philosophy in film

Sometimes the part about “identity” gets particularly tricky. And there are many gimmicks used in film in which to explore it.

One especially: the doppelgänger.

Of course some us will be more inclined to seek out a doppelgänger than others. But among those who are generally timid and weak, submissive and [for all practical purposes] invisible, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone around who is strong and assertive? On the other hand, when you bump into him there will be the inevitable adjustments to be made. Like, for instance, figuring out what the hell is going on.

Let’s face it, some folks have all the personality of a board. There they are, right in front of you, but you never really see them. Or, if you do, you may just as well not have. But, personality aside, the gap between being who you think are and being what you need to be in order to get others to see you as you want to be seen can become rather complicated.

And then there are those who also look the part. Nerds we call them.

Still, there are those of us who actually go out of our way not to be noticed. The more invisible we are the better.

The story comes from a novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Although 5 minutes into it you recognize it might just as well have been written by Franz Kafka. Rather surreal one might say. At times it seems right around the corner from Eraserhead. Well, give or take a few blocks.

IMDb

[b]An earlier version of this film, also based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, and also to have been called The Double, came close to being made by director Roman Polanski in 1996. John Travolta was to have played the lead role alongside Isabelle Adjani, John Goodman and Jean Reno, from a script by Jeremy Leven. Shooting was to have started in Paris in June 1996. However, just days before principal photography was due to begin, Travolta left the project after an argument with Polanski about alleged changes to the script and the film collapsed shortly afterwards.

The drawing Hannah tears up and throws away evokes Magritte’s “Not to Be Reproduced,” a painting commissioned by his patron, Edward James. Two identical images of James are depicted in the painting but his face is not shown. The protagonist and his double are named James.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Double_(2013_film
trailer: youtu.be/XG8qATRtNuU

THE DOUBLE [2013]
Written in part and directed by Richard Ayoade

[b]Melanie: You can go now.
Simon: Right. Yes, thank you.
Melanie: Because if I were to find out how depressing and demeaning whatever the fuck it is you do here, I might be forced to feel sorry for you.

Narrator: People…the ultimate resource. Yet to some businesses they all look the same. But the colonel knows people are different. The colonel knows business is people and people are business, making your business his business because the colonel knows people and the colonel knows that you demand the most powerful data-processing system on the planet to make sense of it all. The colonel will show you people in a way your business can understand because the colonel knows there’s no such thing as special people.
All: Just people.[/b]

Think of the Colonel as you would, say, Little Brother.

[b]Simon [after he reports a man jumping off the building to the police]: I wonder why he did it.
Detective:: His note said he was lonely. He should have got a dog. Or exercised more.
Simon: Did he suffer?
Detective: Splat.
Simon: Do you see this sort of thing often?
Detective: Every day. That’s what we do…suicides.
Simon: Only suicides?
Detective: That’s right.
Simon: For the whole city?
Detective: We can barely cover the neighborhood.

Detective: You’re not thinking of killing yourself, are you?
Simon: Sorry?
Detecive: It’s a simple question.
Simon: No.
Cop: Should I put him down as a “no”?
Detective: Put him down as a “maybe.”

Simon [motioning to James]: Doesn’t he remind you of someone?
Harris: Who did you have in mind?
Simon: Me, for instance.
Harris: Oh, yeah, I suppose so.
Simon: You suppose so? Now why doesn’t anyone notice?
Harris: Well, no offense, mate, but you’re pretty unnoticeable. Bit of a non-person.

Simon [of Hannah]: I have all these things that I want to say to her, like…Like how I can tell she’s a lonely person, even if other people can’t. Cause I know what it feels like to be lost and lonely and invisible.
James: Simon, you have to go after what you want. I would tear the asshole off an elephant for a piece of trim I wanted that bad.

Simon [to James]: I don’t know how to be myself. It’s like I’m permanently outside myself. Like, like you could push your hands straight through me if you wanted to. And I can see the type of man I want to be versus the type of man I actually am and I know that I’m doing it but I’m incapable of what needs to be done. I’m like Pinocchio, a wooden boy. Not a real boy. And it kills me.

James: Stop that. That’s gay.
Simon: But you just did it to me.
James: Yes, but it was me. Do you see the difference? You can’t be doing anything gay. No ice-cream cones.
Simon: I like ice cream.
James: Of course. It’s delicious. Ice cream is fine in a cup, but in a cone is gay unless you’re with a woman at the time.
Simon: Anything else?
James: No riding on a motorcycle with another man. Exceptions are drive-by shootings, bomb throwings and purse snatchings. Anything else is gay.
Simon: You seem to know a lot about this.

Workers’ Services Executive: You don’t exist anymore.
Simon: Excuse me?
Workers’ Services Executive: You’re no longer in the system.
Simon: Well, just put me back in the system.
Workers’ Services Executive: I can’t put you back in the system.
Simon: Why?
Workers’ Services Executive: Because you don’t exist. I can’t put someone who doesn’t exist in the system.
Simon: But I used to be in the system.
Workers’ Services Executive: Not according to the system. In fact, according to the system, you’ve never existed.
Simon: How reliable is the system?
Workers’ Services Executive: Hey, it’s completely reliable.
Simon: Yes, but I used to exist. I do exist! I’m standing in the this room, aren’t I?
Workers’ Services Executive: And?
Simon: So how do I get back in the system?
Workers’ Services Executive: You need a card.
Simon: Right. So can I please get a new card?
Workers’ Services Executive: No.
Simon: Why?
Workers’ Services Executive: Because you’re not in the system.

Simon: You fuckers! You don’t know who you’re dealing with. You don’t know who you’re Dealing with, you fuckers. You fucking fucks. I am a person. Stay back! Stay back, you fucks! You fucking fuckers! I am a person! I exist!

Hannah: You probably think I should be thankful that you took me to the hospital, but I’m not. I wanted to die. And now I’m afraid I won’t have the courage to try again. Do you wanna know what I think? I think that you should kill yourself. I promise I won’t try to stop you halfway through.

The Colonel: There aren’t too many like you. Are there Simon?
Simon: I’d like to think I’m pretty unique. [/b]

If you spot Bill Hader, how far away can Kristen Wiig be? Also, the other way around.

Here they are twins. The kind that are not identical. Still, there is something about having a twin brother or sister that is bound to draw you in a bit closer to them. Unless of course it doesn’t. Here they are “estranged”. And not only in relationship to each other. In fact, they seem to be estranged from the whole fucking world.

Not unlike me. Only I was estranged from one brother, three sisters, two parents, and tons and tons of relatives. And, from time to time, myself.

On the other hand, in the opening frames Milo and Maggie are both attempting to commit suicide. In fact, Maggie’s suicide attempt is interrupted when she gets a call from the hospital informing her that her brother was just admitted because he slit his wrist.

Really, it took a few years longer for me to get that estranged.

Let’s face it, there are many, many ways in which the gap between what you want and what you’ve got can just get wider and wider. And that is really what this film is all about: how “ordinary people” cope [or do not cope] with that. And, for some, the family can help to bridge the gap. For others though it just gets wider. Everyone has their own rendition. And if you look hard enough you will no doubt spot one or another rendition of yourself here.

Well, if you are of a certain demographic.

Look for Nancy Grace. Sort of.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeleton_Twins
trailer: youtu.be/Xf6CUAIqTOU

THE SKELETON TWINS [2014]
Written in part and directed by Craig Johnson

[b]Maggie: I don’t know. Maybe we were doomed from the beginning. I mean, it’s not like Dad was Mr. Sunshine. Sometimes I think all our problems came directly from him. But a lot of the good stuff did, too. Remember what he always called us? The Gruesome Twosome. He told us to stick together, no matter what. God…what the hell happened to us?

Milo’s suicide note: To whom it may concern…See ya later

Maggie: Look at you.
Milo: Yeah, look at me. Another tragic gay cliche.

Milo: Have you read “Marley and Me?”
Maggie: Yeah. Sad.
Milo: Why is it sad?
Maggie: You don’t know what happens?
Milo: No, that’s why I’m reading it.
Maggie: Sorry.
Milo: What?
Maggie: Nothing.
Milo: Does the dog die at the end?
Maggie: No. I didn’t say that.
Milo: The fucking dog dies at the end.
Maggie: I’m didn’t - I’m not saying anything!
Milo: Look how much I had left!
[he tosses the book to the ground and sighs]
Maggie: I’m sorry I ruined it.
Milo: Maggie, I know the dog dies. Everyone knows the dog dies. It’s the book where the dog dies.
Maggie: Asshole. I see you’re getting your sense of humor back.
Milo: Yeah, they can’t take that away from me.

Maggie: So, you met Lance.
Milo: Yeah, I met Lance.
Maggie: Isn’t he the best? Yeah, he’s like a big Labrador retriever.
Milo: Yeah, I guess.
Maggie: He’s just the nicest guy on the planet. I really lucked out.
Milo: Yeah, you’re really going for it.
Maggie: What does that mean?
Milo: You’re going for it…just, like, the job, the house, the furniture…the Lance.
Maggie: I guess I grew up.

Milo [in a bar]: So, when do the boys show up?
Woman: It’s Dyke Night, sweetie.
Milo: It’s what?
Woman: Dyke Night.
Milo: Dyke Night? I showed up on Dyke Night?!

Milo [at the dinner table]: Did everybody hear how I’ve never taken a shit before?

Maggie [to her mother]: Stop trying, Judy. Stop trying. There are worse things than being a shitty mother.
Judy: So…if you’ve finished vomiting all over me…I will just say thank you for dinner, and, Milo, thank you for the invitation.

Milo [to Maggie]: Well, at least she is sending us the light.

Lance [to Milo about Maggie]: Land mines, man. It’s like sometimes she and I will be strolling through the park laughing, getting along perfect, and then, kaboom, you know? A freakin’ land mine blows my nuts off. And I’ll think, “Oh, I coulda sworn my nuts were there a minute ago. I wonder where they went.” No nuts. - Oh, there… there they are. They got blown clear across the room. They’re sliding down that wall over there. My nuts.

Milo: Look, it had nothing to do with you.
Maggie: That is bullshit. You’re my brother. And we’re supposed to be there for each other. And if you don’t get that by now, then, I don’t know, I guess I’ll talk to you in another ten years.

Milo [after Maggie tells him of all her affairs]: I guess Lance just doesn’t do it for you.
Maggie: But why? He’s so great. He’s so sweet and cute and nice and he would make such a great dad, and he is the polar opposite of all the assholes that I’m used to dating. He doesn’t deserve a fucking whore as a wife.

Maggie: How’d we go 10 years without talking?
Milo: Oh, it’s probably not worth talking about now.

Milo: Look, he was confused. I felt terrible for him.
Maggie: Hey! You had no right!
Milo: Things were gonna crash down eventually.
Maggie: No, you were just trying to get back at me.
Milo: I was trying to help you.
Maggie: You ruined my marriage!
Milo: What marriage?
Maggie: Fuck you.

Milo: You know what the sad thing is? It’s that we’re a good team.
Maggie: Oh, yeah, and you’d be a real hoot to have around if you weren’t such a fuckup.
Milo: We’re both fuckups, okay? And I’m tired of you acting like you’re the healthy one and I’m your special needs kid.
Maggie: Oh, what does it even matter anymore, Milo? You got your revenge. You got it.
Milo: I was trying to lay it out on the table. That’s what I was trying to do.
Maggie: You wanna lay it out on the table?
Milo: Yes!
Maggie: Okay, then, go for it.
Milo: You’re emotionally unstable.
Maggie: You’re a prick.
Milo: You need professional help.
Maggie: Oh, and this coming from a guy who just tried to kill himself.
Milo: Maybe I should try fucking all my problems away.
Maggie: Well, maybe next time you should cut deeper.
[she tears up at what she said][/b]

Talk about dasein:

Title card: The region where North Korea, China and Russia meet is known as the Yambian Korean Autonomous Perfecture. About 800,000 Korean-Chinese known as Josenjok reside here. Over 90% of the Josenjok population rely only on illegal activities or legally live in South Korea in order to survive.

So, imagine being born and bred there?

On the other hand, no matter where you are born and bred in this day and age, sooner or later it will all come back around to the part about money. And if you don’t have it [and especially if you are deep in debt] you can find yourself compelled to do things that you wouldn’t ordinarily do. And once you set down that road the variables can become increasingly harder to manage. Lots of desparate people will do lots of desperate things. But this is particularly the case in the Yambian Korean Autonomous Pefecture. In other words, lots of people are just plain expendable.

And when they have children that they love…children that they have to raise…it just gets that much more complicated. And then there’s the part about the wife.

Everything here is strictly on a need to know basis. And what you don’t know can kill you. One of those classic yarns where the dupe gets in way over his head. And before he knows it both the thugs and the cops are gunning for him. But then the thugs themselves are gunning for each other.

In large part this convoluted plot revolves around money [of course] but also around the part that three women play in setting so much of the plot in motion. And yet the women themselves are deep in the backgorund by and large.

Bottom line: If this were based on a true story, Gu-nam would be the luckiest man in the world. And this may well be one of the bloodiest films ever made. The difference between gun violence and blade violence is palpable. The hatchet in particular, Fortunately, almost all of the violence is inflicted on the thugs by the thugs. Just not all of it.

Don’t go looking for cartoon characters here. This isn’t a Hollywood production. Or, as Roger Ebert noted:

Looking back at the Hollywood blockbuster action films of 2011 when the year was about to end, I found none of them could top the raw realism of the ambitious South Korean thriller “The Yellow Sea” (2010). When I endured “Transformers 3” last summer, I had no excitement at all with its pointless loud action scenes decorated with weightless CGI. In the case of “The Yellow Sea,” real people and real vehicles are put into the action on the screen, and they are far more visceral than those big, humongous CGI robots fighting on the streets of Chicago.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Sea_(film
trailer: youtu.be/yTCwY79GQ1o

THE YELLOW SEA [Hwanghae] 2010
Written and directed by Hong-jin Na

[b]Gu-nam [voiceover]: When I was 11 years old, rabies went around…A fertile dog brings in good money. My dog caught rabies and it bit its mom to death…then killed anything it could bite. When the neighbors tried to beat it to death, it ran away. Days later it came back, skinny and pitiful as ever. There was nothing behind its dark eyes. It looked at me for a while then slowly laid on the ground and died. I buried the dog behind our neighborhood but it was dug up by the leders that night and devoured…The reason why I thought of it is because the rabies that vanished has come back. It’s going around…

Thug: Did you play mah-jongg again? I told you top cut that shit out. Let me remind you again. Even if you sell your eyes, your guts, and your daughter to a diry, sleazy pimp, it still won’t cover your debt. So if you’re not able to pay…[/b]

You know what’s coming of course: he knows someone who has a job for him…

[b]Mr. Myun: Fuckling lowlifes…

My Myun: Gu-nam…go kill someone for me in South Korea.
[Gu-nam starts to laugh]
My Myun: You think thuis is a joke? You can never repay your debt here. Do you want to live life like those dogs all your life? Once you’re there you can go see your wife…whether you bring her back or kill her. Just go and do the job. And start your life over.

My Myun [handing Gu-nam a note]: Memorize it. All of it. Recite it.
Gu-nam: “Seoul, Gangnam 99-1, Kim Seung-hyun.”
Mr. Myun: Don’t forget it. If you forget, your family is all dead.
[then he burns the note]
My Myun: One more thing. You’ll have to being me one of his fingers. The thumb.

Gu-nam [after he kills a man]: Oh, the thumb…[/b]

But is it the right thumb? Here things become really, really complicated.

[b]Gu-nam: I can’t go back to China. I’ll probably die here. But before I die…I need to know who started all of this. And how it happened. Only after I find out…can I die.

Gu-nam [looking at the ID of Kim Tae-won, dead on the ground]: He fucked my woman…in my home. My woman. The professor fucked her in my home. [/b]

Alejandro González Iñárritu: Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel, Bitiful.

I’ve included them all above.

And now Birdman.

The guy is a fucking genuis. At least in the world of film.

And all of his films touch on the manner in which events far flung can be connected one way or another by six [or less] degrees of separation.

There are the parts that we see, of course. But they are barely the tip of the iceberg. Instead, it is the part beyond our understanding [or control] that often have the greater weight. And by far sometimes.

Only this one [actually] is a lot less like that. This one seems to focus more on one partiuclar stage…and all of the different ways we may or may not be acting on and off it.

As for “the unexpected virtue of ignorance”, it can be difficult at times to make the distinction between something you expect and something you do not. And forget the part about it being a virtue. There are simply too many renditions of that to count.

And then there is a distinction to be made between the existential angst of folks who were at least once “somebody” and the vast multitude that comprises the rest of us. At best we were/are legends only in our minds. So, does that make the angst more or less able to be tolerated? But then “in the end” what the hell does it really mean to be keeping score, anyway?

Look for that too. The nihilism in other words.

And then [of course] the part about the “superheroes”. The “superheros” that have virtually hijacked the film industry. The films that make a ka-zillion dollars everytime they open and, in appealing always to the lowest common denominator among us, have all but washed away what is left of serious cinema in America.

Or as Mike explains it to Riggan:

If this doesn’t work out for you, you fuck off back to your studio pals and dive back into that cultural genocide you guys are perpetrating. A douchebag’s born every minute! That was P.T. Barnum’s premise when he invented the circus…and nothing much has changed. You guys know if you crank out toxic crap people will line up and pay to see it!

But then the film also explores the way actors go about creating characters up on the screen or up on the stage. The way they are always probing the characters and going back and forth with other actors regarding what the character ought to be thinking and feeling and saying and doing – as opposed to, perhaps, what the script says. And the way in which they bring “real life” into them. At least when these characters are not comic book superheroes.

Look for the part about love. Both on and off the stage.

And what a difference a nose makes.

IMDb

[b]There are only sixteen visible cuts in the entire film.

According to Alejandro González Iñárritu, he had dinner with director Mike Nichols in New York two weeks before he began shooting the movie. Iñárritu told Nichols of his plan for how he was going to shoot the movie as one long take. Nichols predicted it would be a disaster because not having the ability to use cuts in editing would inhibit the opportunities for comedy. Iñárritu said the meeting didn’t deter him, but was instead helpful in raising his awareness level of the difficulty of what he was about to do.

Before shooting began, Alejandro González Iñárritu sent his cast a photo of Philippe Petit walking on the tightrope between the Twin Towers. He told them, “Guys, this is the movie we are doing. If we fall, we fail.”

The film plays with notion of Chekov’s gun: “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.”

According to one view, the movie is a retelling of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” Michael Keaton is Macbeth and Birdman is Lady Macbeth, pushing him to do as he pleases (to be king, or in this case, to be popular and trending). Also, Macbeth famously pursues a course of action aimed at blocking a prophecy proclaimed by witches, while here Keaton uses all his money and time to stop his show from failing as predicted by a female critic. There is also a scene when Keaton’s character leaves a bar, and lines from “Macbeth” are being spoken by an actor on the street. Finally, at one point in the play within the movie, dancing trees are seen on stage, just as in Macbeth.

In the scene where Riggan buys a bottle of liquor, a man is heard (later seen) saying lines from Macbeth, “Poor… player… struts and frets his hour upon the stage… and then is heard no more!” This quote can be seen as talking about Riggan: he has a brief, fretful time on Broadway before he is “heard no more,” he kills himself.

Given the unusual style of filming long takes, Edward Norton and Michael Keaton kept a running tally of flubs made by the actors. Emma Stone made the most mistakes; Zach Galifianakis made the fewest. He actually did mess up a few lines during the filming, but played his mistakes off well enough that the shots were included in the film.

During the press conference in Riggan’s dressing room, he says that he hasn’t played Birdman since 1992. That’s the same year Batman Returns (1992), the last Batman movie starring Michael Keaton, was released.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdman_(film
trailer: youtu.be/uJfLoE6hanc

BIRDMAN: OR [THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNIORANCE] [2014]
Written in part and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

[b]Title card: And did you get what you wanted from this life? I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth
[Raymond Carver, Late Fragment]

Riggan [voiceover]: How did we end up here? This place is horrible. Smells like balls. We don’t belong in this shithole.

Riggan: Just find me an actor. A good actor. Give me Woody Harrelson.
Jake: He’s doing the next Hunger Games.
Riggan: Michael Fassbender?
Jake: He’s doing the prequel to the X-Men prequel.
Riggan: How about Jeremy Renner?
Jake: Who?
Riggan: Jeremy Renner. He was nominated. He was the Hurt Locker guy.
Jake: Oh, okay. He’s an Avenger.
Riggan: Fuck! They put him in a cape too?!

Note on Riggan’s dressing room mirror: “A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.”

Gabriel: Why would sombody go from playing the lead in a comic book franchise to adapting Raymond Carver for the stage? As you probably know Barthes said that the cultural work done in the past by gods and demigods…now it is done in the commercial
detergent and by comic strip characters.

Riggan: Like you said…Barthes said…you see Birdman is like Icarus…
Clara: Okay, hang on. Who is this Barthes guy? Which Birdman was he in?

Clara: Now, is it true that you’ve been injecting yourself with semen from baby pigs?
Riggan: I’m sorry, what?
Clara: As a method of facial rejuvenation.
Riggan: Where did you read that?
Clara: It was tweeted by @prostatewhispers.
Riggan: No, that’s not true.
Clara: I know, but did you do it?
Riggan: No, I didn’t do it.
Clara: Okay, then I’ll just write that you’re denying it.
Riggan: No, don’t write anything! Why would you write anything? I didn’t… don’t write what she said.

Gabriel: Are you at all afraid that people will say you’re doing this play to battle the impression that you’re a washed up superhero…?
Riggan: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. That’s why 20 years ago I said no to Birdman 4.

Jake: Oh my god! How do you know Mike Shiner?!
Lesley: We share a vagina.

Mike [up on the stage at the preview “improvising”]: Is this water? Did you replace my gin with water, man?
Riggan: Mike. Come on.
Mike: No. Come on, what?
Riggan: Come on, you’re drunk.
Mike: I’m drunk? Yes, I’m drunk! I’m supposed to be drunk! Why aren’t you drunk? This is Carver. He left a piece of his liver on the table every time he wrote a fucking page. If I need to be drinking gin, who the fuck are you to touch my gin, man? Listen, you fucked with the period, you fucked with the plot so you could have the best lines, you leave me the fucking tools that I need! Oh, come on people, don’t be so pathetic. Stop looking at the world through your cellphone screens. Have a real experience! Does anybody give a shit about truth other than me? I mean the set is fake, the bananas are fake, there’s fucking nothing in this milk carton, your performance is fake. The only thing that is real on this stage is this chicken. So, I’m gonna work with the chicken.

Riggan [to Sylvia]: The last time I flew here from LA, George Clooney was sitting two seats in front of me. With those cuff links, and that…fucking chin. We ended up flying through this really bad storm. The plane started to rattle and shake, and everyone on board was crying, and praying. And I just sat there. Sat there thinking that when Sam opened that paper it was going to be Clooney’s face on the front page. Not mine…Did you know that Farrah Fawcett died on the same day as Michael Jackson?

Riggan: Why did we break up?
Sylvia: Because you threw a kitchen knife at me. And an hour later you were telling me how much you loved me. You know, just because I did not like that ridiculous comedy you did with Goldie Hawn did not mean I did not love you. That’s what you alweays do – you confuse love for admiration.

Riggan: I have a lot riding on this fucking play. People know who I am, and…
Mike: Bullshit. They don’t know you, your work. Tbey know the guy from the bird suit who tells coy, slightly vomitus stories on Letterman.
Riggan: Well I’m sorry if I’m popular.
Mike: Popular? I don’t give a shit. Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige.
Riggan: Okay, I don’t even know what the fuck that means.
Mike: It means, my reputation is riding on this, and that’s worth a, a…
Riggan: A lot.
Mike: A lot, exactly! Fuck you. Yes! If this doesn’t work out for you, you fuck off back to your studio pals and dive back into that cultural genocide you guys are perpetrating. A douchebag’s born every minute! That was P.T. Barnum’s premise when he invented the circus…and nothing much has changed. You guys know if you crank out toxic crap people will line up and pay to see it!

Tabitha [the New York Times theatre critic]: You headed for Hollywood, Mike?
Mike: No. Hollywood’s heading hear, Tabby.
Tabitha: Good luck with that.
Mike: “A man becomes a critic when he cannot be an artist the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier”. Flaubert, right?
Tabitha: He’s a Hollywood clown in a Lycra bird suit.
Mike: Yes, he is. But tomorrow night at 8:00 he is going out on that stage and risking everything.What will you be doing?

Riggan: Listen to me. I’m trying to do something important.
Sam: This is not important.
Riggan: It’s important to me! Alright? Maybe not to you, or your cynical friends whose only ambition is to go viral. But to me…To me… this is - God. This is my career, this is my chance to do some work that actually means something.
Sam: Means something to who? You had a career before the third comic book movie, before people began to forget who was inside the bird costume. You’re doing a play based on a book that was written 60 years ago, for a thousand rich old white people whose only real concern is gonna be where they go to have their cake and coffee when it’s over. And let’s face it, Dad, it’s not for the sake of art. It’s because you want to feel relevant again. Well, guess what, there’s a whole world out there where people fight to be relevant every day. And you act like it doesn’t even exist! Things are happening in a place that you willfully ignore, a place that has already forgotten you. I mean, who the fuck are you? You hate bloggers. You mock Twitter. You don’t even have a Facebook page. You’re the one who doesn’t exist. You’re doing this because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you know what? You’re right. You don’t. It’s not important. You’re not important. Get used to it. Dad…

Lesley: Why don’t I have any self-respect?!
Laura: You’re an actress, honey.

Sam is sitting on the parapet of the theatre roof.
Voice from the street: JUUUMP!
Sam: EAT ME!
Voice from the street: OKAY. JUMP ON MY FACE!
Sam: I love this city.

Sam: Truth or dare?
Mike: Truth.
Sam: You’re boring.
Mike: Truth is always more interesting.

Mike [to Riggan]: My massive hard-on got 50,000 views on youtube!

Riggan alter ego: You really fucked up this time. You destroy a genius book with an infantile adaptation. Now you’re about to destroy what’s left of your career. It’s pathetic…You were a movie star once, remember? Pretentious, but happy.
Riggan: I wasn’t happy.
Riggan alter ego: Ignorant, charming. Now you’re just a tiny, bitter cocksucker.
Riggan: I was fucking miserable.
Riggan alter ego: Yeah, but fake miserable. Hollywood miserable. What are you trying to prove? That you’re an artist? Well, you’re not.
Riggan: Fuck you!!
Riggan alter ego: No, fuck you, you coward. We grossed billions! You ashamed of that? Billions!!
Riggan: And billions of flies eat shit every day!![/b]

To jump or not to jump “right back into that Lycra suit”.

[b]Mike: You’ve been hanging around here trying to make yourself invisible behind this fragile little fuck-up routine but you can’t. You’re anything but invisible. You’re big. You’re kind of a great mess. It’s like a candle burning at both ends, but it’s beautiful. No amount of booze or weed or attitude is going to hide that.
Sam: I’m glad you’re an actor and not a writer, 'cause that was, like, Oprah, Hallmark, R. Kelly bad.

Sam: How do you do it?
Mike: Do what?
Sam: How do you go out there every single night and pretend to be someone else in front of all those people?
Mike: I don’t pretend out there. I told you. I pretend just about every place else, but not out there.
Sam: That’s a shame.

Sam: Do you really think you’ll be ready for opening tomorrow?
Riggan: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, previews were pretty much a train-wreck. We can’t seem to get through without a raging fire or a raging hard-on. I’m broke. I’m not sleeping like, you know, at all. And um, this play is kinda starting to feel like a major deformed version of myself that just keeps following me around, hitting me in the balls with a tiny little hammer. I’m sorry, what was the question?
Sam: Never mind.

Sam [showing Riggan the youtube video of him walking down Broadway in his underwear]: 350,000 views in less than an hour. Believe it or not, this is power.

Tabitha: It doesn’t matter, I’m gonna destroy your play.
Riggan: But you didn’t even see it… I mean, did I did something to offend you?
Tabitha: As a matter of fact, you did. You took up space in a theater which otherwise might have been used on something worthwile.
Riggan: Okay… well. I mean you don’t even know if it’s any good or not… I didn’t…
Tabitha: That’s true; I haven’t read a word of it or even seen the preview. But after the opening tomorrow I’m gonna turn in the worst review anyone has ever read and I’m gonna close your play. Would you like to know why? Because I hate you and everyone you represent. Entitled, selfish, spoiled children. Blissfully untrained, unversed and unprepared to even attempt real art. Handing each other awards for cartoons and pornography. Measuring your worth in weekends? Well this is the theater and you don’t get to come in here and pretend you can write, direct and act in your own propaganda piece without coming through me first. So break a leg.
Riggan: Well… You know… What has to happen in a person’s life to become a critic anyway? What are you writing? Another review? Is that any good? Is it? Did you even see it? Let me read it.
Tabitha: I will call the police!
Riggan: Call the police… let’s read. Lacklustre… That’s just labels. Marginality… You kidding me? Sounds like you need penicillin to clear that up. That’s a label. That’s all labels. You just label everything. That’s so fuckin’ lazy… You just… You’re a lazy fucker. You know what this is? You even know what that is? You don’t, You know why? Because you can’t see this thing if you don’t have to label it. You mistake all those little noises in your head for true knowledge.
Tabitha: Are you finished?
Riggan: No! I’m not finished! There’s nothing here about technique! There’s nothing in here about structure! There’s nothing in here about intentions! It’s just a bunch of crappy opinions, backed up by even crappier comparisons… You write a couple of paragraphs and you know what? None of this cost you fuckin’ anything! The Fuck! You risk nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! I’m a fucking actor! This play cost me everything… So I tell you what, you take this fucked malicious cowardly shitty written review and you shove that right the fuck up your wrinkly tight ass.
Tabitha: You’re no actor, you’re a celebrity. Let’s be clear on that. I’m gonna kill your play.

Riggan as the young Birdman to the bedraggled and defeated Riggan today: It’s a beautiful day. Forget about the Times… everyone else has. Come on. Stand up! So you’re not a great actor. Who cares? You’re much more than that. You tower over these other theater douchebags. You’re a movie star, man! You’re a global force! Don’t you get it? You spent your life building a bank account and a reputation… and you blew 'em both. Good for you. Fuck it. We’ll make a comeback. They’re waiting for something huge. Well, give it to them. Shave off that pathetic goatee. Get some surgery! Sixty’s the new thirty, motherfucker. You’re the original. You paved the way for these other clowns. Give the people what they want… old-fashioned apocalyptic porn. Birdman: The Phoenix Rises. Pimple-faced gamers creaming in their pants. A billion worldwide, guaranteed. You are larger than life, man. You save people from their boring, miserable lives. You make them jump, laugh, shit their pants. All you have to do is…
[Riggan snaps fingers, and explosions occur, shooting starts, soldiers get shot, choppers fly and shoot, one gets shot down]
Young Birdman: That’s what I’m talking about. Bones rattling! Big, loud, fast! Look at these people, at their eyes… they’re sparkling. They love this shit. They love blood. They love action. Not this talky, depressing, philosophical bullshit.
[Birdman shoots laser in giant mechanical bird above the building, it screeches]
Young Birdman: See? There you go, you motherfucker. Gravity doesn’t even apply to you. Wait till you see the faces of those who thought we were finished. Listen to me. Let’s go back one more time and show them what we’re capable of. We have to end it on our own terms… with a grand gesture. Flames. Sacrifice. Icarus. You can do it. You hear me? You are… Birdman!

Slvia [after reading a revew in the paper]: You’re happy about this?
Jake: Happy? I’m fucking euphoric! This is the kind of review that turns people into living legends!
Sylvia: He shot the nose off his face!
Jake: He’s got a new nose! And if he doesn’t like that one, we’ll get him a new one! We’ll use Meg Ryan’s guy. [/b]

When you enter the world of the “artistically gifted”, you may find yourself among people who take what they do to a level that is almost impossible for those considerably less gifted to fathom.

Really strange behavior can be the norm. I mean, really strange: “play one wrong note and you die!!”

Oh, and your pretty wife too.

But this film is actually a “thriller”, a “mystery”. We need to find out why someone is intent on shooting this concert pianist making a “comeback” after five years off the stage. And how is it all connected to the missing family fortune of his “mentor”.

In fact, could this actually be a “heist film”?

It’s basically a remake of Phone Booth. Only here the plot is even more preposterous.

Back to the music…

For some, playing the music beautifully is simply not good enough. Instead, it must be played to perfection. Every note precisely as the composer had intended it to be played. I’ve known folks like that. They listen to the music only in order to spot the parts that are not as they “must” be played. It’s not about the emotional or aesthetic reaction, but about the technical skill. Almost as though the music itself is the least of it. And here, given the plot, it just might be.

Look for the “MacGuffin”.

IMDb

[b]Wood had worked with a teacher three weeks prior to going to Barcelona and found it stressful having to play the piano and speak at the same time saying, “It was incredibly technical […] lots of moments where it was jumping from where I’d play, listen to a click, listen to music, have to be in the right place and the right time and hear dialogue and repeat dialogue”.

The closing credit roll takes up 12 minutes of the 90-minute film. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Piano_(film
trailer: youtu.be/SdMQffEtQeU

GRAND PIANO [2013]
Directed by Eugenio Mira

[b]Marjorie [on the phone]: What I mean is, what is the piano’s significance to you?
Tom: What do you mean?
Marjorie: “La Cinquette”. The unplayable piece, right? “La Cinquette”. Am I mispronouncing it? I mean, you have a history with this piece. Five years ago, at the Flannery…
Tom: That didn’t really work out.
Marjorie: Right. So my question is this. You return to the stage after all these years of silence. Are you nervous about playing the same piano? Are you nervous about choking again?
Tom: Choking?
Marjorie: Do you see this as your last chance at glorious redemption, your one shot to forever…?
Tom: Stop! Sorry. Look…I play piano. This is just another gig, nothing else.

Tom: Do you really think Patrick would want me playing his precious piano again? The great screw-up?
Reisinger: What?
Patrick. He’d be embarrassed.
Reisinger: Tom…
Tom: Come on, I always flubbed notes. Tom Selznick, the new Rachmaninoff…if only he didn’t choke.
Reisinger: Tommy, listen to me. Patrick would be proud of you.
Tom: No. I’m gonna screw up, Norman. I know it.
Reisinger: You can’t play charts like these without fudging a note here and there. So what? If you’re going to start playing “carefully”, I’ll just go get the wine and cheese. Do you want to be the thousandth guy to give me a respectable Bach? Because you can keep that. I don’t need respectable. If you’re going to play music this dense, you’re going to hit a wrong note. And they won’t know. They never do.

Clem [via earpiece]: Now head to the left side of the stage. Now. In front of you. The top step.
Tom: I see it.
Clem: Look closely. Keep looking. That’s the entry wound of a Rochester .47 automatic with scope laser aim and silencer. The most precise weapon on the market. And the quietest. Now you know the meaning of “stage-fright”.

Clem [via earpiece]: Okay. Here are the rules. I can see and hear everything you do. Call for help and I will hear it. Leave the stage and I will see it. Get a cop or a guard involved, I will know it. If you do any of these things, your wife will die. If you play a wrong note, you will no longer be of any use to me and you will die.

Clem [via earpiece]: You think you can bargain with me? You’re not in control, Tom. The audience is control. And right now, I’m your audience.

Tom: Why? Why did you kill him?
Clem [via earpiece]: You’ve never seen a dead body before, have you? How did you think you could be a great artist with so little life experience? I’ve taught you in a way Patrick never could, which means you’re ready.
Tom: What?
Clem: “La Cinquette”. Remember it?
Tom: What about it?
Clem: “The Unplayable Piece”. Except there are a few people who can play it. Am I right? Who can move their fingers that fast and spread them that wide. One of them died last summer. The other is you.

Clem [via earpiece]: I think the mark of a great artist is curiosity. You’re striking me as a mediocre artist. Don’t you know everybody has a price?
Tom: What’s yours?
Clem: Imagine it. Imagine a value. Now double it.
Tom: I can’t.
Clem: Exactly. You can’t, because you don’t have imagination. Because you make your living playing stuff other people write. That’s what you’re good at. That’s your talent. Leave the imagination to the real authors, the real artists.
Tom: You’re just a petty thief.
Clem: And you’re just a puppet. A genius puppet, but just a puppet.

Clem [via earpiece]: You sniveling little piece of shit! Are you listening to me, Tom? You knew that was the wrong note. You knew it!
Tom: Yes. But the audience didn’t.
Clem: What the hell do you mean?
Tom: They never do.

Tom [to Emma]: I need to finish this.[/b]

He’s a twisted fuck but the thug he’s tracking down is more twisted still. So you have to make up your own mind whether to root for him.

Think Keyser Soze.

And in this world many things are rationalized by insisting it’s nothing personal. It’s just “business”. Only this time it is anything but.

Revenge. It’s always sweet. Unless you manage somehow to convince yourself that it’s not. Maybe through God. But this sort of film will always appeal to folks who themselves long to inflict revenge on those who did them wrong. Only they don’t have the guts. Or they aren’t willing to deal with the consequences. And that’s most of us, right? So, scripted [vicarious] revenge is always better than nothing.

Here the hero sets out to avenge his dog. Which for some makes the motive all that more powerful. And this dog is particularly special to him.

But then so is the car the thug stole.

And it’s the Russians again. Really, it seems that [of late] every time the script calls for especially vicious thugs, it’s the fucking Russians.

Anyway, see if you can spot “the code”.

IMDb

[b]Director Chad Stahelski was Keanu Reeves’ stunt double in The Matrix movies.

Although she’s credited in the supporting cast, Bridget Moynahan, who plays John Wick’s wife, has only 8 seconds of screen time.

John Wick kills 77 people.[/b]

At least.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wick_(film
trailer: youtu.be/bvaftiAu7mw

JOHN WICK [2014]
Directed by Chad Stahelski, David Leitch

[b]Marcus: How are you holding up?
John: I keep asking, “why her”?
Marcus: There’s no rhyme or reason to this life. It’s days like today scattered among the rest.
John: Are you sure?

Helen [in a note to John after her death]: John, I’m sorry I can’t be there for you. You still need to something…someone to love. So start with this… because the car doesn’t count. I love you, John. This illness has loomed over us for a long time. And now that I’ve found my peace…find yours’. [/b]

Meet the dog. Though not for long. The next day its dead.

[b]John: Is it here?
Aurelio: It was. Iosef Tarasov nicked it.
John: Viggo’s Son?
Aurelio: Yeah.

Viggo [on phone]: I heard you struck my son.
Aureilo: Yes, sir, I did.
Viggo: And may I ask why?
Aureilo: Yeah, well, because he stole John Wick’s car, sir, and, uh, killed his dog.
Viggo [after a pause]: Oh.

Viggo: It’s not what you did, Son, that angers me so… It’s who you did it to.
Iosef: Who?.. That fucking nobody?
Viggo: That “fuckin nobody” is John Wick!

Viggo: Wick was once an associate of ours. We call him … Baba Yaiga
Isoef: “The Boogeyman”?
Viggo: Well, John wasn’t exactly “The Boogeyman”. He was the one you sent to kill the fuckin’ Boogeyman.
Isoef: Oh.
Viggo: John is a man of focus. Commitment. Sheer will. Something you know very little about. I once saw him kill three men in a bar…with a pencil. With a fuckin’ pencil.

Jimmy [the cop]: Evening, John.
John: Evening, Jimmy. Noise complaint?
Jimmy: Noise complaint.
[he looks in the door at a body sprawled out on the floor]
Jimmy: You, uh, working again?
John: No, just sorting some stuff out.
Jimmy: Oh, well, I’ll leave you be then. G’night, John.
John: G’night, Jimmy

John [on the phone]: This is Wick. Yeah, John Wick. I’d like to make a dinner reservation for 12.

Charlie [from “waste disposal”]: Good to see you, John.
John: Charlie.
Charlie: You look good. And here I feared you’d left this all behind.

Winston: Now, as I recall, weren’t you the one tasked to dole out the beatings, not to receive them?
John: Rusty, I guess.

Winston: I want to ask you this. Have you returned to the fold?
John: Just visiting.
Winston: Have you thought this through? I mean chewed it down to the bone? You got out once. If you dip so much as a pinky back into this pond, you may well find something reaches out, and drags you back into its depths.

John: I’m retired.
Addy: Not if you’re drinking here you’re not.

John [with a gun at Francis’ head]: Hello, Francis.
Francis: Mr. Wick.
John: You’ve lost weight.
Francis: Over sixty pounds.
John: Yeah? Impressive.
Francis: Are you here on business, sir?
John: Afraid so, Francis.
[pause]
John: Why don’t you take the night off?
Francis: Thank you, sir.

John: Hey Harry? You keen on earning a coin?
Harry: Baby-sitting the sleeping one? Catch and release?
John: Catch and release.

Viggo: I’ll say this John…they sure as fuck broke the mold with you.

Viggo: John Wick. Baba Yaiga! It was just a fucking car…just a fuckin’ dog!
John: Just a dog? Viggo?
Viggo: Yeah.
John: When Helen died, I lost everything. Until that dog arrived on my doorstep. A final gift from my wife. That moment I received some semblance of hope, an opportunity to grieve unalone. Your son stole that from me…YOUR SON TOOK THAT FROM ME!! People keep asking me if I am back. And I really haven’t had an answer. But now, yeah, I’m thinkin’ I’m back! So, you can either hand over your son, or you can die screaming along side him!!!

Viggo: What happened, John?..We’re professionals…Civilized.
John: Do I look civilized to you? [/b]

One way or another every year is “a most violent year” for someone. Even now, 2015 is becoming “a most violent year” for any number of folks. On the other hand, when your life is unfolding in the general vicinity of the criminal element, there may be so many violent years that pinning one down might well be impossible.

On the other hand, this film focuses less on the violence itself and more on the manner in which folks who live in a world where violence can erupt at any time go about the business of living their lives never really quite knowing what is around the next corner. Some, of course, will actually find this sort of thing exciting; while others, well, they won’t.

Then there are those folks who try to forge a path between the straight and narrow and the abyss. But there will always be only so much they have control over it – so the tug of war can become particularly fierce. To be or not to be corrupt. That is the question.

And then the part that revolves around “the law”. Only that tends to be equally problematic.

Bottom line: What’s legal and what’s not? What’s moral and what’s not? Or, more to the point, how do the two intersect out in the real world? The usual in other words. The ethics of ambiguity. Someone wrote a book about that as I recall.

And it is always – always – about the fucking money. And don’t trust nobody.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Most_Violent_Year
trailer: youtu.be/o87gG7ZlEAg

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR [2014]
Written and directed by J.C. Chandor

[b]Anna: Don’t do anything stupid.
Abel: We don’t have any more money so what more could I possibly do?

Joseph: I want you to know this up front. I am a very fair man but I believe in honoring contracts. You will fulfill your end of this contract and the property is yours. If you can’t we will keep your money and will sell it to your competitor who has been chasing us almost as badly as you have. I like you, but know that the only reason I am choosing you is because of the favorable terms of this contract. So this is business… and when you sign this…
Abel: I understand.
Joseph: Well then, let’s see this money, and then I will sign these papers.[/b]

This is the part that is all above aboard. Well, if you’re a capitalist. Mazel tov.

Anna: Do you want me to speak to my brother about this?
Abel: No…don’t talk to him or your father.
Anna: This can’t continue.
Abel: It won’t.
Anna: It will if we don’t do something.
Abel: I’m meeting with the D.A. in the morning.
Anna: Oh, fuck the D.A. He’s more interested in coming after us than helping us. It’s not fair to your drivers. You’re at war here.
Abel: No we are not.
Anna: Really… because they are.
Abel: Well, Im not.

The plot in a nutshell:

[b]Abel: My people are at risk just driving around in this city, just trying to do their jobs. And I… I have done everything you have asked of me. It’s been two years since you first started investigating my company and I have spent thousands of dollars hiring lawyers for this and that to provide you with every piece of information your office has requested. And I expect that you have been asking the same from my competitors. So with all this information that you have gained…We are just asking if you have any idea who has been doing this to us?
DA: I don’t. I understand your frustration. And although everyone else seems to have given up and left this city for dead, I haven’t. And as you know we have been investigating industry-wide corruption in your business that seems to have been going on for years. fact is that the only person who could do anything with 8000 gallons of heating oil in a matter of minutes after stealing a truck is someone from within that industry. And almost certainly someone with local storage capacity. So you’re right. That means you all are stealing from each other. Which is, as far as I can tell, just a refreshing new take on what you’ve been doing to your customers and fellow taxpayers for the last fifteen years.

Abel: What is that?
Anna: A gun… It’s a gun Abel.
Abel: Where did you get it?
Anna: Your youngest daughter found it in the bushes outside our front door. She was playing with it. It’s loaded… with the safety off. Those weren’t kids looking to rip off our TV Abel, that was a fucking goon with a loaded gun looking in our windows! What the hell is going on here?
Abel: I’ll take care of this.
Anna: What does that mean you will take care of it. This isn’t a brick through our car window or some other cute little warning that I’ve put up with in the past. This is your daughter playing with a loaded gun!
Abel: I know what it is! Let me deal with this.
Anna: You better. Because you won’t like what’s going to happen once I start getting involved.

Andrew [to Abel]: It’s not good… It’s bad. It’s a fourteen count indictment. Most of it is crap. But the first three counts are where we start to have real issues. They know what’s going on in this industry. They say we are rigging scales and under-reporting income. We don’t know what they have or how they got it. But no matter how they got it, it’s a problem.

Andrew [to Anna and Abel]: And there is one other thing. The bank…We need to sit down with them immediately. I set a dinner. We need you both there to lay everything out and be totally upfront. This shouldn’t be a problem. Lord knows they’ve given money to bigger crooks than us.

Andrew: Do you want to go for a walk? Come on.
Abel: Are you really serious …this is what it’s come to, we have to walk around outside like we’re fucking gangsters?
Andrew: I am, and it is.

Abel [to Ian from the bank]: When it feels scary to jump, that is exactly when you jump, otherwise you end up staying in the same place your whole life, and that I can’t do.

Abel: What’s with the gun?
Anna: I told you. I wasn’t gonna continue to stand around and let these people come and get me and my children. Unlike you, who seems to be completely comfortable just standing around like some fucking pussy, I decided to do something about it.

Abel: You must be a bigger fucking idiot than I even thought. You are trying to protect your children? Protect them? Do you have any idea what happens if you get caught using this gun? You dress yourself up in these fancy clothes, and look at you here in your mansion. I’ve given you everything you could possibly want but you still can’t stop thinking like the Brooklyn corner-store gangster’s daughter that you are.
Anna: You’ve given me? You? Are you delusional? Do you even understand how ridiculous that makes you sound?

Anna: This is one probably you’re gonna regret.
DA: Excuse me?
Anna: My husband’s an honorable man. We are not who you think we are.
DA: I think I knew your father.
Anna: Good for you. My husband is not my father. Not even close. So if I were you, I would start treating us with a little more respect or I guarantee he will make it his mission in life to ruin you.
[the DA turns his head and grins sarcastically]
Anna: This was very disrespectful. And you’re not going to find a fucking thing.

Julian: I feel…vulnerable.
Abel: Good…because you are vulnerable. We all are.

Abel: I spent my whole life trying not to become a gangster…
Anna: I know.
Abel: And now on the biggest deal in my career they’re gonna own me.

Abel: What is this?
Anna: It’s a bank account.
Abel: Whose?
Anna: Ours.
Abel: How much is in it?
Anna: A lot.
Abel: What does that mean?
Anna: It means you could replace Peter’s money and get him out of the deal.
Abel: Where did it come from?
Anna: Abel…
Abel: Where did it come from? Anna…

Abel: Is it clean?
Anna: What does that mean?
Abel: It means if you walked into the office of the people who have been trying to put us in jail right now and slapped a check from that account down on their desk would it push me further into hell or help to get me out?
Anna: It’s as clean as every other dollar we’ve ever made.
Abel: Well that’s a fucking bullshit answer!

Abel: I’ll get it done. And it won’t be as a cheat.
Anna: Oh you are too much. You’ve been walking around your whole life like this all happened because of your hard work, good luck, and charm. Mr. Fucking American Dream. Well this is America but it’s not a dream, and that wasn’t good luck helping you out all those years…IT WAS ME! Doing the things you didn’t want to know about…
Abel: You stole from me!
Anna: Oh…You have always been very good about not letting your ego get in the way of business. Don’t start now just because it’s me.

Abel [to Julian]: You’re looking backwards. Look forwards. It’s the only thing you can control.

Abel: You should know that I have always taken the path that is most right. The result is never in question for me. Just what path do you take to get there, and there is always one that is most right. And that is what this is.
DA: I hope so. [/b]

So I watched this movie yesterday. I liked the premise but it wasn’t produced very well, in my opinion. Pretty fucked up situation. Some bourgeoise cult leads a generations old tradition of abducting women and forcing them to fight to the death. If they don’t, one of their family members gets whacked. The final winner gets to walk. The tournament is symbolic of the frenzied maenads, those crazy bitches that followed dionysus around.

Fun fact; this myth was probably one of the first manifestations of feminism; greek women were tired of being treated like shit, and this social phenomena was transformed into a symbolic mythos by the philosophers, playwrights and poets. Angry greek housewives get to be what they are not in reality; man eating power mongers. Same goes for the satyrs; this was a symbolic manifestation of sexually repressed greek men. For every mythological character or creature, there is an underlying social phenomena that is being symbolically and metaphorically expressed.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id29tVGhbFA[/youtube]

In a considerably more dramatic manner, this is also the story of my own trajectory in and out of Vietnam. I too came from a family and a community that wrapped itself tight in the flag. Politically conservative and all gung-ho about the military and American involvement in Vietnam, being a soldier was something that all honorable American citizens were expected to embrace wholeheartedly. And while the war in Vietnam was not exactly the equivalent of WW2, neither was it understood in the context of the war economy or the military industrial complex.

Not where I grew up.

But then, by the time that I got back, I had a profoundly different political narrative from which to view both the war and the government that sent me over there. It just took Ron Kovic a little longer to see the light.

Of course he had to view it from a wheelchair. And that can make all the difference in the world.

And once again this is a film that clearly shows how the life that you live can suck you down into a frame of mind that only makes sense because of that life itself. The existential parameters of “I” are marbled through and through the trajectory of this man. And then it is only a matter of sifting and then shifting through all the entangled variables and trying to understand how one might yank himself up out of them…trying to grapple with a point of view that is more reflective of the way things really are.

IMDb

[b]The real Ron Kovic gave Tom Cruise his Bronze Star for his performance in this movie.

Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise both expressed interest in using a nerve agent to cause genuine paralysis in Cruise’s legs, but they were unable to find a substance that was safe enough to guarantee no permanent damage.

The film’s anti-war message meant that Universal were very nervous about its box office chances so they kept the budget low. To keep costs down, most of the cast didn’t receive an upfront salary.

A copy of “Johnny Got His Gun,” a popular anti-war novel about WW1, is visible on Ron’s hospital bed when he learns he will never walk again. In the novel, the main character is a soldier who is mutilated beyond recognition in a war; he has lost both of his arms and legs as well as his sight and hearing.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_on_t … July_(film
trailer: youtu.be/t8NR6n1nRMI

BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY [1989]
Written in part and directed by Oliver Stone

[b]Ron [voiceover]: It was a long time ago. Sometimes I can still hear their voices across Sally’s woods. There was Billy, Steve, Tommy, and the tall kid from down the street… Joey. Yeah, it was Joey Walsh. My best friend was Timmy Burns who lived two blocks away from me. We turned the woods into a battlefield and dreamed that someday we would become men.

Mrs. Kovic: Your brother’s a hard worker, Tommy, 'cause he wants to be the best. Win or lose… in school, in sports, in life… as long as you do your best, that’s what matters to God.

Timmy: My brother’s at school at Adelphi. He said there will be a war in…what is it?
Ron: Vietnam.
Timmy: The Marines will be the first in, and it won’t last long. So if we don’t sign up
soon, we’ll miss it.
Ron: I’ve already decided. I’m going in. I’m going in now.
Stevie: You’re crazy.
Ron: Our dads got to go to WWII. This is our chance to be part of history.
Timmy: Yeah, just like our dads.

Ron: What do you think, Dad, about that?
Father: I don’t know. that’s a long way to go to fight a war. They fought the French and the Japanese for 30 years. Can they be weeded out?
Ron: Anything that lives in a cave can be weeded out.
Father: I just hope they send you to Europe or Korea or…
Ron: They can’t.
Father: …Someplace safe.
Ron: Every Marine has a tour of duty there. It’s not like the Army. What’s wrong with you? You served. Uncle Bob served.
Father: I know, Ronnie. I know.
Ron: Remember what President Kennedy said? There won’t be an America anymore unless people are willing to sacrifice. I love my country.
Father: I know.
Mother: And you’re right, Ronnie. You’re doing the right thing. Communism has to be stopped. It’s God’s will you go. We’re proud of you. Be careful, that’s all.
Ron: Don’t you know what being a Marine means to me, Dad? Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to serve my country, And I want to go. I want to go to Vietnam, and I’ll die there if I have to.

Chaplain: How are you?
Ron [weakly]: Tell them - they have to operate on me. There’s something wrong with me.
Chaplain: The doctors are real busy right now. There’s a lot of wounded here today. No time for anything except trying to stay alive, so you got to try and stay alive, okay? You hear me? Try and stay alive.
[pause]
Chaplain: I’ve come to give you your last rites. Are you ready?
Ron [weakly]: Yeah.
Chaplain: I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. You brught nothing into this world, and it is certain that you will take nothing out of it. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Ron: This place is a fuckin’ slum!
Marvin: You want out of here, man? Fine. We take that leg of yours, and we can get you out of here in two weeks!
Ron: I want my leg.
Marvin: Why?
Ron: I want my leg!
Marvin: Why? You can’t feel it no how!
Ron (incredulous and angry): It’s my leg! I want my leg, you understand? Can’t you understand that? All’s I’m sayin’ is that I want to be treated like a human being! I fought for my country! I am a Vietnam veteran! I fought for my country!
Patient: Shut the fuck up!
Ron: And I think that I deserve to be treated… decent!

Doctor: We want to make one thing very clear to you, Ron. The possibility of your ever walking again is minimal… almost impossible. You’re a T6 - paralyzed from the mid-chest down. Probably… you’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Ron: Well, doctor…
Doctor: Hmm?
Ron: Doctor, will I ever be able to - to have children?
Doctor: No.
[pause]
Doctor: No, but we have a good psychologist. He’s helped a lot of people.
Ron: I’ll walk again.
Doctor: No you won’t…
Ron: No, I know I’ll walk again!
Doctor: No, let me tell you something, Ron. You will NEVER walk again.

Ron: They burned the flag and they demonstrated against us; it’s on the cover of the paper today. They have no respect. They have no idea what’s going on over there, Mom - the men that are sacrificing their lives. People are dying every day over there, and nobody back here even seems to care. It’s a bunch of goddamn shit if you ask me!
Mrs. Kovic: Ronnie, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain - not in front of the children. I agree with everything you say!
Ron: I served my country - and they just want to take from it - just take, take! Love it or leave it, that’s what I think.

Ron: When I was in the hospital, I thought, yeah - yeah, this makes sense.
Timmy: What makes sense?
Ron: Because I failed, Timmy.
Timmy: What are you talking about?
Ron: Because I - I killed some - people; I made some terrible - mistakes!
Timmy: Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ronnie, we all made mistakes. I mean, you - you had no choice. That’s something that those goddamn pansy demonstrators ain’t never gonna understand! Now, you don’t even have to talk about it, Ronnie; I mean, it was insane over there! It was crazy!
Ron: Sometimes I wish, I wish I’d - The first time I got hit, I was shot in the foot. I could have laid down, I mean - who gives a fuck now if I was a hero or not? I was paralyzed, castrated that day; why? It was all so - stupid! I’d have my dick and my balls now, and some days, Timmy - some days I think I’d give everything I believe in - everything I got, all my values, just to have my body back again, just to be whole again. But I’m not whole; I never will be, and that’s - that’s the way it is, isn’t it?
Timmy: For Christ’s sake, Ronnie, it’s your birthday. You’re alive. You made it! Smile.

Steve: You could start out as a cashier… and then work your way up to becoming a manager of one of these places - just like your dad.
Ron: I get $1700 a month from the government. I think I’m just going to lay low, and look around…
Steve [dismissively]: That’s charity money, Ronnie; this isn’t.
Ron Charity?
Steve: All I’m saying is that you got to - you got to put the war behind you, you know; you got to forget about this chair you’re in!
Ron: Sometimes, Stevie, I think people, they know you’re back from Vietnam, and their face - changes: the eyes, the voice, the way they look at you, you know.
Steve: I know what you mean, Ronnie, but people here - they don’t give a shit about the war! Yeah! To them it’s just a million miles away. It’s all bullshit, anyway. I mean, the government sold us a bill of goods and we bought it, and got the shit kicked out of us, and for what, huh?
Ron: What do you mean, “we,” Stevie? You were in college, man.
Steve [shrugs]: You bought that Communist bullshit, Ronnie. Yeah, they were going to take over the world, you remember that? Fenelli, you, Walsh - the whole town was devastated.
[pause]
Steve: For what? For lies, for bullshit lies?

Mrs. Kovic: Don’t say penis in this house!
Ron: Penis! Penis! Big fucking erect penis, Mom!

Ron We went to Vietnam to stop communism!..We shell women and children!
Mrs. Kovic: You didn’t shoot women and children! What are you saying?
Ron: That was the war, communism, the incidious evil! They told us to go.
Mrs. Kovic: Yes, yes that’s what they told us.
Ron: Thou shalt not kill, Mom. Thou shalt not kill women and children! Thou shalt not kill! Remember? Isn’t that what you taught us? Isn’t that what they taught us?
Mrs. Kovic: Stop it! Stop it!

Ron: Am I good? Hey…
[drags himself forward]
Ron: Am I good?
Willie: Man, you’re one crazy Marine, Kovic - so gung-ho and everything, but you don’t know shit about what’s really happenin’ in this country.
Ron: Fuck you, Willie.
Willie: I’m serious man. It ain’t about burnin’ the flag and Vietnam, man. While we fight for rights over there, we ain’t got no rights at home. It’s about Detroit and Newark, man. It’s about racism, man.
Ron: Is that right?
Willie: Because you can’t get no job at home. Vietnam is a white man’s war, a rich man’s war.
Ron (contemptuously): Where’s my money?
Willie: I’m serious, man, you gotta read some books. There’s a revolution going on, Kovic. Brothers are gettin’ it together, and if you ain’t part of the solution, man, then you’re part of the problem. [/b]

Dystopia and the class struggle – on a train? The end of the line for the human race and absolutely nothing has changed: some are the masters and some are the slaves. And then [of course] we have to decide which side we are on.

How dystopian? Well, Curtis is reduced down to eating babies. In part because they taste better. And he’s the hero.

Well, if you choose his side. But trust me: that get’s tricky.

Here one can readily image how a dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, law of the jungle mentality makes sense. That’s really what it comes down to. The ruling class of course will rationalize the way things are by insisting it is the way they were always [and only] meant to be. God’s will, they might call it.

If nothing else, we get to imagine that the “global warming” folks are right and to confront one possible scenario for “the future”. Oh, and it also allows us to think back when there really was a class struggle in this world.

Unfortunately, this is basically just a surreal caricature of the class struggle rooted in the historical reality of capitalism. It’s a world where the few live in unimaginable squalor at the back of the train while the many live in unimaginable splendor in the front. Nothing at all like the real world. And if there is anything in the way of a middle class, I missed it. And it has always been the existence of the middle class that sustained “the system” from one crisis to the next. Call this, say, the post-modern class struggle.

And talk about co-opting “the revolution”!

Look for the part about political economy. Dasein and conflicting goods? Not so much.

As for the ending: Extinction event. The new beginning. Adam [black], Eve [Korean]. And the polar bear? Here’s one take on it: vulture.com/2014/07/snowpiec … ssion.html

IMDb

[b]Chris Evans thought the scene where he slips on a fish was ridiculous. Joon-ho Bong had to persuade him that it is one of his twists.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Dustin Hoffman auditioned for the film.

The protein block was made of sea weeds and sugar. Jamie Bell hated it. Tilda Swinton liked it.

The markings on the engine, a circle with a narrow S on it represent the yin/yang, the same relationship between the front and the back of the train. The front can’t survive without the children of the back, and the back can’t survive without the food from the front, a “perfect” symbiotic relationship.

Joon-ho Bong had reservations about casting Chris Evans in the lead role because of his muscular physique. He felt that as a resident of the extremely poverty-stricken tail section, Curtis should not be especially physically fit. Costuming and careful camera angles kept Evans’ physique from showing.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer
trailer: youtu.be/nX5PwfEMBM0

SNOWPIERCER [2013]
Written in part and directed by Joon-ho Bong

[b]Male Reporter: Good morning. On this day, July 1st, 2014, at this hour, 0600, we are at the first airport in the world…
Female Reporter: The topic of so much controversy over the past seven years has continued development. Protests from environmental groups and a number of developing countries continue. But in accordance with…
Male Reporter: It had been claimed that CW7 is the answer to global warning. And we are witnessing it…
Female Reporter: Leaders argue that global warming can no longer be ignored. Today, 79 countries will begin dispersing CW7 into the upper layers of the atmosphere.
Male Reporter: …In the upper layers of the atmosphere, and surprisingly bring down the average global temperature to the finest levels. It is just a day away that…
Female Reporter: …upper layers of the atmosphere. According to scientists, the artificial cooling substance, CW7, will succeed in bringing average global temperatures down to manageable levels, as the revolutionary solution to mankind’s warming of the planet.

Title card: Soon after dispersing CW-7 the world frooze and all life became extinct. The precious few who boarded the rattling Ark are humanity’s last survivors.

Edgar: Those bastards in the Front Section think they own us. Eating steak dinners and listening to string quartets and that.
Curtis: We’ll be different when we get there.

Gilliam: Edgar just wants to help, you know. He thinks the world of you.
Curtis: He shouldn’t worship me the way he does. I’m not who he thinks I am.
Gilliam: Few of us ever are.

Curtis: We control the engine, we control the world. Without that, we have nothing. All past revolutions failed because they couldn’t take the engine.
Gilliam: What you saying?
Curtis: This time, we take the engine.
Gilliam: Then what?
Curtis: We kill him.

Mason [holding up a shjoe]: This is not a shoe. This is disorder. This is size ten chaos. This - see this - this is death. In this locomotive we call home, there is one thing that between our warm hearts and the bitter cold. Clothing? Shields? No! Order! Order is the barrier that holds back the frozen death. We must all of us on this train of life remain in our allotted station. We must each of us occupy our preordained particular position. Would you wear a shoe on your head? Of course you wouldn’t wear a shoe on your head. A shoe doesn’t belong on your head. A shoe belongs on your foot. A hat belongs on your head. I am a hat. You are a shoe. I belong on the head. You belong on the foot. Yes? So it is. In the beginning, order was proscribed by your ticket: First Class, Economy, and freeloaders like you. Eternal order is prescribed by the sacred engine: all things flow from the sacred engine, all things in their place, all passengers in their section, all water flowing. all heat rising, pays homage to the sacred engine, in its own particular preordained position. So it is. Now, as in the beginning, I belong to the front. You belong to the tail. When the foot seeks the place of the head, the sacred line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe. [/b]

All reactionary objectivists subscribe to one or another rendition of this. Oh, and see if you can spot Tilda Swinton here.

[b]Tanya: Jesus, Marboro Lights?

Mason [to Curtis]: My friend, you suffer from the misplaced optimism of the doomed.

Curtis [to Namgoong Minsoo]: You know what I hate about myself? I know what people taste like. I know that babies taste the best.

Wilford: Curtis, everyone has their preordained position, and everyone is in their place except you.
Curtis: That’s what people in the best place say to the people in the worst place. [/b]

Then things really get weird.

[b]Wilford [to Curtis]: I believe it is easier for people to survive on this train if they have some level of insanity. As Gilliam well understood, you need to maintain a proper balance of anxiety and fear and chaos and horror in order to keep life going. And if we don’t have that, we need to invent it. In that sense, the Great Curtis Revolution you invented was truly a masterpiece.

Wlford: Look, Curtis. Beyond that gate. Section after section precisely where they’ve always been and where they’ll always be all adding up to what? The train. And now, the perfectly correct number of human beings all in their proper places all adding up to what?
Humanity. The train is the world, we the humanity. And now you have the sacred responsibility to lead all of humanity. Without you, Curtis, humanity will cease to exist. You’ve seen what people do without leadership. They devour one another.[/b]

Until that day, however, we will have to be content with the global economy.

Wilford: Nice…

Revenge. It comes in all shapes and sizes cinematically, but you either crave it or you don’t. And you either crave it or you don’t depending in part on the extent to which you are able to actually execute your own. Which is to say that, for most of us, vicariously is better than nothing.

On the other hand, revenge is not exactly the point here. But then what exactly the point is may never be pinned down.

Here is the director’s take on it: denofgeek.us/movies/lucy/237 … luc-besson

It’s as though he started out to make another 2001: A Space Odyssey and in it reconfigured into Transformers instead. A really bizarre film.

Anyway, it’s a jungle out there. And the part about “civilization” has always only ever been a facade. One minute you’re on your way home to study and the next thing you know you’re a drug mule for South Korean gangsters.

This is one of those films in which the plot is absurd – really absurd – and the science is skewed but [for some of us] that doesn’t make any difference. It stimulates something in us – above the neck, below the waist. It is what it is and you are who you are and it clicks or it doesn’t. You might think of it as Through The Wormhole meets Marvel Comics by way of the Twilight Zone.

IMDb

[b]The script took 9 years to make.

In an interview on 08/03/2014 (evening news on France 2), Luc Besson said that this project took 10 years to become a reality. Also, he admitted that he knew that some scientific assumptions were erroneous, e.g. that humans use only 10% of their brain. Nonetheless, he said that “[such assumption] would be a great start for a sci-fi movie”.

The human-looking ape seen in some scenes is Australopithecus afarensis, who represents the ‘missing link’ between apes and humans, nicknamed ‘Lucy’ after John Lennon’s song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” She lived 3.2 million years ago and is the earliest known hominid to walk upright like humans. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/MVt32qoyhi0

LUCY [2014]
Written and directed by Luc Besson

[b]Lucy [narrating]: Life was given to us a billion years ago. What have we done with it?

Professor Norman [lecturing]: If life starts approximately a billion years ago, we will have to wait 400,000 years to see the aberration of the first nerve cells. This is where life as we know it begins.

Professor Norman [lecturing]: Animal life on Earth goes back millions of years. Yet most species only use 3 to 5% of its cerebal capacity. But it isn’t until we reached human beings at the top of the animal chain that we finally see a species use more of its cerebral capacity. 10% might not seem like much, but it’s a lot if you look at all we’ve done with it.
[cut to first flight, fighter jets, road way, armies, robots, stock market, rockets, satellite]

Professor Norman [lecturing]: We humans are more concerned with having than with being.

Professor Norman [lecturing]: For primitive beings like us, life seems to have only one single purpose: gaining time. And it is going through time that seems to be also the only real purpose of each of the cells in our bodies. To achieve that aim, the mass of the cells that make up earthworms and human beings has only two solutions. Be immortal, or to reproduce. If its habitat is not sufficiently favorable or nurturing, the cell will choose immortality. In other words, self-sufficiency and self-management. On the other hand, if the habitat is favorable, they will choose to reproduce. That way, when they die, they hand down essential information and knowledge to the next cell. Which hands it down to the next cell and so on. Thus knowledge and learning are handed down through time.

Professor Norman [lecturing]: 100 billion neurons per human, of which only 15% are activated. There are more connections in the human body than there are stars in the galaxy. We possess a gigantic network of information to which we have almost no access.

Lucy [on the phone]: Mom, I feel everything.
Mom: What do you mean, Sweetie?
Lucy: Space, the air, the vibrations, the people, the gravity…I can feel the rotation of the earth. I can feel my brain. The deepest parts of my memories.

Lucy: How much is left?
Doctor: Five hundred grams.
Lucy: And how long will it take my body to eliminate the rest of it?
Doctor: To answer that, I need to know what it is. May I?
Lucy: Go ahead.
[the doctor starts to stitch her up]
Lucy: CPH4.
[the doctor gives her a surprised look]
Lucy: Tell me about it.
Doctor: Pregnant women manufacture CPH4 in the sixth week of pregnancy, in tiny quantities. For a baby, it packs the power of an atomic bomb. It’s what gives the fetus the necessary energy to form all the bones in its body. I’d heard that they tried to make a synthetic version of it. Didn’t realize that they’d succeeded. If it really is CPH4, in this quantity, I’m amazed you’re still alive.
Lucy: Not for long.

Lucy [to Jang]: It’s funny, I used to be so concerned with who I was and what I wanted to be and, now that I have access to the furthest reaches of my brain, I see things clearly and realize that what makes us us, it’s primitive. They’re all obstacles. Does that make any sense? Like this pain you’re experiencing, it’s blocking you from understanding. All you know now is pain, that’s all you know, pain. Where are the others? The others carrying the drugs, I need the rest of it. For medicinal purposes.

Lucy [on phone]: I don’t feel pain. Fear. Desire. It’s like all things that make us human are fading away. It’s like the less human I feel all this knowledge about everything; quantum physics, applied mathematics, the infinite capacity of a cell’s nucleus. They’re all exploding inside my brain, all these knowledge. I don’t know what to do with it.
Professor Norman: If you’re asking me what to do…? You know…if you think about the very nature of life. I mean, from the very beginning. The development of the first cell divided into two cells. This whole purpose of life has been to pass on what was learned. There is no higher purpose. So, if you’re asking me what to do with all this knowledge you’re accumulating, I’d say, pass it on. Just like any simple cell going through time.
Lucy: Time. Yes, of course. I’ll be at your door in twelve hours.

Pierre Del Rio [to Lucy racing through traffic]: Do you always drive like this?
Lucy: I’ve never driven before.

Professor: How did you manage to access all these information?
Lucy: Electrical impulses. Every cell knows and talks to every other cell. They exchange a thousand bits of information between them per second. Cells group together, forming a giant web of communication which in turn forms matter. Cells get together, take on one form. Deform. Reform. makes no difference, it’s all the same.
[she makes her hand form webs before turning it back to normal]
Lucy: Humans consider themselves unique, so they rooted their whole theory of existence on their uniqueness. ‘One’ is their unit of measure, but it’s not. All social systems we put into place are a mere sketch. One plus one equals two, that’s all we’ve learned. But one plus one has never equaled two. They are in fact no numbers and no letters. We’ve codified our existence to bring it down to human size to make it comprehensible. We’ve created a scale so that we can forget its unfathomable scale.

Professor Norman: But if humans are not the unit of measure, and the world isn’t governed by mathematical laws, what governs all that?
Lucy: Form a car speeding down the road.
[Lucy shows them a visual footage of car going down a road]
Lucy: Speed up the image infinitely, then the car disappears. So what proof do we have of its existence? Time gives legitimacy to its existence. Time is the only true unit of measure. It gives proof to the existence of matter. Without time, we don’t exist.
Professor Norman: Time is unity.

Professor Norman: All these knowledge, Lucy. I’m not even sure that mankind is ready for it. We’re so driven by power and profit. Given man’s nature, it might bring us only instability and chaos.
Lucy: Ignorance brings chaos, not knowledge.[/b]

If you are going to glorify both war and the warriors who fight them, there is nothing quite like making the enemy an alien. Literally. Something from outer space. No affiliation with the Commies. Or the Nazis. Or the Islamic jihahists. Who the fuck wouldn’t embrace slaughtering actual aliens hell-bent on taking over the whole fucking planet?

And then of course once the military and warriors and war itself have been glorified you can insinuate the narrative into any conflict with any enemy.

On the other hand, there was Hitler.

Indeed, here one might go so far as to worship the ubermen. And now of course the uberwomen. Though they are still very few and very far between. With a smattering of blacks. The usual in other words.

And, if nothing else, “warriors” like Tom Cruise can at least brag that he did his own stunts. Most of them anyway. And doesn’t he start out as but one of the chicken shit sheep?

Of course once it shifts from Aliens to Groundhog Day it shifts from science-fiction to pure fantasy. La la Land. That either ruins it for you or it doesn’t. Still, if nothing else you can use the plot and the alien technology to engender a discussion about the mystery that is time. Controlling it for example. And what that tells us about, say, free will?

Then again, the occasional humor in the script is dependent on the bits about time. Just like in Groundhog Day.

Live. Die. Repeat. Oh, and look for the full metal bitch. One of the boys. And then some.

IMDb

[b]While filming the car chase scene which includes a mini-van, Emily Blunt was instructed to drive fast and then to take a right hand turn so that the van would shake. However, Blunt missed her mark and she drove the car right into a tree. She later said that it was both hilarious and terrifying, as she almost killed Tom Cruise, who was in the passenger seat, but both of them started laughing after the incident.

At the beginning of the movie there was a montage of different newscasters, news footage, and public officials trying to deal with the alien invasion. One of the public officials they showed was Hillary Clinton. It’s implied that she was President of the United States. The movie was released in 2014, two years before the 2016 presidential elections

The filmmakers described this project as a cross between Groundhog Day (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997). [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Tomorrow_(film
trailer: youtu.be/yUmSVcttXnI

THE EDGE OF TOMORROW [2014]
Directed by Doug Liman

General Brigham: Operation Downfall, the entire might of the UDF invading from France, the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, relieving pressure in the Eastern front and allowing the Russians and Chinese to push the enemy back and we all meet in the middle, exterminating this Mimic scourge along the way. A lot of good soldiers are going to die tomorrow, Major, and when the smoke clears and the body bags start coming home people tend to look for someone to blame, someone like me. Ideally I’d prefer a different scenario.

American warriors, Russian warriors, Chinese warriors. One for all and all for one. Until the “common enemy” is destroyed .Then it is back to “business as usual”. Literally, business as usual.

[b]Cage: A best selling memoir perhaps? Maybe a career in politics? Off the top of my head I would go with the…“The Sense of Manifest Destiny”, “Rags to Riches: Rags Rise Through The Ranks, Born to Deliver”. You see people, well, they’d love that sort of thing.
General Brigham: You misunderstand, Major. I didn’t ask you here to sell me, I want you to sell the invasion.

Cage: General, I just inspired millions of people to join your army, and when the body bags come home and they’re looking for someone to blame, how hard do you think it would be for me to convince people to blame you? I’d imagine a General would prefer to avoid that.
General Brigham: Are you blackmailing me, Major?
Cage: I would prefer not to be filming acts of heroism and valor on that beach tomorrow.
[Brigham gets up and walks over to Cage]
General Brigham: You won’t be.
[as Cage leaves the office Brigham turns to one of his guards]
General Brigham: Arrest this man.

Cage: You’re name’s Farell?
Master Sergeant Farell: That’s right. Master Sergeant Farell.
Cage: Master Sergeant Farell, you’re an American.
Master Sergeant Farell: No, sir. I’m from Kentucky.

Master Sergeant Farell: Rumor is a terrible thing, and not following these men we’ll all reach the same conclusion, that you’re a coward and a liar putting your life above theirs. The good new is there’s hope for your, Private. Hope in the form of glorious combat, battle is the great redeemer, the fiery crucible in which the only true heroes are forged. The one place where all men truly share the same rank, regardless of what kind of parasitic scum they were going in.[/b]

That’s pretty much what they told me too. Only the “common enemy” back then were “gooks”.
But then the weird shit begins.

[b]Rita: Find me when you wake up.
Cage: What?
Rita: Come find me when you wake up…

Rita: Whenever an Alpha is killed, an automatic response is triggered. The Omega [the centtral brain] starts the day over again, but you see this time it can remember what’s going to happen, just like you do.
Dr. Carter: It-it knows exactly what we’re going to do before we’re gonna do it.
Rita: And an enemy that knows the future can’t lose.
Cage: But if that’s true, how did you win in Verdun?
Rita: We were allowed to win. This thing wants us to believe we can win. It wants us to throw everything we have into the invasion. Operation Downfall isn’t our end game, it’s the enemy’s.

Dr. Carter: The thing you’ve got to understand is this is a perfectly evolved world conquering organism. For all we know, there are thousands, millions, of those asteroids floating around the cosmos like a virus. And it’s just waiting to crash land into a world with just the right conditions. All they need is for the dominant life form to attack and…
[he snaps his fingers]
Rita: And they’ll be nothing to stop the Mimics from conquering the rest of the world. Unless you change the outcome.

Cage: Okay. How do I control it?
Rita: You have to die.
Dr. Carter: Every day.
Rita: Until the Omega is destroyed.
Cage: Fist of all, that was a terrific presentation. Terrific. I know the General, we should take this to him. You just tell him everything you told me, he would know…
Rita: I went to see the General, Cage, any number of times. Psyche ward, dissection, remember?

Cage: What are you expecting from me?
Dr. Carter: Have you seen anything strange?
Cage: Is he shitting me?

Rita: Last time I was in combat, I was hit. I was bleeding out, just not fast enough. I woke up in a field hospital with three pints of someone else’s blood and I was out. I lost the power, do you understand? Then you better start over don’t you?
Cage: What?
[Rita holds up her weapon and shoots him]

Cage [while in training]: Stop! Wait, wait, wait, wait! Stop! Wait a second, wait a second! I’ve been thinking… I mean, this thing is in my blood. So maybe there’s some way I can transfer it to you.
Rita: I’ve tried everything, it doesn’t work.
Cage: I mean have you tried… you know… tried all the options.
Rita: Oh, you mean sex? Yeah, tried it.
Cage: …how many times?

Rita: We should just reset. It’s a dead end.
Cage: Hey, hold…just…
Rita: If it’s all the same to you, I’m tired, I’m in pain. I’d rather just start fresh.
Cage: I’ll tell you what, take a few minutes. Coffee’s ready. I’ll look around for the keys, that’s productive.
Rita: Ten minutes.
Cage: Okay.
Rita: And then I’m killing you.
Cage: Fine.

Rita: What do we do now?
Cage: I don’t know. We’ve never gotten this far.

Skinner: We’re low on ammo, I’ve got one claymine. Ford, you’re out. Griff has only got half a magazine left and he can hardly move. I thought you could see the future.
Cage: I haven’t lived this day. I don’t know what’s gonna happen.

Rita [to Cage]: Yes? What do you want?[/b]

We can think of folks we believe are most deserving of love. But then some of them are so hell bent on pursuing the road less traveled that they almost always bring about the conditions where love is the least likely to be sustained. If it can even get started at all.

For example, in being a criminal. In being an outlaw.

Outlaw lovers is what we’ve got here. And the baby makes three. And then she becomes this beautiful little girl. And that changes everything. Children almost always do.

You know he loves her because he is willing to do the time that should have been hers. 25 years. And you know that she loves him because she waits for him. If on her own terms. Think The Crying Game. Only in Texas.

Also, think about this: Would you bear the burden of a 25 years prison sentence for something the one that you loved did instead? I’m thinking probably not. But then how do you get inside the head of another like this? How can you possibly fathom what makes him tick? Or what makes him do things that you can scarcely even imagine.

As for the title:

According to Casey Affleck, the title is the director David Lowery’s misquotation from lyrics of a song and has no actual meaning.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain%27t_T … ies_Saints
trailer: youtu.be/b_gGlYCMye4

AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS [2013]
Written and directed by David Lowery

[b]Ruth: Why did you tell Freddy you were gonna strike out on your own?
Bob: I don’t think I said that, but if I did, when I say, “on my own,” I mean you and me. I always mean you and me.

Ruth [to Bob]: I shot someone. I think I shot someone.[/b]

She shot a cop. And not just any cop as we learn later.

[b]Skerritt: So, I lost my boy. And that leaves you…And Bob. Only Bob don’t got a choice. I’m confused, Ruth. I took you kids in… raised you and Bob like you were my own. How do you go and do a thing like this?
Ruth: We were just doing what you taught us to do.

Bob: [in a letter to Ruth]: Every day I wake up thinking today’s the day I’m gonna see you. And one of those days, it will be so. And then we can ride off to somewhere. Somewhere far away.

Skerritt: They say they traced Bob to Montana.
Ruth: You think he’s in Montana?
Skerritt: I can make some phone calls, see what I can do about putting an end to all this.
Ruth: I could put an end to all this right now all by myself. All I’d have to do is…tell the truth.

Sweetie: Where you planning on going?
Bob: A direction that hasn’t been invented yet.

Bob [to Sweetie]: See, I’ve got a higher calling. I’ve got a wife and a little girl who needs her daddy. And the guard asked me what I know about higher callings…says even if I do get out, I’m gonna have to answer to God and the devil for the things I done. I tell him, “Sir, I used to be the devil. Now I’m just a man”

Skerritt: Well… Look at you, Bob. Break out of prison and head straight back here. Maybe not the smartest move.
Bob: Long as you don’t turn me in.

Skerritt: Gene Dentler and a bunch of his deputies come over a few days ago for a chat. I told them I could think of at least six sons of bitches who’ve got a mind to see you dead but that it’d be more fun to sit back and take bets on who gets you first. You fucked over your share of people in your day.
Bob: Yeah, and then I got caught.
Skerritt: Not by them, you didn’t.

Skerritt: You do whatever you want. You take all your money and you get yourself as far away from here as you possibly can. But you listen to me when I tell you…You leave those girls alone.
Bob: I can’t do that.
Skerritt: Yeah, you can.
Bob: And why would I?
Skerritt: Well, now, think about it, Bob. If you got any trouble coming your way… They sure as hell don’t need that.
Bob: What trouble is that?
Skerritt: You got out. What more do you want?
Bob: I want my family.
Skerritt: So do I. But I don’t got it.
[he grabs Bob by the neck and pins his head to the counter]
Skerritt: Now, this is how it works. I will never hurt you more than I’m hurting you now. I will never lay another hand to you or prick your finger or pinch your cheek. I won’t call the sheriff, and I won’t tell them where you’ve been. But if I hear that old Bob Muldoon has been talking to Ruth Guthrie…You asked me about trouble. I will make sure you got some.

Bob [to Skerritt]: Freddy was the one who shot first that day. Nobody would have gotten hurt if he hadn’t done that.

Sweetie [to Bob]: I guess I hope I never see you again.

Ruth: Did you hear what I said after?
Patrick: I read your statement.
Ruth: It wasn’t all true, you know. I wasn’t just a little girl who got dragged in over her head. I knew what I was doing.
Patrick: Well… I think that, uh… A lot of things were said that might not have been true. But you did what you did. So did he. And whatever it is you’ve done, when I see you with your daughter…All I see is good.
Ruth: Maybe I’m just fooling you.
Patrick: Are you?

Ruth: I figured that I’d just tell him all at once when I saw him. He’d walk through the door, and I’d know exactly what to say to him, and things would be the way they used to be. That’s why I’ve been saving every little thing.
[pause]
Ruth: And I haven’t slept in four years. And I’m tired. I’m so goddamn tired.
Patrick: Then rest.

Ruth [cradling a grieviously wounded Bob]: I’ve been waiting for you…

Ruth: Tell me more about that house.
Bob: It’s big… Maybe a farm. It’s old. It’s older than us. At the same time, though, I feel like maybe I built it. There’s no telling. There’s just no telling,[/b]

From the director of El Topo and The Holy Mountain above. In other words, expect anything. After all, it is described as an “avant-garde horror film”. And you don’t see too many of those coming out of Hollywood.

Metaphors abound here: The human “circus”? The human “freak show”?

One take on it: io9.com/5792771/in-santa-sangre- … -literally

This is a world that, by and large, revels in lumpen-proletariat spectacles. And, as with all of his films, you are constantly being bombarded with visual images that will either mean something to you or not. And there is simply no way in which to take out of them other than that which you must first necessarily put into them: “I”.

For some then, the spectacles are so far removed from what they would call a “normal life” or a “rational life” or a “civilized life”, it is all but impossible to really care about any of the characters. Surreal or not. Better to just sit back and count you’re blessings that this was not your own fate. And though many are brutalized in a world they had no capacity to choose it can all be explained away simply by noting that [surreal or not] they are not “one of us”. And we know how that works.

And so, once again, we are inundated with any number of moral, political and religious themes that [again] we will react to not as intended but as we must: subjectively, subjunctively.

Bottom line: Freud is everywhere here.

Whatever that means.

IMDb

The project was launched when Alejandro Jodorowsky was commissioned to write and direct a film based on real-life Mexican criminal named Gregorio Cárdenas. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorio_ … %C3%A1ndez

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Sangre
trailer: youtu.be/fDgwu4scwQM

SANTA SANGRE [1989]
Written in part and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

[Fenix crouches naked atop a tree trunk in his barren asylum room]
Doctor [enters along with orderlies pushing a food cart]: Fenix. Please…
[offers him a normal meal]
Doctor: Eat like a human being.
[pause]
[Doctor puts the tray back down and offers him a raw fish]
Fenix [howls then jumps down and grabs the fish]: Grr!
[he sits and begins eating it]

And we’re off…

Concha: Please, Father, help us. They want to destroy our temple.
Roman Catholic monsignor: I won’t let them do such a thing.
Concha: Peace.
Roman Catholic monsignor Peace. Let me see your church.

Big mistake:

Concha: This is it, Monsignor. This is where we worship our beloved saint and martyr. Here she is, Monsignor.
Monsignor: But…this is no saint.
Conchas: Monsignor, she is a saint. Right here, many years ago, Lirio, a young girl, was attacked by the Terrano brothers. She tried to fight them off with all her strength but they cut off her arms. They raped her and left her to die in a pool of blood. And on this ground, miraculously still wet with her holy blood, we built our church.
Monsignor: This is paint!
Concha: No, it’s holy blood.
Monsignor: This is paint!
Concha: It’s holy blood!
Monsignor: Do you hear me, crazy woman? It’s paint!
Concha: It’s blood! lt’s blood! Feel it! Feel it!
Monsignor: This is paint! It is paint! This is paint!
Concha: Holy blood! It’s holy blood! It’s holy blood!
Monsignor: It’s paint!
Concha and the parishioners begin shooting: Holy blood! Holy blood! Holy blood! Holy blood!
Monsignor: I order you to stop this foolish sacrilege immediately!!
Concha: Never! This is our saint!
Monsignor: The church will never recognise this heresy!

Kiss the church goodbyue.

[b]The Tattooed Woman [of Alma to a brutish john]: She’s a deaf-mute. You can do anything you want to her.

Concha: You know what you have to do.
Fenix: No, I don’t want to!
Concha: This girl has defiled you with her lust.
Fenix: No, mum, it’s not true! It’s only a game!
[begins to lose control of his hands]
Fenix: No! I can’t! Don’t ask me to!
Concha: I’m not asking you, I’m ordering…my hands…and my arms… to kill her. Kill her!

Concha [to Fenix]: Wake up! Wake up! You can’t atone for your sins with nightmares.

[Fenix glances at The Invisible Man poster]
Concha: Without me you are nothing. No one sees you and no one notices you. Just like your stupid hero.

Concha [to Fenix]: Stop it! It’s always roosters or swans! You never see anything else in your ridiculous hallucinations!!

Fenix: My Mummy is dead…[/b]

Written and directed by Jon Stewart. Honestly, I never expected to be typing those words on this thread. And while I don’t follow his program on the Comedy Network, he seems to encompass a political point of view that at least tries to hold accountable the powers that be in my own country: the US of A.

A liberal in other words. But the sort of liberal that is allowed to question the powers that be in America. In other words, exposing the nature of crony capitalism…but only up to a point.

Here though he takes on a far easier target: theocracy. In Iran. And the film makes it all quite clear that living in a theocracy can be perceived by some as a hell on earth.

It is based on a true story.

On the other hand, there is Iran when it was not a theocracy. When, instead, it was a brutal military dictatorship backed to the hilt by the Amercan government. Indeed, put into power by the American government. Cue Jeane Kirkpatrick’s destinction between authoritarian thugs [our guys] and totalitarian thugs [their guys]. And Stewart to his credit does connect the dots between Iran in the 1950s and Iran today. And thus exposes [at least up to a point] the true nature of American foreign policy.

So, it would not surprise me at all if it turned out that Maziar really was in fact on the payroll of the CIA.

Basically, this is one of those films where over and again you are asking yourself: What would I do? Which some will then twist into this: What is the right thing to do? To which there are any number of objectivists out there who will swear that they [and they alone] know the answer.

The “backstory”:

Maziar Bahari was imprisoned, interrogated, and beaten in Iran for 118 days in 2009 on charges that he was attempting to stage the overthrow of the Iranian government. One of the pieces of “evidence” that Bahari’s Iranian captors held against him as proof of his guilt was footage from a segment on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in which he was interviewed by Jason Jones pretending to be a spy. During the sketch, Bahari called Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an “idiot”. After he was released, Bahari was interviewed on “The Daily Show” by Jon Stewart, who discussed the role that the show had (inadvertently) played in his imprisonment. Stewart and Bahari became friendly, and Stewart decided to adapt Bahari’s 2011 book “Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival” (co-written with Aimee Molloy) into a screenplay.

IMDb

The actual Maziar Bahari makes a cameo appearance as a man sitting in the desk near the camera when his character “confesses” to his crimes on Iranian Television.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewater_(film
trailer: youtu.be/cEExQHYsOT4

ROSEWATER [2014]
Written and directed by Jon Stewart

[b]Maziar [voiceover]: When I was nine, my sister took me to the Shrine of Masumeh. It was beautiful. But I’ll never forget the smell. A mix of sweat, and the rosewater they showered down on the faithful. I used to think only the most pious carried that seem.

Mother: Mazi jaan…Mazi jaan…
Maziar: Mmm.
Mother: Wake up. These men want to talk with you.

Newscaster: There is great anticipation in the run-up to Iran’s presidential election. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline incumbent, is no longer the guaranteed victor. His opponent, the more moderate Mir-Hussein Mousavi, has been gaining quickly and could be poised for an historic upset. But Ahmadinejad’s student organizer Alireza Abkar still believes.
Abkar [on television]: So-called Western democracy is corrupt because it reflects only the will of the people.[/b]

That is the political backdrop of the story.

[b]News colleague: You think he’ll still want to talk?
Maziar: Yes, I mean, if I bring him some Maltesers, he will talk. Allah is no match for London chocolates.
Bobby: It’s not funny.
Maziar: I’m sorry?
Bobby: It’s pathetic. Ahmadinejad or whoever, they take these poor street kids, who’ve got nothing, give them food or sweets or whatever. Indoctrinate them to spout this gibberish. It’s pathetic, and that’s the real story we should be doing.

Davood [mocking Abkar]: “This is what must be, Maziar. This is what must be.” Oh, man, that guy! Who talks like that? I can’t believe he let you film it.
Maziar: Why not? He’s a poster boy for the Supreme Leader. What’s he got to be afraid of?
Davood: Looking like an ignorant asshole.
Maziar: He’s not alone, you know.
Davood: Yeah. Neither am I. Just because you can’t see the cockroaches doesn’t mean they are not there.

Jason Jones [of The Daily Show]: So, as a spy, I’m just trying to figure out why your country is so terrifying?
Maziar: You know, the first thing to know about Iran is that it is not evil. Actually, Americans and Iranians have a lot of things in common, more than they have differences.
Jason Jones: What do I have in common with you?
Maziar: What is the number one enemy of the United States?
Jason Jones: Al-Qaeda.
Maziar: AI-Qaeda is also the number one enemy of Iran. The Al-Qaeda members say that if you kill an Iranian or if you kill a Shiite, you go to Heaven and you get 72 virgins.

Maziar: Hey, Davood! Wait, you’re gonna get hurt!
Davood: We have to fight back!
Maziar: You’re gonna get killed! Come on.
Davood: What do you want me to do, huh? They took my vote. I’m dirt to them. I’m dust. It’s not right.
Maziar: No, it’s not right, Davood.
Davood: Ah, well, who are you to say? You have a real weapon and you choose not to use it.[/b]

His camera in other words.

Prison official [to Maziar]: Welcome to Abu Ghraib, or whatever you Americans like to call it.

The infamous Evin prison. Once entrusted to Savak. Our thugs.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evin_Prison

[b]Haj: Bahari is not some street thug. He will be well-prepared intellectually.
Javad [Rosewater]i: Of course.
Haj: I’ve given you the questions he must answer. But, Javadi, we must have his confession! Do you understand?
Javadi: Of course, sir.
Haj: The people in the streets must know how they have been fooled by these traitors. We can end this, but we must show them how their leaders have been receiving orders from foreigners, Zionists and Jews in the West. They will listen to him, Javadi.
Javadi: Yes, sir.
Haj: And remember, we need his face for the cameras. This will take much more than just a fist, Javadi.

Ravadi: Yes, we know you are a spy.
Maziar: A spy?
Ravadi: Yes. The game is over, Mr. Bahari.
Mazari: And for who am I a spy?
Ravadi: For CIA, MIG, Mossad, Newsweek. You tell me.
Mazari: Newsweek magazine’?
Ravadi: No, Newsweek the carpenter. The media arm for CIA.[/b]

Here we are all supposed to scoff. Well, I don’t. The corporate media is an arm of the crony capitalist ruling class. And that certainly includes the CIA.

[b]Mazari: He’s not a spy.
Ravadi: He’s not a spy?
Mazari: He’s… No, it’s a show. A comedy show. It’s stupid. He’s a comedian pretending to be a spy.
Ravadi: So, can you tell me why an American pretending to be a spy had chosen to interview you?
Mazari: And why would a real spy have a TV show’?
Ravadi: Why did you tell this man that America and Iran has something in common? Was that funny, too? You know, Khamenei said that America is the Great Satan. But maybe you don’t think that’s right. Maybe we have been hasty. We kicked America out of the door and you will bring them back through the windows.

Maziar [to Baba Akbar his father as though he were in the cell]: I have nothing to tell them because I’m not a spy.

Maziar: The American government doesn’t control Newsweek magazine. To be honest, it’s not even worth controlling anymore. This weekly model of magazines is completely outdated.
Ravadi: Outdated?
Maziar: There are better ways of doing propaganda. Through the Internet. In the blogs. Twitter. Uh…There’s many things. The game has changed completely.

Haj: Your father was imprisoned at one time, was he not’?
Maziar: Yes.
Haj: When was this?
Maziar: In 1953.
Haj: He was accused of being a communist.
Mazari: Yes.
Haj: Was he?
Mazari: He was a communist back then.
Haj: On whose authority was he detained?
Mazari: Under the Shah.
Haj: Yes. The Shah of Iran. I’m sorry. That must have been difficult for your family.
Maziar: Thank you, sir.
Haj: I thought at that time, Iran had a democratic leader. Mossadegh. Mohammad Mossadegh. So there was a coup?
Maziar: Yes.
Haj: Organized by?
Maziar: The CIA. The Americans, British…
Haj: Operation Ajax I believe it was called. The West wanted the Iranian people’s oil.
Maziar: Yes.
Haj: And the journalists and gangsters that were paid by the CIA to spread lies and violence, and turn the Iranian people against its government so the Americans and Zionists could deploy their puppet the traitor, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi…
Maziar: Yes, but that was in those days, sir. I…But I am not a spy!

Ravadi: My bosses are not happy with you.
Maziar: But I don’t understand. I’m trying to do everything you want me…I am trying to figure out the media conspiracy, but I cannot lie to you.
Ravadi: I know. I know this. But they have decided to kill you. I brought you a Nescaf.
Maziar: Why…Why do they want to kill me?
Ravadi: There is milk and sugar.
[pause]
Ravbadi: You don’t like my Nescaf?
Maziar: I don’t understand what they can achieve by killing me.
Ravadi: You don’t like my Nescaf. Blindfold.
Maziar: It’s…
Ravadi: Blindfold. Now is the time.

Baba Akbar: They barely touched you. Others have suffered more.
Maziar: No, Baba. No, no. You don’t understand. You were what they said you were.
Baba Akbar: You can choose who you are.
Maziar: I am not a spy. I am not a spy…
Baba Akbar: They locked you up, but you are still free.
Maziar: You don’t understand, Baba! You were who they said you were.
Baba Akbar: You filmed the truth about these sisterfuckers. What is more dangerous to them than the truth. huh? Tell me.
Maziar: It didn’t change anything. Look where it got me.
Baba Akbar: God damn it, believe in something! It is your only hope.
Maziar: Like communism? Did it ever occur to you that the dream that kept you during your torment, it was corrupt? Your great Russian heroes, they also torture. Your torture was conceived in the Gulags. Where do you think the Shah’s secret police got it from? From the Soviets. From the CIA, from the Mossad. From all the fucked up secret services of the world.

Maziar [in his television confession]: My name is Maziar Bahari. And I am a member of the western media. I am a journalist, and as such, I am a member of the Western capitalist machine. Western media saw its candidate lose the elections, on June the 12th of 2009. Western media claimed it was a fraud to undermine and to hurt the legitimacy of the elections. Western media afterwards claimed that there was a coup. What followed was a series of preplanned actions designed to foment a failed color revolution. My colleagues and I started to ignore accurate reporting and we produced reports that were very inaccurate and illegal. I apologize to the Iranian people…and to my family. And to our Supreme Leader for my actions and my wrongdoings.

Prison guard: Specialist time, Mr. Hillary Clinton.
Maziar [startled]: What did you say?
Guard: Mr. Hillary Clinton. She’s been talking a lot about you.[/b]

Segue to the media barrage about him around the globe. And that changes everything.

One particular facet of that which became known as the “Iran/Contra Affair”: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%8 … tra_affair

How do you spell “national security”? M-O-N-E-Y. And isn’t that just another way to spell W-A-L-L S-T-R-E-E-T?

In other words, just one more snapshot of American foreign policy as it actually functions out in the world that we live in. Rather than in the manner in which the government and the corporate media portray it instead. Call that “the big lie”.

Just as some banks are too big to fail, some stories are too true to tell. And I’m sure there are folks who actually believe there are not renditions of this in the Obama administration. Or in the Clinton administration. Really, they assure us, the Democrats are different.

On the other hand, if you are a staunch anti-communist, it is just one more end in which to employ any means necessary. And this frame of mind has always worked for both those on the left and those on the right.

But then these things always get tricky. Some reporters are in the loop that is the corporate media and some are not. Some will pursue the facts wherever they take them while others are there to make sure that certain facts never see the light of day.

The main focus here revolves around folks who have always argued that the drug epidemic in black communities is part and parcel of a government conspiracy. And, really, how far removed is the consequence of the Reagan administration’s policy here from that? In one searing scene, Gary Webb the reporter who broke the story takes us into South Central, Los Angeles. He shows us all of the folks strung out on the drugs the CIA helped to bring into the country. Including many newborns. The infamous crack babies.

Actually, it seems the drug infestation in black communities was more an “incidental consequence” of the Reagan administration’s obssession with toppling the Nicaraguan government. Rather than an actual self-conscious “conspiracy”. But, then again, can we really rule out the possibility that it may well have been a thought out part of the plan?

And the only reason any of this came out at all was because the government accidently sent a transcript of grand jury testimony in a discovery packet to an attorney. Again, reminding us of all the shit that goes on “behind the curtains” in Washington – programs we may never know about.

Gary Webb died when he was 49. It was ruled that he committed suicide.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb

IMDb

[b]Various members of the cast and crew have admitted to receiving government-level “push back” to the film, both during filming and in post-production.

Before director Michael Cuesta signed on to Kill the Messenger, Spike Lee expressed interest in directing the film.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_ … (2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/VW4XO-52ubE

KILL THE MESSENGER [2014]
Directed by Michael Cuesta

[b]Nixon [on television]: …public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.

Ford [on television]: For nearly a year, I have been devoting increasing attention to a problem which strikes at the very heart of our national well-being: Drug abuse.

Carter [on television]: I did not condone any drug abuse, and we’ll do everything possible to reduce this serious threat to our society.

Reagan [on television]: Drugs are menacing our society. They’re threatening our values and undercutting our institutions. They’re killing our children.[/b]

That’s the government rhetoric. This film however gives us an actual slice of the reality.

[b]Nancy Reagan [on television]: …and when it comes to drugs and alcohol, just say no.

Reagan [on television]: Those who smuggle and sell drugs are as dangerous to our national security as any terrorist or foreign dictatorship.

Newscaster: The Reagan administration is spending billions on two wars the war on drugs at home and the struggle for Nicaragua abroad.

Black man on television: Crack cocaine, a drug epidemic unlike any that’s ever probably existed in the history of the world. For five dollars, you can begin the process of addicting people.

Newscaster: Waging the war on drugs has cost us one hundred billion dollars over the last ten years.

Coral Baca: But Raffie’s story is different. He sold drugs for the government.
Gary: You want to say that again?
Coral Baca: He brought four tons of cocaine into the country…for the U.S. government.
Gary: Look, you have a very lovely voice…
Coral Baca: Thank you. I’ve copied every piece of paper. Selling drugs for the U.S. government. Have you written that story?

Coral Baca [to Gary]: And there is the little bitch. Russell Dodson.

Russell: So why is the local news interested in this case?
Gary: I’m not. But I am interested in Danilo Blandon.
Russell: Never heard of him.
Gary: Then why is he on your witness list? You had this guy cold on major narcotics trafficking and you let him walk. Why? I have his grand jury transcript. I know. I’ve seen some screw ups outta you guys but boy is that a big one.[/b]

He’s from Justice Department. Enough said?

[b]Gary: What just happened?
Coral: You terrified them. They just stuffed Danilo Blandon under a rug. He’s off their witness list. No Blandon, no case. Raffie walks.
Gary: Hey, hey, hey…So you used me to get this fucking case dropped?
Coral: I’m just the bimbo, remember?
Gary: Yeah, fuck you.
Coral: Be happy, Gary Webb. You thought you were getting a piece of cheese, but I just gave you the mouse.

Fenster [Ricky Ross’s lawyer]: Fuck me! The government blocks me! Every time I ask for something. Claiming - get this - National Security.
Gary: National security and crack cocaine in the same sentence? Does that not sound strange to you?

Ricky [to Gary]: Look, I am just the elf. Blandon is Santa Claus!

Lawyer: Mr. Blandon how much money did you take in from cocaine sales while you were working for the U.S. government?
Blandon: One and a half billion dollars.
Lawyer: What did you do with that money?
Blandon: We made so much money we had to keep an apartment just to keep the cash. It was floor to ceiling dollars. We had to rotate the money from the top to the bottom to prevent mold from coming on the money from the humidity.

Gary: So when did all of this start?
Norwin Meneses: They were always looking for ways to raise money to fight this war. There was this one time when Ollie…Ollie went to his friends in Washington, and this is years ago-
Gary: Oliver North?
Norwin Meneses: No, Oliver Hardy. Yes, Oliver North. So he said why don’t we use the cash seized from the cocaine arrests to fund and support the Contra war? Of course, they declined you know. But as you can see, Ollie wasn’t the only person with ideas like this.

Gary: Did it have to be drugs?
Norwin Meneses: The ends justify the means. Yeah, write that down. You Americans don’t want coconuts or bananas. You want cocaine.

Norwin Meneses: I’m going to tell you the whole truth. I’m going to introduce you to people you should talk to and then you will be faced with the most important decision of your life.
Gary: Oh Yeah, what’s that?
Norwin Meneses: Deciding whether to share it or not.

Fred Weil: I had an American citizen a rich Republican Party fund-raiser, a White House favorite, in my office…upset about things he was hearing. He believed in freedom and defeating communism…but not in laundering narcotics money for guns. And he’s sitting
in my office in the U.S. Senate and he gets a phone call telling him that if he talked to me he’d die. This is your ticket out of small time, right? You’re going to make your bones on this.
Gary: This is a true story
Fred Weil: My friend, some stories are just too true to tell.

Gary: …to answer your question, no. My angle is that the American government knew drugs were put on the streets to fund an illegal war.
Agent Miller: What you want to say happened, never happened.
Gary: Then why am I here?
Agent Miller: American kids were going to die in that war.
Gary: American kids did die. They’re still dying. Just not the ones you care about, apparently.

Ian [Gary’s son reading from Gary’s story]: “For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay-area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to Latin American guerrilla army run by the US Central Intelligence Agency a Mercury news investigation has found.”

Ted Koppel [on television]: A reporter for the San Jose Mercury News suggested that the CIA might have played a role n permitting Nicaraguan drug dealers to distribute crack cocaine in south central Los Angeles during the 1980’s. That had enormous resonance within the African-American community.

Al Sharpton: If they had put that crack in Beverly Hills, it would be a presidential issue. We love our children. Just like you love yours.

Maxine Waters: I think it is enough information here to say to the CIA, you stand accused.

Fred Weil [on the phone]: I was you once. Gary, I started down this road. Though nowhere near as far as you are. When they saw I wasn’t gonna stop, they ‘controversialized’ me. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about? They make you the story. That you have a history of schizophrenia, you’re a liar, you’re a homo, you beat your dog. you’re a pedophile – it doesn’t matter if none of it’s true. The point is no one remembers what you found. They remember you…and you’re nuts.

Fred Weil [on the phone]: Remember Gary, you get the most flak when you’re right above the target. That’s when they empty all their guns into you. When you’re about to drop a bomb on the on the Kremlin…Or in this case, the Central Intelligence Agency.

Gary [on the phone]: What’s happening here, Rich? The only people you have in your story is the former Director of the CIA, the current Director of the CIA and - guess who - a bunch of CIA officials. Are you following up on anything I wrote or are you just talking to the CIA?
Rich Kline [from the Los Angeles Times]: I can’t be talking to you.
Gary: Why?
Rich Kline: I don’t know. I’m sorry.[/b]

The corporate media [the big guys] circle the wagons.

[b]John Cullen: Don’t turn on the light. I’m John Cullen. Do you know that name?
[no response from Gary]
John Cullen: What you found here, Gary, is a monster.

John Cullen: After I left the Agency, I worked my way into a major drug cartel. It was early Medellin. I solved logistical issues. Bringing supply into the United States. Paved the way, you might say…as the traffic grew. And grew.
Gary: Well someone in Washington knows what you do and is doing nothing to stop it.
John Cullen: It’s all lies and corruption, Gary. You become attracted to the power, then you become addicted to the power…then you’re devoured by the power.
Gary: Your thing and my thing, are they connected? Are they the same?
[pause]
John Cullen: Yes. They are the same.

Gary [speaking at an award dinner honoring him as reporter of the year]: Look, I know I pissed off a lot of people over the years. Many of whom are in this room right now. But I think that’s what good investigative reporting does. It ruffles feathers. But I was never fired. And my editors never threw me under the bus. And that’s because I never wrote anything until now…that really mattered to a lot of people. Mattered in a scary way. I’m not going to take it back. Make nice to save my job. Because I thought my job… I thought my job was to tell the public the truth. The facts, pretty or not. And let the publishing of those facts make a difference in how people look at things. At themselves, at what they stand for.

Title card: In 1998, the CIA relaeased a 400 page report that acknolwedged the Agency associated with members of the Contra movement who engaged in drug trafficking. Consumed with the President Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. The national media largely ignored the report.

John Kerry [in an interview from 1997]: There’s no question in my mind there is a complicity in the flow of drugs into this country. Same pilots, same airstrips, same airplanes carrying guns and drugs at the same time. And people knew it. South Central Los Angeles and every other city in America are owed an explanation.[/b]

There must be a million renditions of this. Approximating I’d say the actual number of relationships that there are. Of course much depends on the demographics. And the culture. And the historical context.

And the script.

So don’t actually expect to learn anything here.

Anyway, here they have reached the point in their relationship where they are seeing a therapist. They are looking for a possible resolution to their “problems” – in order to get their love back up on the track. Or at least up out of the ravine.

Solution? A “beautiful retreat”. In fact, you might call it a magical retreat.

Cue the doppelgängers.

I can imagine some men watching this and thinking: “I could never not be passionaitely in love with Elizabeth Moss”. But it rarely works that way. Over time the passion tends to dissipate in all relationships and you’re thinking about other women. And women of course have their own rendition of this. Being one of the “beautiful people” doesn’t necessarily make that go away. It’s always about one or another “tradeoff”.

Here though you get to imagine your husband or your wife or your lover as a different person. Instead of the way he or she is, he or she becomes the way you would like them to be instead. The idealized husband, wife, lover. So, will that be enough to save the relationship?

Other than that it is all rather routine stuff. You know, for Yuppies.

IMDb

[b]About the script and the way it was performed, Duplass stated, “The way this worked, there (was) about a 50-page document that was the entire movie - the scene beats, everything, locations - except for the actual dialogue in the film. And most of the dialogue you see in the film is improvised. Although in certain scenes, where we have effects and things like that, Justin our writer [Justin Lader] would write out a version of that scene the night before, to give us a good guide, so we could have something to stick to.”

In the therapist’s office, several clocks are shown, including a chess clock. All of the clocks and both faces on the chess clock show a different time.

The filming location is Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen’s home.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_I_Love_(film
trailer: youtu.be/jCOvhojlZzQ

THE ONE I LOVE [2014]
Directed by Charlie McDowell

[b]Sophie [to the therapist]: When we were in the water and we were waiting and no one came out, no one was home, and we were just floating there, I felt sad, and I felt like our happiness used to be so easy and there used to be so much of it, and now I feel like happiness is something that we have to re-create.
Ethan: I’m sorry. I tried to make a romantic moment. I’ll never take you to a fucking pool again.
Sophie: Oh, come on. Don’t do that.

Therapist: So, are you guys having sex?[/b]

Back to the piano.

[b]Therapist [to Ethan and Sophie]: It’s like a perfect retreat, just the two of you. I’ve sent a lot of couples there and they’ve all come back really renewed.

Ethan [to Sophie]: I’m sorry. I’m spazing out in there, I know, but something fucking weird like Twilight Zone shit is going on here, and I’m trying to get a handle on it, okay?

Ethan [to Sophie – one of them]: You’re in that shower. I just handed you a towel.

Ethan: You want to go back?
Sophie: This is something we’ve been talking about, creating a new relationship.
Ethan: I imagined like horseback riding with a little satchel of wine, you know? Not exploring other dimensions in some weird version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Ethan: Who the fuck starts with O?
Sophie: I know.
Ethan: Who the hell do you think you are?
Sophie: Crazy.
Ethan: Goddamn anarchist.

Ethan [to the doppelgänger Sophie]: You’re not a real person. You know you’re not real. Who the hell are you? What the hell are you? Are you a fucking robot? Are you a…like a spirit? Because I’ve got to say it’s bad enough that I’m losing my wife to a mirror image of me…Now I have to sit and look at a mirror image of exactly who I’m losing. So, no… I’m having a hard time enjoying this weekend because this is the weekend I lose my wife. So, pardon me if I don’t want a fucking mimosa, okay?
Sophie: It wasn’t just this weekend.
Ethan: How do you know?
Sophie: Because as your wife, I know these things.

Sophie: Would everybody just tell me what we’re talking about? What happened?
Doppelgänger Ethan: All right, look, Ethan was a little suspicious that something was going on between us, so he decided to try and figure it out for himself. He didn’t go to the grocery store. He ended up sneaking into the guest house, and in a strange twist of events, he pretended to be me, so you actually slept with Ethan instead of me.
Ethan: I can’t fucking pretend to be you… I am me.
Doppelgänger Ethan: Basically, first he betrayed you by sleeping with someone else and then he kind of betrayed you by sleeping with you.

Ethan [on the phone to the therapist]: Hey. It’s Ethan. Um, I’m really just calling to thank you for your wonderful recommendation this weekend. Maybe next session you can send us to a fucking holocaust museum.[/b]

Modern love. Here’s one rendition of it: youtu.be/FDjJpmt-wzg

And, below, is another [less surreal] version.

Indeed, compare relationships now with those that once existed. Back when we lived in a world where there was a place for everyone and everyone was in their place. In other words, you followed the script [everyone did] from the cradle to the grave.

Not anymore. There is no script. But even though the world increasingly revolves around pop culture and consumption, there are still those more “sophisticated” folks who try to rise above it.

But there are just so many godawful narratives – lifestyles – from which to choose. Still, one thing is clear: Youth rules!

Here, Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are no longer young. And they’ve been married long enough now for things to get “stale”. What to do? Well, they meet Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried. They’re younger, hipper, more adventuresome. But, in their own way, just as fucked up. Especially Adam. A real phony we might call him. Think Bill Hurt in Broadcast News.

The personification of “American youth”. Just a lot “cooler”.

And then this part: To have or not to have kids?

Jeez Louise.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/While_We%27re_Young_(film
trailer: youtu.be/NRUcm9Qw9io

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG [2014]
Written and directed by Noah Baumbach

[b]Cornelia [to the baby…not hers]: There were three little pigs and they made a house out of twigs and the wolf came…
Josh: He blows it down?
Cornelia: Yeah, but what happens in the middle?
Josh: I keep wanting to do ‘This little piggy went to the market, but that’s with the toes’.

Josh [to Cornelia]: Well, maybe the point is we have the freedom. What we do with it isn’t that important.

Ira Mandelstam [from Josh’s documentary]: There was a poll conducted in 1987 in which people were given a series of phrases and asked which ones could be found in the U.S. Constitution. One of the phrases that got the highest percentage of votes was, "From each according to his ability, “to each according to his need.” Of course that is not in the Constitution but is the famous communist credo popularized by Karl Marx.

Josh [in the classroom]: “Documentary is about someone else. Fiction is about me.” This is a quote from Jean-Luc Godard. Now, what do we think about this? Can a documentary be personal? Documentaries, I want to say to you today, can and should be about me. Me meaning all of us.[/b]

He makes those kind of documetaries. Think Cliff Stern. To wit:

[b]Jamie: Josh, what’s your new film about?
Josh: Well, I’m trying to solve the problem that Eisenstein never solved, that is, how to make a film that is both materialist and intellectual at the same time. Uh, it’s about the distinctly American relationship between biography and history, theory and method and how that relates to power and class in our country, particularly the political, military and economic elite.

Jamie: I really loved your film. That scene with the dogs around the garbage. How did you stage that?
Josh: I said ‘Hey, shoot those dogs’.

Josh [to Fletcher and Marina]: You should see this guy’s record collection. It’s Jay-Z, it’s Thin Lizzy, it’s Mozart. His taste is democratic. It’s The Goonies and it’s Citizen Kane. They don’t distinguish between high and low, it’s wonderful.
Fletcher: When did The Goonies become a good movie?
Cornelia: And it’s like their apartment is full of everything we once threw out, but it looks so good the way they have it.

Jamie: …instead of responding to them on Facebook, see, I’m going to go find them in person. With my camera.
Josh: Okay.
Jamie: Like make Facebook real. It’s like, you want to talk to me, let’s talk.
Josh: Kind of just like real life?
Jamie: Exactly.
Josh: Well, real was there before Facebook.

Doctor: You have arthritis in your knee.
Josh: Uh, is arthritis a catch-all for some kind of injury to the…
Josh: No, arthritis is a degradation of the joints.
Josh: Yeah, I know what traditional arthritis is. But…
Doctor: I’m not sure what you mean by “traditional”, but this is arthritis.
Josh: Arthritis arthritis?
Doctor: Yes, but I usually just say it once.

Josh: I like our life as it is.
Cornelia: Yeah. I mean if we wanted to take off to Paris tomorrow we could.
Josh: If we’re gonna do it, we should plan it with at least a month in advance.
Cornelia: A month is still in the realm of spontaneity.

Cornelia: We’ve got this Ayahuasca ceremony this weekend with Jamie and Darby.
Marina: What’s an Ayahuasca ceremony?
Cornelia: You drink this sludgy liquid and you hallucinate and vomit up your demons. [/b]

No doubt this sort of New Age bullshit really does exist.

[b]Josh: Oh, my God, I see a fucking pyramid. And a sphinx. It’s true, you see Egyptian shit. Honey, what are you seeing?
Cornelia: I’m in a deli in Bensonhurst.

Cornelia: I wish you’d look at me the way you look at Jamie and Darby. When we first met, you wooed me with romantic e-mails.
Josh: It wouldn’t make sense for me to send you e-mails now that we’re in the same room all the time.

Kent: Why do we stop doing things? Life happens I guess, huh?
Jamie: Life is other plans.
Kent: Yeah.
Josh: Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.
Kent [to Jamie looking over at Josh]: Who is he?

Cornelia: My dad likes saying, “The more, the more.”
Josh: That’s because your dad has everything and then he gets more.

Josh [pitching his documentary to this hedge fund scumbag]: The three sections correspond to the three nodes of what Mills called the power elite. The political, military and economic. But, and this is key, each part has to interconnect to show how none of three nodes functions without the other. It’s a linear film of course, but I imagine it as kind of a hypertext. To be clear, the film is really about the working class and I can’t speak on behalf of the working class. I can’t make their film, of course. But they have to be felt as the impossible subject of the text. If that makes sense. But it isn’t even really about the power structure but about what it means to make a film about it. It’s about the very possibility of making this film. It’s really about America.[/b]

Let’s just say the pitch doesn’t work.

[b]Josh: Do you think that Jamie came to my class because he knew that I was married to you? That this was all so he could meet your dad?
Cornelia: Josh, you know, the world isn’t a conspiracy against you.
Josh: You know, fuck you. Fuck you.
Cornelia: Don’t talk to me like that.
Josh: I’m saying “fuck you” the way Jamie and Darby say it where it’s not a real “fuck you,” it’s a semi-playful “fuck you.”
Cornelia: We’re not Jamie and Darby. We don’t talk to each other that way. If you say fuck you to me it feels like a real fuck you.
Josh [coming clean]: It is real.
Cornelia: Fuck you. And not semi-playfully either!
Josh: Fuck you. Total real, cutting to the core, fuck you.

Cornelia: Where were you last night?
Josh: I was dancing with Darby in an after-hours gay club.
[gesturing towards Jamie]
Josh: Is this some kind of a private meeting?
Cornelia: Did you follow me here?
Josh: I follow him on Twitter! We can’t lie like we used to lie anymore. Everything’s reported. Nothing is private.

Josh [of Jamie]: It’s all a pose. It’s like he once saw a sincere person and he’s been imitating him ever since.

Fletcher: Before you have a kid, everyone tells you, “It’s the best thing you’ll ever do.” And as soon as you get the baby back from the hospital, those same people are like, “Don’t worry, it gets better.”

Josh: I was just with Kent.
Darby: Oh, Kent! I love Kent.
Josh: I saw your ice cream in Jamie’s video.
Darby: Well played, sir.
Josh: He let me think I was the one who found out about Kent in Afghanistan.
Darby: Jamie doesn’t wanna disappoint you. None of us wanna disappoint you. You’re such a purist. Jamie would never have made the movie without Afghanistan. When I told him about Kent and the massacre, he thought it would make a good movie. He just had to figure out how to tell it.
Josh: But why not tell it honestly?
Darby: It’s more entertaining this way. And now it has a before and after which, as you know, Americans love.

Josh: But you really will do anything to be successful.
Jamie: Success isn’t my thing, Josh. It’s yours.
Josh: Yeah, you’re right, it is my thing. I’ve got a fucked up relationship with success. I want it and I don’t have it. But what you have scares the shit out of me.

Josh: I do know that documentaries are over.
Jamie: Are you kidding? It’s what everyone is doing.
Josh: Leslie’s documentaries are over. What you’re doing is something else. If everyone is filming everything, what’s a documentary anymore? It has no meaning, it’s just some shit you recorded!
[pause]
Josh: Is that old man talk? Maybe it is. You kids have been told you can do anything. You think everything is out there for you to take. It’s not.
Jamie: Nobody owns anything. If I hear a song I like, or a story, it’s mine. It’s mine to use. It’s everybody’s.
Josh: No, it isn’t! That’s not sharing, Jamie, that’s stealing.
Jamie: That’s old man talk.

Cornelia [looking at a magazine interview of Jamie a year later]: It’s out there. The evil is unleashed.
Josh: No, you were right, he’s not evil. He’s just… young.[/b]

Timothy Treadwell, Christopher McCandless, Cheryl Strayed. They all seemed to share in common – sort of – a need to transcend the “modern world” by trekking through nature. Escaping the rat race so to speak and finding a new persona away from a world hell bent not only on mass-producing commodities but on mass-producing people to.

Two of them, however, are now dead. But Cheryl is still around. In part because she never really went as far “into the wild” as the others. And her own rendition here appears to be entirely more subjective. And considerably more complicated. There’s that part about the dope for example.

And there’s her mom, Bobbi. This woman’s attitude about life’s trials and tribulations will either give you hope or [like me] make you cringe. But no doubt about it: Cheryl sure loved her Mom.

The film basically shifts back and forth in time in order that we might gain some insights into why in the world she would do something like this. And, given her background, it was, well, rather crazy. And yet, truth be told, I was never quite able to really get the connection between her past and her present.

To the extent to which you too feel trapped in this modern world, Wild will either more or less resonate. Me? Nope, I have no inclination at all to commune with nature. Instead, I have managed to come up with the sort of distractions I can indulge right here in my own apartment.

Though I surely do understand why others might be so inclined. But that is but one more rendition of dasein of course. And what makes Cheryl stand out here in particular is the fact that she is a woman. All the other hikers [except Stacey] are men. And only some of which you would call “gentlemen”.

Wanna try it? Okay, but don’t forget to take a whistle.

As for the ending…the “message”…a bit too New Agey for me.

IMDb

[b]The young Cheryl is portrayed by the actual Cheryl Strayed’s daughter.

The real Cheryl Strayed makes a cameo in the film as the woman who drops off the main character at the beginning of the film and wishes her good luck.

The director covered all of the mirrors so Reese could not see herself during the shoot.

The director would not let Witherspoon read the instruction manual to the tent, or the stove. All of the frustration showed on screen was genuine.

Reese Witherspoon beat out Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson and Emma Watson for the role. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_(film
trailer youtu.be/tn2-GSqPyl0

WILD [2014]
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée

[b]Cheryl [aloud to herself]: “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail…”

Cheryl [throwing her other boot down the mountain]: FUCK YOU BITCH!!!

Cheryl [on the phone]: Sorry.
Paul: No, I’m sorry.
Cheryl: For what?
Paul: I…I…I don’t know. I’m sorry that you have to walk a thousand miles just…
Cheryl: Finish that sentence. Why do I have to walk a thousand miles?
Paul [after long pause]: Happy trails, Cheryl.

Cheryl [reading about Marie Curie]: She died a famous woman, denying her wounds, denying her wounds came from the same source as her power.

Cheryl [aloud to herself]: Cold mush is great. Cold mush with nuts. Cold mush with tuna jerky. Cold mush dreams. Cold mush shit.

Frank: You ever think about quitting?
Cheryl: Only once about ever two minutes or so.

Cheryl [aloud to herself]: You’re doing good, Cheryl. Five to seven miles a day. At this rate you’ll be finished in about twenty years.

Cheryl: I don’t know when I became such a piece of shit. I was strong…responsible…I wanted things in life. I was good, you know? I ruined my marriage, and now I’m ruining the rest of my life. I gotta go back to that store. I’m gonna walk myself back to the woman my mother thought I was. I’m going to put myself in the path of beauty.
Aimee: What the hell are you talking about?

Ed: Are you burning what you read?
Cheryl: You want me to burn books?
Ed: Well, you’re not going to become a Nazi, I promise you. But you are going make your pack a lot lighter.

Cheryl [aloud to herself]: Hi, I’m Cheryl. I’m an unaccompanied female hitchhiker. Would it be okay if I got into your car so that you can rape and dismember me?

Jimmy Carter: I’m Jimmy Carter. No relation. I interview hobos for the Hobo Times, just drive all over the USA, and I have to tell you. Lady hobos are hard to find.
Cheryl: Oh, I think you’re mistaken. I’m not a hobo. Second of all, that’s a real thing, the Hobo Times?
Jimmy Carter: Yeah, it’s real enough to pay for my rent and gas. So, how long have you been out on the road?
Cheryl Strayed: I’m not on the road. I’m hiking the PCT. I just had to bypass a chunk of it because there was a snowfall this year.
Jimmy Carter: Okay, so if you’re not a hobo, where do you live?
Cheryl Strayed: I’m between places right now. I’m probably going to live in Portland when I get off the PCT.
Jimmy Carter: This is so fucking cool. I mean, I’ve only spoken to maybe one other female hobo in two years.
Cheryl Strayed: Let me reiterate to you, I am not a hobo and that’s probably cause women can’t walk out of their lives. They’ve got kids to take care of. They’ve got parents to look after.
Jimmy Carter: You sound like a feminist.
Cheryl Strayed: I am.
Jimmy Carter: That’s excellent. That’s fantastic. I love feminists!

Cheryl: Can you stop humming that song? What is wrong with you?
Bobbi: What’s wrong with you? I’m happy! Happy people sing.
Cheryl: Why are you happy? We have nothing, mom, nothing.
Bobbi: Well, we’re rich in love.

Leif: What are you doing?
Cheryl: Praying. I’m praying to the whole fucking universe…hoping there’s a God. Because I want a miracle. I want a fucking miracle! Our mother isn’t going to die at 45.

Cheryl [after store clerk gives her the new boots from REI]: Are you sure there’s not another package?
Clerk: I’m sure. And, lady, if you walked 50 miles in duct tape, ypou got the right package.

Stacey: You get lonely?
Cheryl: Honestly? I’m lonelier in my real life than I am out here. I miss my friends, of course, but it’s not as if I have anybody waiting for me at home. How about you?
[pause]
Cheryl: Why are you here?
Stacey: I don’t know. I just need to find something in myself, you know? I think the trail was good for that. I mean, look.
[They look up at the sunset]
Stacey: This has the power to fill you up again, if you’ll let it.
Cheryl: My mother used to say something that drove me nuts. There is a sunrise and a sunset every day and you can choose to be there for it. You can put yourself in the way of beauty.
Stacey: My kind of woman.

Cheryl: I thought there’d be couches and Kleenex and shit.
Counselor: That’s 50 bucks an hour therapy. This is 10 bucks an hour therapy. So why do you think you were destroyed by your mpother’s death?
Cheryl: Is that your job? To tell the bereaved they’re grieving too much?
Counselor: People grieve in all sorts of different ways. I’m asking you about yours.
Cheryl: Is mine so bad?
Counselor: You’re using heroine and and having sex with anyone who asks. I don’t believe these things are making you happy.
Cheryl: Well, that’s where you’re wrong. When I’m doing these things I am happy, and when I’m not I want to die.

Cheryl [to herself]: Where is that fucking tank?!

Cheryl [voiceover in a letter to Paul]: I have only another 300 miles left to walk. I’m desperate for it to be over. I’m terrified too. When I’m done, I’ll only have two dimes to my name, but I’ll have to start living. I’m nowhere near ready.

Cheryl: God is a ruthless bitch.

Cheryl [voiceover]: There’s no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish. Or die. Or take another course. What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I’d done something I shouldn’t have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I’d done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything differently than I had done? What if I’d actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was? [/b]

He wants to be one of the greats. And, yes, here is yet another film that protrays just how brutally your life can be twisted into knots by those employed to make that come true.

After all, aside from those very, very few who become music prodigies by the age of 6, most folks will have to commit to those endlessly grueling hours practicing and practicing and practicing and practicing and practicing.

So, is it a good thing or a bad thing then if your teacher is Terence Fletcher? And here he is fucking God. In other words, with these guys the center of the universe is jazz. Playing it to perfection. And Andrew decides that he wants to be perfect too. And if that means cutting himself off from the rest of the world and reducing every waking moment of his life down to being the best fucking drummer since Buddy Rich, well, so be it.

The ego and the arrogance on display here is nothing short of breathtaking. But: Is that what it takes?

Here’s the problem though [for me…for most of us]: We don’t know shit about what Fletcher knows about music. So how in the world can we possibly grasp if what he says and does here is…appropriate?

In other words [you’ll be asking yourself], when do his “methods” here border on or actually become…“abuse”?

Besides, for me, the less I know about music “technically” the more it fulfills me. Music is emotion. Or an aesthetic experience. So the more I start to think about it “intellectually” the more I am distracted from the reason I listen to it.

IMDb

[b]During the more intense practice scenes, the director wouldn’t yell, “cut!” so that Miles Teller would keep drumming until he exhausted himself.

Miles Teller, who has played the drums since he was 15, received blisters on his hands due to the vigorous, unconventional style of jazz drumming. Some of his blood was on the drumsticks and the drum set as a result.

Buddy Rich, the famous drummer who Andrew idolizes, never received any formal music education and said he never practiced.

The film is one of the lowest grossing movies ever to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

J.K. Simmons has won 47 awards for his role as Fletcher.

Andrew appears in every scene.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiplash_(2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/7d_jQycdQGo

WHIPLASH [2014]
Written and directed by Damien Chazelle

[b]Fletcher: Either you’re deliberately out of tune and sabotaging my band, or you don’t know you’re out of tune, and that’s even worse.

Fletcher: Do you think you’re out of tune? What are you…there’s no fucking Mars Bar down there, what are you looking at? Look up here, look at me. Do you think you were out of tune?
Metz [after much hesitation]: Yes.
Fletcher: THEN WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU SAY SO?!! I carried your fat ass for too long Metz, I’m not gonna have you cost us a competition because your minds on a fucking happy meal instead of on pitch. Jackson congratulations, you are fourth chair. Metz why are you still sitting there, GET THE FUCK OUT!!
[pause]
Fletcher: For the record, Metz wasn’t out of tone. You were, Ericson. But he didn’t know. And that’s bad enough.

Fletcher: Why do you suppose I just hurled a chair at your head, Neiman?
Andrew: I… I don’t know.
Fletcher: Sure you do.
Andrew: The tempo?
Fletcher: Were you rushing or were you dragging?
Andrew: I-I don’t know.
Fletcher: Start counting!
Andrew: Five, six…
Fletcher: In four, dammit! Look at me!
Andrew: One, two, three, four.
[Fletcher slaps him in the face]
Andrew: One, two, three, four.
[Fletcher slaps him again]
Andrew: One, two, three…
Fletcher: Now, was I rushing or I was dragging?
Andrew: I don’t know.
Fletcher: Count again.
Andrew: One, two, three, four.
[slap in the face]
Andrew: One, two, three, four.
[another slap in the face]
Andrew: One, two, three, four…
Fletcher: Rushing or dragging?
Andrew: Rushing.
Fletcher [yelling]: So, you do know the difference! If you deliberately sabotage my band, I’ll fuck you like a pig. Now are you a rusher, or are you a dragger. Or are you gonna be on my fucking time?!
Andrew: I’ll be on your time.

Fletcher: What does that say?
Andrew: Quarter note equals 215
Fletcher: Count me a 215.
Andrew: One two three four…One two three four…
Fletcher: Jesus fucking Christ, I didn’t know they allow retards into Shaffer. Am I to understand you cannot read tempo? Can you even fucking read music? What is that?
Andrew: Eight note.
Fletvcher: Yes, what is that?
A ndrew: A dotted sixteenth
Fletcher: Sing me a measure 101.
[Andrew sputters]
Fletcher: What are you, in a fucking acapella group? Play the goddamn kit! Stop! Now answer my question. Were you rushing, or were you dragging? Answer!
Andrew: Rushing.

Fletcher [after driving Andrew to tears]: Are you upset?
[Andrew nods yes]
Fletcher: Say it.
Andrew: I’m upset.
Fletcher: Say it so the whole band can hear you.
Andrew [a little louder]: I’m upset!
Fletcher: Louder!
Andrew [louder] I’m upset!!
Fletcher: LOUDER! You are a worthless, friendless, faggot-lipped little piece of shit whose mommy left daddy when she figured out he wasn’t Eugene O’Neill, and who is now weeping and slobbering all over my drum set like a fucking nine-year old girl! So for the final, FATHER-FUCKING time, SAY IT LOUDER!
Andrew [at the top of his lungs]: I’M UPSET!!![/b]

Now. was that really necessary? Some will argue yes, some no.

[b]Fletcher [to the band]: Rhythm and soloists, bar 45 we gonna pick up the tempo there alright? Bar 106, brass, do not forget we sharp that ninth. Everybody remember, Lincoln Center and its ilk use these competitions to decide who they are interested in and who they are not And I am not gonna have my reputation in that department tarnished by a bunch of fucking limp-dick, sour-note, flattered on their girlfriend’s flexible tempo dipshits.

Poster of Buddy Rich on Andrew’s wall: IF YOU DON’T HAVE ABILITY, YOU WIND UP PLAYING IN A ROCK BAND

Tanner: I can’t go on stage, I don’t know the charts by heart.
Fletcher: Are you fucking kidding me?
Tanner: I need the music, it’s my memory, I need visual cues.
Fletcher: Visual cues?
Tanner: It’s a medical condition.
Fletcher: Medical condition? What are you, fucking Sunjay Gupta? Play the goddamn music!
Tanner: I can’t.
Andrew: I can.
Fletcher: You know Whiplash by heart?
Andrew: Yes sir, every measure.

Uncle Frank: You got any friends, Andy?
Andrew: No.
Uncle Frank: Oh, why’s that?
Andrew: I don’t know, I just never really saw the use.
Uncle Frank: Well, who are you going to play with otherwise? Lennon and McCartney, they were school buddies, am I right?
Andrew: Charlie Parker didn’t know anybody 'til Jo Jones threw a cymbal at his head.
Uncle Frank: So that’s your idea of success, huh?
Andrew: I think being the greatest musician of the 20th century is anybody’s idea of success.
Jim: Dying broke and drunk and full of heroin at the age of 34 is not exactly my idea of success.
Andrew: I’d rather die drunk, broke at 34 and have people at a dinner table talk about me than live to be rich and sober at 90 and nobody remembered who I was.
Uncle Frank: Ah, but your friends will remember you, that’s the point.
Andrew: None of us were friends with Charlie Parker. That’s the point.

Andrew [to Nicole]: I’m just gonna lay it out there. This is why I don’t think that we shouldn’t be together. And I thought about it a lot. And this is what’s gonna happen, ok? I’m gonna keep pursuing what I’m pursuing And because I’m doing that it’s gonna take more and more of my time And I’m not gonna be able to spend so much time with you. And when I do spend time with you, I’ll be thinking about drumming. I’ll be thinking about Jazz and my charts and all that. And because of that you’re gonna start to resent me.
And you’re gonna tell me to ease up drumming, spend more time with you because you’re not feeling importrant And I’m not gonna be able to do that. And I’ll just start to resent you for even asking me to stop drumming. And we’ll just start to hate each other. And it’s gonna get very… it’s gonna be ugly. And so… for those reasons, I’d rather just break it off clean.
[a long pause as he stares at Nicole who is dumbfounded]
Andrew: Cuz I wanna be great.

Andrew: I wanna be one of the greats.
Nicole: And I’ll stop you from doing that?
Andrew: Yeah.
Nicole: You know I’ll stop you from doing that. You know that for a fact.
Andrew: Yes.
Nicole: And I barely see you anyway. And when I did see you you treated me like shit because I’m just some girl who doesn’t know what she wants. And you have a path, and you’re going to be great, and I’m gonna be forgotten. And therefore, you won’t be able to give me the time and day because you have bigger things to pursue.
Andrew: That’s exactly my point.
Nicole [incredulous]: What the fuck is wrong with you?! You’re right, we should not be dating.

Terence Fletcher: Try me you fucking weasel! At 5:30 that’s in exactly 11 minutes my band is on stage. If your ass is not on that stool with your own fucking sticks in hand or you make ONE FUCKING MISTAKE, ONE! I will drum your ass back to Nassau where you can turn pages until you graduate or fucking dropout! By the time your done at Schaeffer your gonna make daddy look like a fucking success story, got it, OR, we can let Johnny Utah play the part, you choose.
Andrew: It’s my part, I’ll be on your stage.

Fletcher: I don’t think people understood what it was I was doing at Shaffer. I wasn’t there to conduct. Any fucking moron can wave his arms and keep people in tempo. I was there to push people beyond what’s expected of them. I believe that is…an absolute necessity. Otherwise, we’re depriving the world of the next Louis Armstrong. The next Charlie Parker. I told you about how Charlie Parker became Charlie Parker, right?
Andrew: Jo Jones threw a cymbal at his head.
Fletcher: Exactly. Parker’s a young kid, pretty good on the sax. Gets up to play at a cutting session, and he fucks it up. And Jones nearly decapitates him for it. And he’s laughed off-stage. Cries himself to sleep that night, but the next morning, what does he do? He practices. And he practices and he practices with one goal in mind, never to be laughed at again. And a year later, he goes back to the Reno and he steps up on that stage, and plays the best motherfucking solo the world has ever heard. So imagine if Jones had just said: "Well, that’s okay, Charlie. That was all right. Good job. "And then Charlie thinks to himself, “Well, shit, I did do a pretty good job.” End of story. No Bird. That, to me, is an absolute tragedy. But that’s just what the world wants now. People wonder why jazz is dying.

Fletcher: I tell you man, every Starbucks’ Jazz album just proved my point, really. There are no two words in English language more harmful than “good job”.
Andrew: But is there a line? You know maybe… you go to far, you discourage next Charlie Parker from ever becoming Charlie Parker?
Andrew: No man, no. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.

Fletcher: The truth is, Andrew, I never really had a Charlie Parker. But I tried. I actually fucking tried. And that’s more than most people ever do. And I’ll never apologize for how I tried.

Fletcher: You think I’m fucking stupid?
Andrew: What?
Fletcher: I know it was you.

Fletcher [after Andrew all but takes over the stage]: Andrew what’re you doing man?
Andrew: I’ll cue you![/b]