" - it still exists, anyway; deal with it).

[QUOTE=Vesnic;17732]Only Lovers Left Alive
3/5: Three of Five Stars

Great review, but I also haven't seen this, and at this point I'm not likely to. I might look up the one you referenced at the end, though.

Also watching the Borgias. Involving enough, and since I'm ~familiar with the history, it's interesting to see how they play with it.

[donteatpoop]

On AGOT, (spoiler alert if you haven't seen much this season)

For the most part the adaptation is pretty good, it's not perfect but that's expected. Characters were cut out or combined, plots meshed together, abandoned, or brand new ones created to make things flow more smoothly.

But one of my favorite characters in the books was sadly cut from the show. His name is Strong Belwas. When Sir Barristan Selmly shows up to help Danaerys Targaryen he wears a cloak to conceal his identity and poses as the squire to the great warrior Strong Belwas.

Strong Belwas was a pit fighter of great reknown. He would let each man he fought get one good cut on his belly and then he would kill them. So if you counted the scars on his belly, you could count the men he has killed.

At the scene where Danaerys is standing outside of the tall city walls with her army, and the slave masters send out a warrior to represent them (who pisses on the ground before getting on his horse). When Danaerys selects her warrior it is Strong Belwas (not Darrio) who would challenge the city's champion.

So the champion guy pees as an insult then gets on his horse and charges Strong Belwas. Just like in the show, Belwas takes the horse down and the rider is launched from the saddle. Unlike the show, Belwas allows the dude to get up so that they can fight man to man.

The champion gets a cut in on Strong Belwas' stomach, then Belwas took him down. While the champion was on the ground; Strong Belwas removed his pants, squatted over the man, and shat on his face.

It was epic.

[End Master]

So I finally got around to finishing up the Oz series.

I used to watch it back when it originally came on, and then I didn't have cable, so I got a I guy I knew to record it for me, then he went to Oz in real life so I unfortunately only got to the first half of the 4th season.

Anyway, after watching the episodes I missed, it would appear I had just missed the point where it started jumping the shark. Right after Adebesi got killed (Which was the last episode I saw years ago) they started coming up with some odd plot lines.

The silliest one were the experimental aging drugs. In fact it only lasted a couple episodes and then it seemed like the writers thought it was stupid too so all the effects miraculously wore off.

Still, it wasn't that bad of a series, it's just like most series it started losing steam towards the end.

Started watching Deadwood too. I think I'm only up to the fifth episode on it, and it's okay. I don't really feel the need to marathon watch it though so I'm sort of watching it when I don't have anything else to do.

But man, they REALLY like saying "cocksucker" in that show. I think they say it more than "fuck."

[End Master]

I don't normally enjoy anime stuff, something about the whole art style just annoys me a lot of the time. (Oversized heads and eyes, sudden outlandish expressions, droplets of water and lines spontaneously appearing…)

I find that even to be the case with the more serious ones which normally have a decent story and a bunch of fucked up shit in them which would probably suit me pretty well, but I still can't get into them.

There are exceptions of course. One such exception I've seen recently is the Attack On Titan series. I really like the whole setting to it. Just wish every episode didn't have so many flashbacks to past episodes.

[Vesnic]

Maleficent
3.5/5 Stars

It's no secret that I'm not the biggest fan of Angelina Jolie. What other people might call naked, petty jealousy, I call a discerning and critical view into the uneven work of a nepotiste whose early fame was achieved equally through bottled blood and lesbian wish fulfillment. I think she has a jaw like a vise, lips like a toilet seat and a broken sense of humor. Her Joan of Arc thing leaves me cold, although this too could be nothing more than the resentment I feel each month when ten euros are transferred from my wobbling bank account to the World Wildlife Federation and I think to myself, "Wouldn't that have been better spent on greasy street food?"

Despite my many prejudices, not to mention a very uneven script and a few dubious casting choices, I actually quite liked Maleficent, which I saw in some sort of super-duper megaplex with calming music and bum-killing benches ringed with Starbucks and candid cameras. Being immersed this way in commercial psychedelia probably also helped to make me more receptive than usual to the extensive CGI stuffed into the film, a stuffing which stopped just short of buggery. Unexpectedly, I think the glitzy bits (no 3D though!) were for the most part tastefully done, with the wondrous little tree fairies and elf goblins and hobnobs or whatever adding to the story's vivid fairytale palette. The only lame part was the three fairies and their "Pink! No, blue! No, green!" shtick lifted directly from Disney and featuring three diffidently annoying and sloppily cast performances in the shape of three heretofore respectable British actresses whose bodies were digitally shrunk while their heads were left quite fat. Maybe there's a special niche market for people who get off on disproportionately featured post-menopausal women dressed up in little-girl Halloween costumes.

As for the story, one can always expect these days that the "original" fairytales will be getting quite a working-over, which is actually sort of bosh since there are no real originals anyway. Andersen, The Brothers Grimm and Perrault all borrowed (plagiarized) liberally from preexisting stories and traditions, some of them already written, some of them not, in order to create their canonical gems which were then raped by a robber baron with red suspenders in the 20th Century and now again by other shady types in the 21st, so really I won't harp on my disappointment in the story's not digressing at the end into a twisted, hopeless morass of incest and madness, which is really the only proper ending for a fairytale. They're supposed to say, "Good night, sweetheart. Sleep tight. Don't let the sandman gouge out your eyes, leaving you in unspeakable torment as the blood flows bright from your yawning sockets. Muah!"

So, spoiler alert, etc. Maleficent is the heroine, or anti-heroine if you will, of this lovely story. She is not a true villain, but rather a literally and figuratively broken woman sleeping her unmerry way through a rather long dark night of the soul. Basically, men are rapists and the only true love's kiss is the one bestowed by a mother upon her child. However, the aforementioned juicy incest swamp is deftly averted by pushing forth the importance of friendship, the necessity of living one's own destiny and the magical healing powers of forgiveness. In theory, I am fully on board with all of these notions. Also, I just happened to see this movie with my mommy.

Even old Angie herself didn't offend me here. She delivered a poised and restrained performance and, not at all surprisingly, she looks rather good with daunting black horns on her head.

Princess Aurora is cute but really more of a theoretical point to be made than a flesh-and-blood character. When she finds out her dad is the king, she essentially says, "Oh. Weird. Can I go home now?" Likewise of note was Maleficent's crow familiar played by some English guy who's recently been making wads playing American guys. Well done, Sam. His work here almost, and I stress almost inspires me to go see On the Road featuring that vampire fetish chick with this nice bloke Sam in the lead role of Sal Paradise. You remember Sal, right? He's the guy who's only mad for the mad ones, who likes to talk a sexy blue jive, nicking the beats and snapping his fingers all the way back home to his Massachusetts mama.

[Vesnic]

Je t'aime moi non plus
4.5/5 Stars

Because sometimes you've just gotta take it up the ass.

I'm feeling very conflicted at the moment. On the one hand, I really want to class this joint up. On the other hand, I know that certain new friends of ours are all about the butt sex, and of that, my dears, there is most assuredly no shortage in this strange, indelibly imprinted, whimsical, cruel and tender French import, which, like all good French movies, takes place at a truck-stop-cum-dump somewhere in the vicinity of Oklahoma or West Texas.

The inimitable Serge Gainsbourg made his directorial debut here, starring his then-lover Jane (should be John) Birkin as the lady lead, who falls hard for a gay Polish garbage man named Krassky. I don't have anything against Jane Birkin. It's just that she has no tits. Yet her boyish little body is shockingly offset by an astoundingly beautiful face that just pulls you in and in and in. As for her fairy loverman, he was notorious as one of Andy Warhol's many human playthings and liked to star in little homemade movies featuring him shadow boxing in the buff. Pretty great stuff, an entire aspect of the 60's I missed out on completely, until now. Anyway, seeing as YouTube seems to have quietly lifted its ban on all things sexytime, you can find this vid of "Little Joey" Dallesandro very easily. That is, if you're into gay stuff. I'm not implying anyone in particular here, or maybe I am. I love you, but I don't. You get the picture.

This movie is a beguiling mixture of high- and low-concept. It's almost dizzying to feel oneself experiencing such, as Joyce would put it, "a riot of emotion" while watching two condemned souls wrestle in a trash heap. The music, scored of course by Gainsbourg, is sparse and haunting and apparently determined to play on continuous loop in my brain for the rest of my natural life.

Also, there is a great cameo of Gérard Depardieu when he could still ride bareback on a horse without crushing it. Boy, he sure does like that horse. I found that sort of ironic because in Maîtresse he famously views a horse being slaughtered upside-down, then settles his feelings (and his stomach) with a nice slice of Black Beauty burger at the factory cafe. Just some of life's quaint little coincidences...

This movie. Watch it. Then lube up your lover/victim and let the games commencer!

[End Master]

Wait, he was supposed to be gay, but his lover was still female? Sounds almost like he just really liked fucking people in the ass.

I'll have to be an uncultured lout on this one and pass on the movie. Saw enough sodomy when I recently finished the Oz series.

In keeping with being an uncultured lout, I want to see 3 mainstream junk food for the brain movies, but I haven't made up my mind if I actually want to be bothered to pay to go see them.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
The Purge 2
Hercules

The one I'm most tempted to actually shell out money for is the Planet of the Apes movie, because you know, monkeys. Plus I really liked the first one. Anyone here seen it?

[Vesnic]

Wait, he was supposed to be gay, but his lover was still female?

Yes, End. It's called "exploring your sexuality". You should try it sometime. I mean for chrissakes, I thought you went to college!

Look at all the acclaim Bat has recently won from his daring adventures. Surely there must be some strays in your neighborhood. You have no excuse because, unlike me, you do not live next-door to a Chinese restaurant (I think).

Sounds almost like he just really liked fucking people in the ass.

Yeah, well, who doesn't?

I'll have to be an uncultured lout on this one and pass on the movie.

I forgot to mention there's another totally hetero scene involving a BJ and a very sloppy dessert, but that sort of thing probably wouldn't interest you.

In keeping with being an uncultured lout, I want to see 3 mainstream junk food for the brain movies.

I'd go for Planet but only because I hold something of a torch for Gary Oldman, even if he has recently been sinking into the mire of self-absorbed, conservative nitwittery. Also, to requote the famous Dylan Moran, I really want to "believe that monkeys could have meetings".

[End Master]

Look at all the acclaim Bat has recently won from his daring adventures. Surely there must be some strays in your neighborhood. You have no excuse because, unlike me, you do not live next-door to a Chinese restaurant (I think).

Sadly I live near TWO Chinese take out places, so as you might expect the stray cat population is quite low. I suppose I could try to catch one of the little bunnies that I've occasionally seen hopping around in the front and backyard, but that's pretty much impossible.

Oh I meant to mention I saw a Viking art film called "Valhalla Rising". It sucked a lot.

Started off kind of promising, but then it just dragged on beyond the point of boredom. Stopped caring about any of the characters, didn't care about the symbolism and the metaphors and whatever else they were trying (and failing) to convey. Hell, I didn't even care that people were graphically getting their heads smashed in.

[Vesnic]

Speaking of Nordic gloom and the urge to remake what's already been done, I just watched Valhalla Rising on DVD. It's like the legendary Aguirre, except with a great deal of violence that is both gratuitous and misplaced, some very threadbare philosophical underpinnings, and a self-awareness that borders on preciousness. I'm not sure why so many films these days seem to have had the color leeched right out of them, but it doesn't say much for a movie that literally has to darken its palette in order to convey a sense of dread. The overall impression I got was that the filmmaker first saw Aguirre a long time ago, has loved it for years, and remade it with his own unique personal stamp, not the least of which is a cast of "Vikings" consisting almost entirely of Scots. The imitation, however, is vague and thin, silent where it should speak and ultimately unconvinced of its own purpose. Long passages took place utterly without explanation, only to be cut short by a sudden, loud impact of some blunt metal object crushing someone's skull. No expense was spared in making the death and gore as vivid and inescapable as possible. While this might have jolted me on three separate occasions from the stupor this movie otherwise induced, it never built up any tension or fear that could go on being felt even in the most seemingly innocuous of situations. In Aguirre, the mere sight of a tree swaying in the wind could be pants-pissingly terrifying.

Valhalla Rising is clumsy and trite, a non-recommend.

I knew this looked familiar. Tsk Tsk End, I mean REALLY.

Valhalla might be an art film for the 300 set, but to me it was just a great excuse to overdose on cough syrup and row my little brainboat up the channel to Happyland.

[End Master]

Well you've been known to get it completely wrong once in a while. Our tastes in movies sometimes vastly differ. It's true!

I think when you wrote that I sort of glanced over it since I had already seen the beginning of it, but then for whatever reason I got distracted and didn't immediately return to it.

Then much, much, MUCH later I finally got around to watching it again from the beginning and…yeah it just turned into a suckfest.

EDIT: I didn't find it to be anything like Agurrie Wrath of God though, of course if it had been more like it, I would've liked it a lot more.

[Vesnic]

Well you've been known to get it completely wrong once in a while. Our tastes in movies sometimes vastly differ. It's true!

Huh? Where did that come from?

I didn't find it to be anything like Agurrie Wraith of God though.

I didn't either, which is probably why it sucked so hard. But wait, this is a very interesting development. God has his own wraiths now? I'll have to remember to thank Him and praise Him the next time my ass-kicking lady Nord goes trophy hunting for ice wraiths. I love their breaking-glass sound, but they do make my tits awful chilly!

[End Master]

Huh? Where did that come from?

Oh I was just saying sometimes what movie you like and what movies I like are vastly different and I was being whimsical about it. (Or I thought I was)

I didn't think you like Klaus Kinski movies though. Or is that one an exception?