Jarmusch and Astronomy

I had collected all the Wu-Tang vinyl with the instrumental B-sides, so I could say, like, "I like this floating, damaged beat. I like this stutter, this trippy slow thing." We decided that we won't do cues to the film. You'll hand me off music, I'll put it in the film, but don't score to certain sections. . . . One of the coolest times: He came in with ODB, and we spent the whole day with ODB watching the placement of the music. That was amazing. I think they were on mushrooms or something, though—they were acting very peculiar. Every five minutes or so, ODB would jump up and go, "Yo, yo! Stop the machine! Earth, Mars, Venus: Pick one!" And RZA would go, "I got this. Earth." And he'd go, "OK, start it up again." He was amazing. I wanted to go in and film him—we were going to go in when he was locked down. Go put a camera on ODB and let him talk about any fucking thing he wants. We never got to do it. That's a big regret.

--Jim Jarmusch on working with the Wu Tang Clan.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

At a film festival, after ''Pat Garrett'' had become the latest of his films to be emasculated by a studio, he was asked if he would ever make a ''pure Peckinpah'' and he replied, ''I did 'Alfredo Garcia' and I did it exactly the way I wanted to. Good or bad, like it or not, that was my film.''

Top 5 Groups of People That Want to Kill My Dad

My dad is an old man. That isn't a relative judgment, the man is simply old and only getting older. He has has been for quite some time. What I've realized about him, though is that the older he gets the more people directly threaten his life in new an insidious ways. It's a cruel irony of life that all of the most terrible things in existence are invented in the last quarter of your life and that everything good in the world occupies the first quarter.

The threats to my father are very real and effect his life in blood-curdling ways. Every day of his life is full of threats to his life by jabbering hordes or barbarians just beyond our front gate. God help us if they ever figure out the side-gate's lock doesn't work.

I could go on and on about how and why and who his life is threatened by, but I'll let the internet's most original art form-- the list-- explain it all to you.



5. Afghans.
Here are what we know about the Afghans-- Fact: Since before time have tried to destroy the United States of America. Fact: An Afghan can keep you warm in winter and spice up a boring looking couch, but is not to be trusted. Fact: We don't know that the Afghan people aren't all Freemasons. Fact: Afghans need to be bombed.

We've been in Afghanistan (correctly pronounced "'Ghanstan") for nearly ten years and there doesn't seem to be any progress. We haven't taken any new territory in years and we yet to take the Taliban capital city (Barack Obama has had two years to take them out, why hasn't he done it yet!?). It is clear that this war can't be won by the liberal go to's of "building government" and "counter-insurgency." It is clear that we need to, as my father has pointed out on countless occasions "Bomb that whole place out."

Why the bureaucrats and intellectuals at the Department of Defense haven't thought this up yet is appalling and more than likely due to the Democratic legislature that's dominated the government since the beginning of the Bush administration. We need to drop nukes on the Afghans, it is the only reasonable way to save them from the threat of Czarist Russian marching over the Oxus River.


4. Iranians.
Iranian Muslims and their allies in Iraq are a new and frightening threat to America. We have never had a hand in the Middle East in any way shape or form and for some reason they want to kill us all and feed us all tabulleh until we start wanting more than one wife. Most of their problems can be laid at the feet of Jimmy Carter, who had the audacity not to attempt another autocratic coup like his better Dwight D. Eisnenhower. This is the only point in history in which the USA did something in the Middle East-- and even then we didn't do anything, so who looks crazy now, Iran?

The Iranians present a unique threat to my father and the American public by creating a two pronged assault on our values-- one by creating nuclear weaponry and the other by buying our restaurants and not paying rent. They both present equally nefarious threats and unfortunately with the nuclear threat, we can't just change the looks when they go away for the weekend.

Iran is also Muslim. That means that they are bad. What about Saudi Arabia, you say? No, they aren't Muslims. Who told you that? That is silly. If the Saudi Arabia was full of Muslims, then I think they'd have something to do with 9/11. Oh what's that? You were mistaken? Yeah, I thought so.

Right now an Iranian is trying to build a bomb. While I'm sure the Democrats in congress would love for them to have a fully functional bomb, what we need to do to save Israel and my dad is to get into a third land war in the Middle East. Luckily, unlike the past ten years, we have the man power and cash to fund a project like that. What's even better is that it will all be paid for and taken care of by the time my dad dies, preventing the Iranians from inflicting any sort of economic payback.

People forget about 9/11 because they don't care about our country as much as my dad does. My dad loves his country so much that during the Vietnam War, when he was asked to enlist, he signed up for the Reserve and valiantly protected his country for a week out of every four. Were there any VC sneak attacks between 1966-1968? Nope. Because a healthy mix of zeal and not wanting to leave the state.

Right now an Iranian is trying to build a mosque on Ground Zero, the holiest land in the United States, right after all of the churches and where ever else they attacked on 9/11 (I think it was a field of some kind). Muslims don't understand that Ground Zero is sacred, not unlike their wailing wall or that Cash to Gold place on Raymond Ave. Since all of New York is now a holy site, having been covered in ash, dust, and TV broadcasts of the 9/11 attacks, it is only fair that Muslims build their mosques under the East River, as our constitution dictates. That way Americans can live in safety, without any more Muslims trying to take over our country, possibly in conjunction with the Chinese or maybe rap music of some kind.


3. The Chinese
China wants to take us over. It's already and established fact that China is going to overpower us economically in ten years, forcing us up past being the number one economic power in the universe to last place. That is how lists work. I wish it were not as ugly as that, but it's a fact. China will stop at nothing to butt in line in front of us, which will only lead to a series of butts that will only stop when Zimbabwe or Czechoslovakia or some other country finally steps in front of us. When you start speaking Chinese one day, don't say that I didn't warn you. . . except that if you did say it, I wouldn't understand you, because I don't speak Chinese.

It is clear by their increasing needs to express themselves freely and demands at more government transparency that the Chinese are just trying to lull us into a false sense of security. Once that is done, they'll club us over the head and take over our country just as the Russians did between the years 1956 and 1960 and the Fire Nation did between 1989 and 2003. We cannot let this happen again. The only possible way to prevent this is to warn people by telling them that the Chinese are taking us over. Say is as many times as you need to until the words lose all meaning. That is when you know the words are working.

If the Cold War taught us anything is that the nuances of human beliefs are just smoke screens to take over Vietnam. And we all know how that went. A Communist is a Communist, no matter how much trade he does with us or no matter how much debt of ours' that he owns. They aren't to be trusted and will stop at nothing to. . . do something.

I'm not entirely sure how the Chinese are going to take us over, but their military spending has increased from 13% of our military budget to 15.2% of our military budget in just thirty years. This rapid uptick in spending can only lead to one conclusion: The Chinese are going to take us over. Either by marching over the Bering Straight, into Alaska, then catching a ferry over to the mainland, or by hiding themselves piece by piece in to-go boxes, biding their time in our fridges, waiting for their moment to reassemble and strike us as one.

Also, the Chinese can't drive.



2. Mexicans.
Mexicans are as old of an enemy of America as the Freemasons or maybe the Jews, depending on what mood they're in.

Mexicans have been stealing jobs from Americans for years. The most obvious example of this dates way back to the 19th century, when a cobbler left his shop for the day. When he returned in the morning, he found that Mexicans had broken in and finished all of his cobbling in secret, without his permission. Typical Mexicans, stealing jobs out from under good, hard-working Americans. Also, the Mexicans played crappy accordion music and one of them might have had a baby in the bathroom.

"But, James," you say, sipping your espresso, readjusting the Afghan around your neck, "Mexicans contribute so much to our society."

Oh, do they? DO THEY REALLY?

Let's do a checklist on what these "Mexicans" have and haven't given us:
* Mexicans did not invent the light bulb. If it was up to them, we'd still be lighting candles like shnooks!
* Mexicans can't even get pitas right. A tortilla, more like tortilladon't. . . Wait, that's shit, give me a moment.
* Mexicans didn't win World War II. They didn't even lose World War II. Make up your mind, Mexico.
* Mexico didn't see one of the all-time, greatest films of all time, Scoot Pilgrim Versus the Universe. Mexico said "I'll wait until it's on DVD." How are we going to get a sequel if you don't see it the first weekend, huh?
* Mexicans might be lizardpeople.
* Wait, I got it, I got it. Tortilla, more like tortillyuck! Yeah. That's good punnery.
* Mexicans stole the pyramids from Egypt. You know what else they stole? My six-speed bike.
* My geography might be off, but if you replace "Visigoths" with "Mexicans," it becomes clear that the Mexican people destroyed the Roman Empire. Do you want us to become like Rome, bloated and vain, with wars in the middle east that we can't pay for, hobbled by ineffective government and cheap farm labor? Do you?
* Mel Gibson made a movie about ancient Mexicans. . . I guess that's one stroke in their favor.

There is no job a Mexican does that can't be filled by an Irishman, who's at least white and at least seem to speaks some kind of English.


1. Liberals.
Liberals are the single greatest threat to my dad and the American people. They're everywhere. They're in our schools, they're in our government, they're in our army (when they say we should stop spending/carpet bombing people), they're on our TV, they're in our Communist parties, they're in our key parties, they're in our key clubs, and they're the number one reason Coke doesn't taste like it used to.

The best presidents in US history have all been good, old-fashioned Conservatives, like Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, and all of our worst presidents have been infamous characters like Bill Clinton and his Magical Surplus Tour and Barack Obama, the single worst president in the history of the United States, including that one year a snake got into the Oval Office and we were forced to abandon the White House. No Liberal has done anything good for the people of the United States ever.

In your ignorance of these threats you might say, "But, wait a minute, didn't a Democratic president win World War II for us?" Well, nice try, but FDR only won that war by using "conservative values." It looks like egg is on your face. Oh, and the myth of FDR pulling us out of the Great Depression? Another liberal lie. The corollary to this should be obvious: Any time a Conservative did something wrong it was because he was being liberal (not to be confused with Liberal) or, possibly, his was crippled by a Liberal congress, like George Bush was time and time again. There is no dark chapter in American history that does not have the stink of the Liberals.

For many years the Liberals stole the newspaper off my dad's front lawn. Also, they once left the fridge open and all of the dairy products went bad. Another time, my dad left his shoe-shop for Classic Liberalism.

There is no conceding to the Liberal, there is no understanding or aid to be given to them, because they are inherently stupider than the rest of us, also they chose to be this way, so they deserve everything they got coming to them. So, it works both ways. Being a Liberal is the worst thing a human being can be and about the most despicable. America wasn't founded by these men. It was founded by hard-working men with old fashioned ideas like freedom of religion, right to representation, right to bare arms, and freedom of speech. Good Conservatives like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Payne all pitched in, using their traditional, Conservative values to campaign for

Liberals, unlike the Chinese, Mexicans, and Muslims, don't want to just take everything we have, but erode it completely. They want to take away our rights to destroy the Constitution. Democrats are the greatest threat that we face as a democracy. They want to change the letter of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by doing something. That's right, everyone, something!

Liberals don't care about the Constitution, that's why they pass laws to take away our rights. For example just look what Barack Obama has done! Just look at all of it! Taking away our rights! There was that one thing. Yeah. And that other thing! I bet you feel the pinch of the boot heel on that one. Oh, yeah, and his health care. Yeah! How about that. Taking away our rights by installing the most banal form of government health insurance imaginable! I bet in three months you'll be attatched to a government-created, life-support system that you have to feed your paycheck into just to buy another week of life. But what if you have a bi-weekly paycheck? Too bad. Welcome to Obama's America.

That isn't what our slave-owning, affair-having, rich, white, dieist forefathers had in mind when they wrote our Constitution in secret, having less than half of the approval of the American people for a revolution! They probably had something else in mind! Probably not this! And they probably had more wigs, too!

Also, our president is black! And gays might want basic civil rights! That kind of thing never used to fly in America and the trolley only cost a nickel. Now we don't even have a trolley and our nickle is made out of lead and crushed-up dreams.

If the Liberals had their way and the Constitution was undermined and changed the way they want it not only would slaves be legally treated like human beings and non-property payers be allowed to vote, but women and all kinds of minorities, as well-- including the Irish! Imagine that, a Catholic getting sworn into office! Not in my America. Not in George Washington's America.

So, when you vote this November, don't think of yourself, think of my poor father who's life is in direct and literal danger by the hordes of so and so's coming over the border/ocean/walls/congressional hearings/delis/Mexican restaurants. American liberty is in your hands American, don't fumble it.

Wow, This is Like Some Full-Blown Inception-Type Shit, Isn't It?

I finally saw Inception last week. As much as I feel and think about that movie, for whatever reason I want to keep that all to myself, keep it as this raw bundle of emotion that I would have to untangle if I wanted to talk about it. Plus, I figure you're about as fatigued on Inception yak as I am.

It's a good movie that did some pretty risky things and got away with it. I can leave it at that.

(Photo by Tsunehisa Kimura.)

Ignoring the blockbuster for a moment, the article below is pretty cool.

(found at Bldg Blog.)

This Certainly Looks Like Something

If you hadn't heard, the Irreversible guy has got a new movie coming out.

Should be horrifying.

Choo-choo! Here comes the hype train!

Apparently, I'm not the only person driven away by over-saturated marketing.

The backlash for me is my perception of somebody trying to get me to buy something. There's a large difference between a movie and a used car salesman, but my gut reaction is calibrated to recognize both of those things as the same threat. Or event. Whatever. I have an aversion to that kind of thing and I'm sure, in some way, most of you do, as well. The more desperate and bombastic a thing seems, the less likely I am to check it out. Either because I associate the movie with some annoying sales campaign or a say "Fuck it and fuck you" and not watch a movie out of spite.

If I had a friend who asked me to listen to his band every time we talked, I'd probably do the same thing. If I want to see or listen to something, I'll get around to it, but if you keep hectoring me about it, I'll make a point to avoid it out of principle. It's movies, not the Middle Eastern peace process, I can afford to be a little stubborn.

There's a lot of things like this. In almost all of these incidents it really isn't the movie's fault (or the TV show's or the book's fault) in any way. In fact, if it was a shitty work of art, I'd probably never hear about it again until I start scrolling through my Netflix recommendations. There's simply extenuating circumstances and I don't want to go into a movie-- for whatever reason-- with a loaded idea of what I'm going to get.

One of the best lessons I learned about watching movies-- and it probably carries on to anything in life-- is that the less you have it built up in your mind, the more satisfied you're going to be. That isn't to say that you expect something to be shitty and be happy you got it, because what's the point if that's the case? Instead, I try to judge a movie based on what I see, not on what an ad or a trailer wants me to think. It's probably why we typically trust the opinion of our friends over a critic (unless it's a critic we develope a rapport with), because our friend isn't trying to sell us anything (which only bad critics do, I realize).

I like to check out a trailer once or twice and just ignore the rest, because it doesn't help me as a viewer and it certainly doesn't help me mentally. Big expectations tend to allow for big letdowns. It's why I don't go to midnight showings any more (that and I'm broke), because there's no movie that is as good as waiting an hour in line and staying up 'til fuckass in the morning for. There's too much build up. If I can, I try to go into a blackout and wait for either more substantial news, or the movie itself. If a movie is good, I can wait for it.

And I suppose that's how I feel about all of the hyped up things I've made a point to avoid. Firefly, (probably) Scott Pilgrim, and more classic movies than I can name. I'll get around to those eventually, more than likely, but I want to watch them on my own terms without marketing, fans, or my own stupid prejudices buzzing in my ear and telling me how to think and feel. The thinking and feeling part comes naturally enough, it's all of the other junk I have to make an effort to avoid.

There's a reoccurring them I write and I talk about a lot, which is that you can often believe the right thing without doing the right thing. I see it in politics more often than not, because it's large, it's loud, and it's public. Even the smallest issues can get national press attention and become some kind of bludgeon. It's a natural consequence of human nature that the larger a group becomes, the more fucked up people are going to join up.

Lately the best example of this principle is the Tea Bagger movement. Lowering taxes and government spending is not an unreasonable argument, I don't think, and it's one Americans have historically been in favor of. In principle, it's fine, in practice, it's a headless chicken running around a living room, but somehow still knows how to squawk. Even the name is stupid. Tea Baggers. Really? No one consulted you on that one? I guess part of the problem is that there's no real leader of the movement/mob/ which is why it's lousy with paranoiacs and racists and people who see Hitler in their breakfast cereal. Wanting to give the government less money shouldn't be such a difficult issue to root for, but there you have it.

I guess on the left-end of the spectrum, you've got the anti-WTO protests. Now, I think we can all agree that most corporations would suck our blood dry if given the chance, so demonstrating against them is not entirely out of line. Kicking in a storefront and setting fire to city property is not a good way to get your point across. That makes you look like an asshole.

You get this all down the line, reasonable issues being undermined by the very morons that fight for it. Gun control is full of crybabies. Pro-weed people are stoners. The anti-gay movement is full of Ms. Carmodys. The pro-gay movement thinks a thong with glitter is formal wear. Joss Whedon fans are terrible. Film snobs make Ingmar Bergman far more painful than he's supposed to be. Etc. Etc. Etc.

There's some quote I'm probably stealing, but the greatest counter-argument against a moron is to let him speak. I guess a corollary of that is the surest way to make something good look bad is to never know when to shut up.

Cinecult: Film Noir!? I Hardly Know Her!

Film noir is probably something most of us here love, but I'm also willing to bet that it's something most of us are in the dark about (rim shot). It's a far larger and wider genre than people like Frank Miller present it to be. It's been around since the 1930's and it's as storied and respectable as any other genre, even though most of its source material can safely be considered pulp garbage (but what can't be, these days?).

With that said, I'm going to shoot my mouth off about it. Let's take a journey through film lore, shall we?

Film noir was created out of a few factors in the late 1930's. In general there was a malaise in the American public (and ditto abroad). It hadn't quite recovered from the Great Depression and Hitler's maneuvers half way across the world wasn't making anyone feel any better about their lot in life. Many of the movies were direct adaptations from the hard-boiled novels of the era. Authors like James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett (who wrote about the east coast), and Raymond Chandler (who wrote about the west coast). Even writers of proper literature like William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway could be folded into the heritage of film noir.



Another influence was the surge of German and European film makers fleeing Europe due to the specter of Nazi Germany. As a result, many talented film makers like Fritz Lang, who were a part of German expressionism took what they knew and moved it to Hollywood. While for many, their best work was behind them, the abstract, moody, and stylized lighting of the movement helped steer the genre into what it would become.

During the brief era that film noir were popular and numerous they weren't actually called anything more than B-movies or crime movies or distractions from the various horrors occurring in Europe and in the Pacific. It wasn't until WWII ended that the French discovered a whole crop of gritty, American crime dramas that weren't available for almost five years. It was then that a whole new audience began to notice the similarities of all of these American crime movies-- both good and bad.

So, French critics dubbed the movement "film noir," meaning "black film," which probably came from a combination of the low lighting prevalent in the movies (because why build a set when you could light it dramatically?), as well as the dark themes.

(By the way, if you ever want to be a know-it-all, if someone calls a book "noir" correct them by saying "Uh, actually, it's only noir if it's a film. Duh." Also, you'll get double points for pronouncing it as "new-ah.")

Putting a name on it, probably also helped hasten its end. Howard Hawks and Jules Dassin and all of the great directors never sought to make a movement or a genre or anything besides an interesting film. Once something like that becomes self aware, it's only so long before it starts to get too ornate or rigid for its own good and someone starts to parody it. Things can only become so baroque before they start too become gaudy and ridiculous.

The same thing happened to Spaghetti Westerns. Leone, more or less, started the movement copying and exaggerating the tropes of American Western directors like John Ford. In less than ten years the sub-genre was kaput, a victim of its own success, and by its end, even Leone himself was making parody movies

Film noir, as a movement started with Howard Hawkes' adaptation of The Maltese Falcon in 1941 and it ended with Orson Welles' Mexican border crime film Touch of Evil in 1958.

While the movement and its influences lasted well past the date of 1958, the golden age ended with Welles' butchered opus.

The classics of the era are numerous, but a brief list would include:


The Maltese Falcon.


Casablanca, a rare classic that is better than everyone says it is. The movie features one of the best screenplays of all time, as well as an incredible cast of characters, ranging from Syndey Greenstreet to Peter Lorre and, of course, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.


Touch of Evil, directed and starring Fat Orson Welles, along with Charlton Heston as the single most unbelievable Mexican in film history, it isn't a perfect movie, but it has more than a few moments that make it the last gasp of a great era-- including one of the longest and most impressive single-take crane shots in film history.


Double Indemnity had its screenplay written by Chandler (based off of a Cain novel) and was directed (and written) by one of the great directors of all time, Billy Wilder.

Then there's the French copycats and prototypes, which are equally numerous:


Elevator to the Gallows is an interesting movie, because it's both directly influenced by American film and by ugly pieces of French history like the Indochina War. What makes it stand out is its rather avant garde soundtrack by Miles Davis, who, as I recall, recorded the whole thing in one day. It's also a movie that shows that the French hate police officers.


Les Diaboliques, which was later remade in the 1990's. The film is directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, who is one of the great French directors that didn't make it to the New Wave.

When William Friedkin met Clouzot in the 70's, he told him that he'd be remaking his movie The Wages of Fear. Clouzot then said to him, "Well, it won't be as good."


Le Samourai. I've spoken about this movie a lot. In fact, it's been the subject of no less than three identical sig/avatar combos on this forum. It's the epitomy of cool. It's not a fast moving film, but Jean-Pierre Melville proves that he's a methodical director and that Alain Delon is more than just an obscure punchline in the first season of the British version of The Office (it's the episode where the guy throws the shoe on the roof). Also: Le Samourai was a heavy influence on John Woe-- The Killer is more or less the same exact plot.


Rififi, directed by American Jules Dassin, it's regarded as one of the greatest heist movies and French crime films of all time. It was later heavily borrowed from by Jean-Pierre Melville in his own fantastic movie, Le Cercle De Rouge (see image below).



There could be a whole other thread about the atavistic works and films that made film noir what it is, but if you boiled down the genre, what you would find are a few, basic tropes-- especially in the movies-- that define what film noir is.


There's the reluctant hero (or the plain anti-hero). In Westerns people like Gary Cooper and John Wayne did what was right and punished the bad guys. In film noir, more often than not, the protagonist would get his head kicked in by the sheriff. He doesn't want trouble and he doesn't care about it, it just finds him.

The doppleganger (which is much harder to express in a single still image so I'm going to skip it), but usually the guy is either framing the main character or being chased by him. This character more or less underpines the idea that being a hero isn't all that different from being a scumbag on the street.

And, of course, there's the femme fatale.

The femme fatale kind of gets a bad rap. While she is bound to the Production Code's rule that a sexy woman is evil, they're interesting because, often they're what starts the plot in most of these movies. It isn't Philip Marlowe that goes out looking for trouble, but rather, some crazy dame that-- somehow, every time-- gets him mixed up in everything. They aren't exactly paragons for the feminist movement, but having a women this powerful and this sexual in a genre as murky as film noir was an important part of

Some people like to drop film noir as an idea that went and died and are clever for bringing back, but film noir has always been with us. It's too good of an idea to be left by the wayside and, unlike the western, its nowhere near as costly or complicated to replicate.

In the 1974 Roman Polanski directed Chinatown, a tribute to the classic American detective movie. It was written by Robert Towne,.

Even though the movie didn't intend to bring anything back in and of itself, it did signal a new wave of films inspired by film noir.

Neo-noir, much like the creation of the modern action movie, established itself formally during the 80's. In many ways neo-noir shares a heritage with action movies (which didn't exist as we know them know until the 1980's).

America wanted (and needed) old fashioned films and something to rationalize the ugliness of the past twenty years. Action movies were the more direct way to deal with the failures of twenty years of bad government and in a way both the action movie and neo-noir were a way to deal with American losing its first war, the government transforming into a villain, having drugs run amok in the streets, JFK and MLK having their heads blown off. have feminism and civil rights and Indian rights and everything else turn the status quo on its head, not to mention Watergate, the fuel shortage, joblessness, and the general failure of the Great Society. Obviously the 60's and 70's were no picnic anywhere else in the world, but in America, I think the movies we got later were a symptom of this mass, disappointment with the world.

On the plus side, at least we didn't get another Shirley Temple.

So what movies count as neo-noir?

The original wave would include (but not be limited to):


Chinatown is as perfect as it is depressing. It might have been directed by a child raping, prison dodging goon, but the work itself is flawless. It's kind of ironic, now that I think about it.


Body Heat, which, like many movies on here, isn't great, but it's worth seeing if only for some crazy, hot, sweaty sex the likes of which is rare in American cinema. And as bonerlicious as it is, it's a rare movie (like Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog) that makes you feel how muggy and unpleasant the weather in the movie is.


Blade Runner is a confluence of sci-fi and hard-boiled and the results aren't exactly perfect. It's one of my favorite movies of all time, but it's plagued with fiddling by the studio and didn't get a proper release until a few years ago in its full restored glory. Blade Runner mixes a lot of old LA noir tropes (like the Bradbury Building and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright) with the (then) fledgling come back of big special effects pictures.


No Country For Old Men. The movie was based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy and takes place on the Texas border in 1980. The movie mixes up a lot of ideas about Westerns along with the classic crime/thriller/chase movie. There's lots of things going on in this movie and it's one of the best to come out of the past ten years. The Coen Brothers directed the movie and one of the defining features of their work is that they always seem to be leaning heavily on past features (The Hudsucker Proxy was a throwback to the screwball comedy and O Brother Where Art Thou was based, in part, on Sullivan's Travels).

The Big Lebowski, The Man Who Wasn't There, and Blood Simple are also infused with film noir aesthetics and sensibilities, perhaps more apparently than the movie above.


The Killer Inside Me, which is also based off of a novel (have you seen a theme, yet?) by Jim Thompson which was written in 1952. While movie has received mixed reviews, mostly based off of its alleged misogyny, it's safe to say that with a subject matter like this, yeah, it's film noir.


And, of course, LA Confidential, which was based off of the novel by James Ellroy, a Los Angeles native and gifted crime writer. There's plenty of movies that attempt to copy that era of LA, but none have done it as well as this movie. It's impressive considering that most of the leads aren't from this country.

Genres are like anything else in art, they aren't rigidly defined and even though you can attach a definition and an understanding to them, there's so much bleed over and overlap that you can't ever fully get a grip on it. There's no real end to the Western, you see it in every TV show where someone has a revolver or wears a hat. The Simpsons still do musical numbers, even if it's probably much easier to wrangle a stray cell than a crappy dancer (Now that I think about it, Blazing Saddles was a Western and had a musical sequence). We still have "Women's Pictures" and melodramas, too (Tyler Perry is a fairly shitty replacement for , then again, most people are).

I'm tired now. Now you talk about film noir (feem newah).

Bonus! Here's a great website for photos of film noir. It has a pretty appropriate title.

More of a Bonus! Here's a further link to shit I posted, but have no desire to reformat.

Great, Unironic Moments in Cinema

CURRENT MOOD

CInecult: The Greatest Trick the Movie Ever Played

It's a rare treat to cry at a movie. Movies can strike you in a lot of ways, but it's a rare occasion that something-- anything, really-- makes me cry.

Intense emotion, for me, is a way for a simply decent movie to be propelled into the realm of great cinema. It's a trick, really. Because the movies themselves aren't great, but somehow, it manages to hit me in such a way, at such a time to make me forget who I am and where I am and who I'm with and cry.

The following is a list of movies that have made me cry in one way or another. All of the movies below, I feel the need to say, I am sincere about, as writing this ironically would a completely pointless endeavor.

Seabiscuit-- I had to hold in my tears when I watched Seabiscuit because I was sitting next to my mom at the time. The story of Seabiscit itself is enough to make me cry, but the movie really got to me. Everyone of the heroes in the movie has every reason to be a failure and to be cast away by everyone, but what keeps them going is this inborn urge to keep on moving on. They get hurt because of this, over and over and over again. All of these set backs and all of this suffering ends with one final race, with Seabiscuit and Red racing towards a finish line. As they're coarsing towards the finish line they'll never get to, I couldn't help but think, "I love horses," which is a thought that I still don't fully understand. What I do understand is the feeling of being cut free from everything that is holding you down and just running free as far and as fast as you can. The movie doesn't give us the closure that most movies do, but I don't need to see it, I already know the ending.

Terminator 2-- I've said before that Terminator 2 is my favorite film, but I'm not listing this because it's my favorite film, rather it's my favorite film because it belongs on this list. There's a lot of great things about that movie, the action most obviously. What gets me is that T2 is a story about a crazy woman, a robot, and jevenile delinquint and it manages to make a family out of this. Even though he's an emotionless, killing machine, we still like the Terminator and when he dies, for me, it isn't that he's dying, but that he finally becomes aware of what it means to be a human and to lose things, but to also know that being human is something that will always be foreign to him. He becomes something more than a killing machine and, because of that, he knows that he has to die, regardless of how any of us feel.

Toy Story 3-- Someone said that Toy Story might very well be the best trilogy of all time and I'm hard pressed to come up with a proper counter-argument. There's a few moments in the movie that got to me, one being the scene with the claw. There's a horrific kind of beauty in that scene, where it boils down the essence of the film and says, more or less, here is what we were concerned about the whole time. As much as Andy features into the story, that scene focuses on the toys' stake in all of this. They realize that, even at the gates of hell, they're still going to be together, forever and that's all that really matters. The second scene, the one that really got me, is with Bonny and Andy. I think some people missed the point on that, but I guess it doesn't really matter. What got me is that moving on is apart of all of our lives. There's no stopping what's coming and, in that scene, Andy finally realizes this. Life has to move on, for better or for worse, because that's what life is. But what doesn't have to change is the memories we take with us. People around us might move away or die or anything else, but that doesn't change the effect they had on our life. It isn't just about toys or childhood, it's about the relationships we have in our lifetime. We have to move on, but, in all of that, we still can carry with us the changes they made in our lives. That can't ever be thrown away.

The Return of the King-- In the midst of the rest of this list, this movie doesn't quite seem to hold a candle to the rest of the movies. That doesn't mean that it didn't earn its way on here, though. There's lots of denouments in the third installment of The Lord of the Rings movies. The moment that got me was wne

Saving Private Ryan-- I first saw Saving Private Ryan in the theaters when I was ten and as much of an experience as that was, most of it obviously went over my head. It took me years to realize this. For a long time it was one of my favorite movies. Since then, my critical eye has sussed out that it isn't nearly as perfect as ten-year-old-me thought it was. Though, the older I get, the harder the end of that movie hits me. It might be a typical Spielbergian moment where the music wells up and he goes for the soft spot, but that end still gets me. All of those men put so much into this operation and at the end, this broken, old man, surrounded by his family, still doesn't know whether or not it was worth it. Of course, we all know the answer.

Murderball-- Muderball is a documentary film about full-contact rugby played by quadropeligiacs in wheelchairs. It's a beautiful movie that doesn't once condescend to the people in it. It doesn't coddle or stroke these delicate little flowers, it just shows them as men who have had one or two bad things happen to them as they live their lives as well as they can. There isn't a single moment of sorrow for these men. The main narrative in the film revolves around the Para-Olympic championship between the American team and the Canadian team, which is coached by the US' former coach. I wont' give away the ending, but there's a scene where one of the more obviously disabled Murderball players, weeping, is embraced by his father, who tells him that he couldn't be more proud of his son. It's a moment everyone waits for and even if the guy could walk, it would still hit me like a ton of bricks, because it isn't that he's disabled, it's that he worked as hard as he possibly could with as much as God gave him. The second part that got me was these new Murderball players, some who are veterans from Iraq, who aren't used to being confined to a chair. They've given their all and they've been rewarded with this, but as we see these guys struggle to play the game, in a way, we know that life is going to go on, no matter what it happens to throw at us.

Ikiru-- Without spoiling too much, Ikiru is about a man dying. It isn't over following with laughs, but Kurosawa is a great humanist in that he doesn't get too sentimental and he doesn't have too much of an agenda. He just loves people and he loves the main character, who is slowly passing away as he realizes that he's wasted his entire life. It's a heartbreaking movie in a lot of ways, but what gets you is that life isn't just about some day dying, it's about how beautiful life can be in between the cracks. It's about how the gaps between the pain are what make the pain worthwhile, I guess.

Special Jury Prize:
Band of Brothers-- The biggest part of Band of Brothers is that you get to know most of these guys for three years before the war ends. They're our dear friends. And it wasn't the actual show that got to me, but these old veterans talking about Currahee and Bastonge and the Eagle's Nest that got to me. The whole time, for ten week, these guys talked about the war, about how ugly it was, about how beautiful it was, and then, at the end, after all is said and done, a tiny little caption tells us who these men were. All of the sudden these old, venerable, respectable men, turn into these characters we've suffered with and felt for for all of this time. All of the sudden they're real people and we know, in however minuscule in a way, what they went through. And we know that, yeah, they are a band of brothers and, yeah, we do considered ourselves accursed for not having been there.



Fuck me. Who needs a drink?

What Gay Vampires and Mopey Teenagers Can Teach Us

Some people are just going to hate shit no matter what people do. You can't please everybody. I guess you might think that I'm one to talk about this, but at least I know it's a problem in my life. Sometimes, though, we're so blinded by our biases that we don't pause and think about what something we loath-- Twilight-- has to offer us.

Pajiba wrote an article about attending a Twilight fan fiction panel at Comic Con and it's actually quite amazing. There's a lot of cogent points made by both the writer of the piece and the people inside the panel. It's a glimpse into a world none of us are particularly interested, but, like anything else that exists outside of our little, sheltered spheres, it can be rather profound-- especially if it's edited down to the good bits.

Now the vast majority of fan fiction-- in fact the vast majority of writing-- is bilge. It's a consequence of having printing presses and literate people, so I guess it's a small price to pay for not shitting in holes and having the Bible chained to a stone pillar.

Besides showing us a side of Twilight that very few of us care to look into, I think the article touches on something that effects most of the people I know and consider my friends, which is the writing process. It's hard. It's ugly. And a lot of the time you've got to turn into the person you hate in order to make something good. Lord knows I've written my share of boring, pretentious things, but if I never did those thing, I'd also have never gotten around to writing the stuff I like, the stuff I know is pretty good. Pride, in a strange way comes from pain, and I guess you see it with this article. There's nothing more embarrassing or lame as writing fan fiction-- fan fiction for a property that isn't even all that good-- but when I read this I kind of realized that it was basically training wheels for writers.

At some point we all fell off and ate shit on our bikes and many of us had training wheels on our bikes. It was kind of silly and embarrassing, but it helped us get to where we wanted to be. I suppose another analogy in there is for any athlete. They've got to lose a lot of matches, pull a lot of muscles, and wake up in a state of catatonic agony in order to become the Tier One performer that they want to be. I guess the same goes for writing. Sometimes you've just got to put aside all of the things you don't want to do and accept that this kind of thing is going to hurt.

Editor's Note: Yeah, this was an excuse to tie The Thick of It in with Twilight.

"Reclusive National Treaure"

There's an interview with Bill Murray at GQ. Everyone loves Bill Murray, go read it here.

Bill Murray: That's good. I want those things to work, but I'm out of touch. I have no idea. I never saw the original Office. I never saw this Office. I never even saw Clerks. Like I never saw, what's-his-name, Larry David's show.

GQ: Curb Your Enthusiasm?

No! The other one. With the other guy.

Seinfeld?

Seinfeld! I never saw Seinfeld.

Come on.

Really! I never saw Seinfeld until the final episode, and that's the only one I saw. And it was terrible. I'm watching, thinking, "This isn't funny at all. It's terrible!"

I love you Bill. They aught to clone you or something.