quote:Originally posted by ralph: Yeah. But it is a comedy for Christs sake...not a lesson in how to live your life...
Yeah, but you know... my impression is that central to its concept and success is an embodiment of a hypocrisy that might be painful to witness over and over again. That while impoverished, black drug dealers are a terrifying social evil a wealthy white one might be quite cute and amusing. LOl! No it's ok, because she's one of us. Just a bit roguish. She's not dangerous like those savage black men.
I don't know how much saying 'It's a comedy' lets it off the hook either, unless it's actually using comedy to attack this complacency on the part of the viewer. If she occasionally strung up one of her dealers that was stealing from her and took a chainsaw to his limbs, then that would be a pretty smart ploy, and would change my pre-conceptions of the programme. But if it's 'just a comedy' and uses its supposed innocuousness to abdicate responsibility for playing up to this hypocrisy, then I'd find that quite insidious and unpleasant to watch.
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: That while impoverished, black drug dealers are a terrifying social evil a wealthy white one might be quite cute and amusing. LOl!
I'm not sure if we're talking about the same show. The black drug dealers in the show I've been watching haven't been portrayed as a terrifying social evil -- quite the opposite really. They're quite loveable and humorous. I find myself wishing that I still got high and was able to hang out with them for an afternoon...
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With that line I was thinking about the wider representation of drug dealing in Western culture in general, rather than in Weeds, which I haven't seen.
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quote:Originally posted by Black Mask: See this knob?
did he do Egyptian Reggae? That would've made it all worthwhile. Especially if he brought on Hot Gossip and the Camel for it... ah yeeeeah.Posts: 979
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This guy reckons that after WWII a front was set up for all the top Nazi scientists and top Nazi spies. That front was... the CIA! America's military-industrial complex needed the spies to keep an eye on the Reds (using their pre-existing second-to-none espionage network) and they wanted the scientists to keep working on the WMDs and UFOs they'd been pioneering, but most importantly some sort of super-efficient zero-point power source. Tesla gets a heads up and the assassination of JFK is explained. I thoroughly recommend this book to likeminded cranks and borderline-alcoholic-pseudo-conspirologists.
quote:Originally posted by McDirts: did he do Egyptian Reggae?
No. He didn't. And even if he had I suspect he would have minced around doing some sort of irritating, fey sand-dance. And then I would've had to kill him.
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I could never call myself a fan, I own one album - the one he did with the Modern Lovers (with, surprise, Egyptian Reggae on it) and I kind of liked the naive charm, but could quite understand how that could rapidly become tiresome.
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I watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom yesterday afternoon, followed by David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Both start with a musical number featuring a female singer, but after that they diverge slightly. I'll give them a total of eight blacke boys.
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I watched Last Crusade last night and spent the whole time wishing that I was playing the Amiga 500 adventure game, rather than watching the film. It's not a good film. It just doesn't have the sinister edge that Lost Ark managed to hold on to. Temple of Doom is even worse. I'm kind of curious about the new one though.
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Temple of Doom is pretty awful isn't it. If it wasn't for the minecart chase at the end, it would be utterly pap. I'd say Crusade is better, mostly because it has an airship, and airships are fucking awesome. But also because it has probably one of the most gruesome deaths you'll find in a supposed family film.
I'm cautiously optimistic about the new Jones film though. I might even raid the lost piggybank (see what I did there?) to scrape together enough money to go and see it at the cinema.
In other news, I watched Lake Placid the other night and found it to be a steamy pile of poop. I'm not sure why this surprised me really. Maybe I just expected better of Bill Pullman.
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I watched AvPR at the weekend. I couldn't make out much, visually the film is gash. The Masketeers deemed it 'Shit' and 'Not as good as Predator'.
quote:Originally posted by Kanye West: watched The Wire series 3. Very good. Still, I was after "that" happened.
I've given the Wire one and a half series, and just cannot like it - I find it a little bit smug really. The whole chess analogy from series one was a rip off of that film with Samuel L Jackson where he teaches his kid to play chess (juice?) and they acted all 'look how clever we are by likening the streets to the chess board' about it. It's not just that though, it's just the general air of them being so assured in the fact that they are making 'something great' - it must just be the most horrible lovey-wank-fest on set.
I also tried to watch Southland Tales, managed 40 minutes before Felix woke up and demanded some attention, but not sure it's any good either - this one suffers from self-awareness - like Men In Black - the first one worked because Tommy Lee Jones played it straight, but the second, too self aware, Southland Tales is like some geeky goth version of Men in Black II
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The Wire is the only series I've been able to get into, and I'll admit that while it's the characters and climactic plots that keep me coming back, satisfaction is derived from the fact that it's very angry and unwilling to make the judgements that could be expected. In that sense it goes beyond entertainment and more into a fairly detailed sociological examination of the inherent classism / racism of the American Dream. That's where I get my jollies. Plus, hiphop, gunplay and re-ups. All in the game, String.
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i watched in bruges. it was pretty casually offensive. luckily it was a saturday evening and i was feeling pretty casual myself, so i enjoyed it a fair amount. if it had been, say, a wednesday, and i'd been feeling comensurately uptight, i might have found it less amusing. but you know. im mellowing with age. also, with the exception of one very discomforting line about a seesaw, a hilarious scene where colin farrell punches a woman in the face, and some fairly entry level homophobia, most of the offensiveness is at the expense of midgets, and i find it really difficult not to laugh at jokes about midgets, mainly because 'midget' is just a really funny word in and of itself, like 'gusset' or 'eggbound'.
anyway. yeah i liked in bruges it was good. i liked it more than happy- go- lucky, which is a cancer on the world of film, and has made me completely reassess my opinion of mike leigh. i used to quite like him, now i think he is a TOTAL CHANCER who hasnt made a really great film since meantime.
quote:Originally posted by Kanye West: watched The Wire series 3. Very good. Still, I was after "that" happened.
A definate " " moment, yeah. I briefly went into a sulk and threatened to never watch it again after that, but am glad I stuck with it. At least he was cool til the end.
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quote:Originally posted by Kanye West: watched The Wire series 3. Very good. Still, I was after "that" happened.
A definate " " moment, yeah. I briefly went into a sulk and threatened to never watch it again after that, but am glad I stuck with it. At least he was cool til the end.
If you two are ing what I think you're ing, I couldn't agree less. That motherfucker had it coming and as for the supervillain team-up who took him out..? They'd make a great Coffin-Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones in any forthcoming screen adaptations of Himes' Harlem Detective novels.
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it's annoying that you can't go on the web and start reading about The Wire, or looking for interviews, because the second you do, you come across giant spoilers.
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See, that's the problem, I've heard season 4 is when it all comes together, and it becomes the best television show ever - but that's what 37 ish hours gone before you even get there - and season one just wasn't good for me - it might all come together beautifully, but it just isn't for me.
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Maxim Gorky has been to see the new films by Auguste and Louis Lumière.
quote: Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows.
If you only knew how strange it is to be there. It is a world without sound, without colour. Every thing there—the earth, the trees, the people, the water and the air—is dipped in monotonous grey. Grey rays of the sun across the grey sky, grey eyes in grey faces, and the leaves of the trees are ashen grey. It is not life but its shadow, It is not motion but its soundless spectre.
quote:Suddenly something clicks, everything vanishes and a train appears on the screen. It speeds straight at you — watch out!
It seems as though it will plunge into the darkness in which you sit, turning you into a ripped sack full of lacerated flesh and splintered bones, and crushing into dust and into broken fragments this hall and this building, so full of women, wine, music and vice.
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watched Eagle vs Shark. Kiwi version of Napoloean Dynamite. Looks / feels like an advert for mobile phones, a banhart-esque acoustic soundtrack plays prominently while two socially inept 'losers' with kooky creative streaks and an inability to live in an adult world have awkward conversations about hipster-approved subjects. Just like in NP, it's hard to determine when it's set, but all the same visual cues are present - cassette tapes, crappy old desktop PC's, cheap sportswear. The lead (played by one of the dudes from conchords) puts on an absurd act of misunderstood 'cool' in order to protect his vulnerable core, and humour is found in the seriousness of his demeanour and his own sense of pride contrasted with our own observations that he is very much not cool. But our enjoyment in mocking his social uncoolness in the face of misplaced self-belief is tempered by his seemingly effortless ability to absolutely nail the kind of things that hipster kids like - tweeness, re-contextualising the past, juvenilia.
the film is about this man meeting a woman who is very similar, and they go to his home town where he is scheduling a fight with a man who bullied him when they were in school. Once they get to the quiet community in rural new zealand that is his home town, he begins a humourously lame (yet endearingly enthusiastic) martial arts 'training' routine, and she gets to understand him, his family, and the community that has shaped him.
The performances are mannered and cold for the most part, and overall the film felt far too much like it was playing to a specific demographic, flattering the 'taste' of audience by rewarding them with a mirror into their own sense of identity.
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after "that" happened.
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