Random Movie Thoughts Thread

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Yeah, it seems like it was done as its artistic style, to kind of lend itself to a lurid exaggeration of things. I think it was meant to emphasize how the tabloids blared updates of cases like this all the time, but when you dig deeper, it's about the real lives of real people. (Like when Joe says, "THIS IS MY LIFE," and not a "story" to be acted out.)

So it was perhaps meant as almost parodic?

So there is a tabloid-like screech hanging over everything, but then there are lots of quiet moments in the film to drive home it's not really about a tabloid approach. Does Elizabeth ever really separate the two? She seems less a dramatic actress and more like a soap-opera actress.

I haven't really paid much attention to the Portman interviews over the years, so good call.

Yeah -- the whole thing with Joe that you mention is kind of showing how she has kept him arrested at an infantile state in some ways. (I think it's great his kids are NOT that way.) It's like their dynamic froze because he had the role of the dutiful boy who wants to please a mother figure and never really embraced his manhood despite having done so in the most physical of ways. During the film, we see him struggling to break out of them and embrace himself as the age he is now. The tricks Gracie uses to avoid conflict and conversation are hard for a boy to challenge because he doesn't want to hurt/displease the woman figure in his life, but it's effectively undermined his adult persona.

Which is ironic, because Gracie herself seems kind of trapped in a girl (rather than woman) persona. She seems very fragile in some ways, and avoidant of conflict/pain.

The whole imbalance in society thing still lingers, in terms of treating sexual experience for boys as some rite of passage even with older partner, whereas girls outside of marriage are treated as if it is a corruption of sorts.

It's hard for me to know; I'm not around that many people. I've heard instances of slut-shaming in high school and college, but not since then in my personal life (perhaps it has come up in the realm of politics), which doesn't mean much. When you are out of school you are just not in proximity constantly to random people like that. Most people at work didn't know what people were doing outside of work, in most cases, which leaves little room for the kind of malicious gossip where that flourishes.

I will note that after the MKL case broken in the 90's, I think we've gradually seen more and more actual cases brought to light and older women prosecuted for sexual escapades with boys who are not legally adults. The quantity of cases in the news now took on more national significance, to the degree I might be seeing more news articles about the women using boys than men using girls. Or at least it gets larger headlines. Lots of cases where a 25-35 year old woman loses her teaching position / goes to jail for having sexual encounters with boys in her middle/high school class. Is it a sign of progress? Yes and no? It still feels like sexual experience for young men is venerated, sexual experience for young women is not.

I have a hard time knowing if I remember other cases or not. I probably have heard of multiple cases, and have not sufficiently remembered the details to distinguish them. I am not knowledgeable about what women experience, beyond what I've read in books or things my sister and ex-girlfriends have told me. I think sexism is real, but I'm not always sure how to talk about it. There's probably a lot less progress than I might think. It's easy to present an appearance of progress, but this doesn't mean it reflects the reality of the situation.

I do think the MKL case was one of the youngest I had heard about, and where the woman actually persisted in it even after getting arrested. IOW, it wasn't the situation, but interest in a very specific boy.

The best I could guess about the repeated images of the butterfly is maybe that it referred to Joe, who it seems was starting to change and come to deeper realizations of what he might have lost of his childhood and young adult years.

I think the image of the pupa busting open and transforming into an adult represented Joe finally starting to come into his own. Perhaps that is why we see him outside the gate at the graduation; he is beginning to leave that behind him.

The talk from Gracie's son by her first marriage about how he wanted to be a music supervisor, made me think that I would be a pretty good music supervisor. Maybe I should do that, lol. I could put on my resume "partipates in TypoC's 'Post a song that describes your current mood' thread."

 

[Totenkindly]

Will Ferrell’s Trans Road Trip Documentary Will Save Lives

When his friend of 30 years came out as transgender, Ferrell suggested they drive across the country together. “Will & Harper” is the sensational documentary about that journey.

www.thedailybeast.com

Thanks, Will and Harper.

...The film is a travelog illuminating where different parts of the country are when it comes to acceptance or having an empathetic curiosity about trans people.

Several of the signposts on that route are with people Steele has known and loved for years, starting in New York with having breakfast with her children—whose wisdom and emotional intelligence is astounding—and drinks at 30 Rock with SNL buddies Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, Paula Pell, Tim Meadows, and Colin Jost. As they travel across time zones, they stay with her sister, Eleanor, in Iowa, whose greatest sorrow after receiving Steele’s email was being clued into the pain that she was in for so long. They visit with Will Forte in New Mexico for a toast to a new beginning, and look back on what they learned about each other when they meet up with Molly Shannon in Los Angeles.

It’s heartwarming to see the embrace they’ve all given Steele. But what about the unfamiliar people? The ones who don’t know her. Who could clock her as trans. Who could bully her. Who could fling slurs at her, or worse.

In many places where one might think Steele would be ostracized, she’s accepted, in fact often with such grace that you might question your own prejudices. (Once you’re done crying at the beautiful scenes and exchanges.) In other places—when Ferrell and Steele sit in court seats at Indiana Pacers game, or when they have dinner at a raucous Texas steak house—the reception is so hateful they can feel it, and, soon, see it, when insults aimed at Steele and outrage that Ferrell would be seen with her flood social media and conservative websites.

Revealing that spectrum of experiences, though, is in some ways the point of the whole exercise...

 

[Totenkindly]

I really love this film.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I believe Gladiator was also Oliver Reed's final film.

I read recently that he was a rumored contender to play Bond when they were looking for a replacement for Connery (then they hired Lazenby instead). I think he'd have made a good Bond, a little rough around the edges. But I'm sure people thought Connery was too "rough" for the role when he was first hired. Reed would've been a good forerunner to Dalton and Craig.

What do you think of this as a theme? (Not the movie itself.)

I've been revisiting it lately and I like it much more than I did then. I'm a huge Jack White/White Stripes fan, but I was disappointed when I finally heard it. I expected it to sound more like the White Stripes, but it sounds much more like something from his first solo album.

 

[Totenkindly]

The James Cameron 4k Special Editions dropped tonight on Amazon. (I got Aliens and The Abyss -- I assume True Lies is now available too.) They are releasing March 12.

They are a little pricey, but there was never a faster case of "Take my money please" than that.

 

[Totenkindly]

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

View attachment 30181

I saw a large picture of him on my sister's phone, and feared exactly this upon seeing it.

 

[Stigmata]

I watched Interstellar for the first time like two weeks ago: first off, let me start off by saying I feel like I was catfished with this film. Here I am, all excited to get my deep space, sci-fi learn on, only to basically spend the vast majority of the film ugly crying about Cooper missing his kids.

"Nobody believe me, but I knew you'd come back..."
"how...?"
"Because my Dad promised me..."

Goddamn you, Christopher Nolan. I'm not crying, YOU'RE CRYING!

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I watched Interstellar for the first time like two weeks ago: first off, let me start off by saying I feel like I was catfished with this film. Here I am, all excited to get my deep space, sci-fi learn on, only to basically spend the vast majority of the film ugly crying about Cooper missing his kids.

"Nobody believe me, but I knew you'd come back..."
"how...?"
"Because my Dad promised me..."

Goddamn you, Christopher Nolan. I'm not crying, YOU'RE CRYING!

But there's a happy resolution thanks to our good friend relativity!

 

[Totenkindly]

...Crying all the way to the bank!

Ellen Burstyn dominates in like a 3 minute performance.
I thought it was kind of wild with Matt Damon not even being in the cast list when the movie dropped.
I think my favorite bits were the two planets and the black hole. They just look amazing on a big screen and/or home widescreen 4K, along with the sound. I wish them circling the black hole had more time on screen, it is just jaw-dropping to see the silhouette of their tiny ship circling that sucker.

Also, the docking sequence. Just ... damn.

And one of ZImmer's more unique and appropriate soundtracks.

 

[The Cat]

I watched Interstellar for the first time like two weeks ago: first off, let me start off by saying I feel like I was catfished with this film. Here I am, all excited to get my deep space, sci-fi learn on, only to basically spend the vast majority of the film ugly crying about Cooper missing his kids.

"Nobody believe me, but I knew you'd come back..."
"how...?"
"Because my Dad promised me..."

Goddamn you, Christopher Nolan. I'm not crying, YOU'RE CRYING!

Yeah Fuck that guy. People need to stop trusting him with their emotions. Sure his movies look great and in the trailers and the first five minutes he makes you feel like you could believe anything could happen, you feel like a god damned emperor...until he gets you. Suddenly you realize you're not watching a comic book movie or a sci fi at all...you're watching a god forsaken drama like some kind of masochist. The part that stings the worst. You let yourself believe. You then blame yourself. The man is insidious.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

...Crying all the way to the bank!

Ellen Burstyn dominates in like a 3 minute performance.
I thought it was kind of wild with Matt Damon not even being in the cast list when the movie dropped.
I think my favorite bits were the two planets and the black hole. They just look amazing on a big screen and/or home widescreen 4K, along with the sound. I wish them circling the black hole had more time on screen, it is just jaw-dropping to see the silhouette of their tiny ship circling that sucker.

View attachment 30186

Also, the docking sequence. Just ... damn.

And one of ZImmer's more unique and appropriate soundtracks.

They managed to get images of real-life black holes a few years after the release, and they ended up looking like this, minus the disk. The absence of the disk could just be due to the angle this happens to be at relative to Earth.

Black Hole Photo Shows Christopher Nolan’s ‘Interstellar’ Wasn’t So Far Off From the Real Thing

In a groundbreaking space discovery, astronomers have captured the first image of a black hole.

www.indiewire.com

 

[The Cat]

They managed to get images of real-life black holes a few years after the release, and they ended up looking like this, minus the disk. The absence of the disk could just be due to the angle this happens to be at relative to Earth.

Black Hole Photo Shows Christopher Nolan’s ‘Interstellar’ Wasn’t So Far Off From the Real Thing

In a groundbreaking space discovery, astronomers have captured the first image of a black hole.

www.indiewire.com

View attachment 30192

Just think if whatever was on the other side would move out of the way we could see what's there, but every time we take a look there's a big glowing eye staring back at us. Ever hear the expression: "They drank you in with their eyes?" With this one. It was literal. There was also more than one. They were terrifying eyes... They were...

Hungry Eyes.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Just think if whatever was on the other side would move out of the way we could see what's there, but every time we take a look there's a big glowing eye staring back at us. Ever hear the expression: "They drank you in with their eyes?" With this one. It was literal. There was also more than one. They were terrifying eyes... They were...

Hungry Eyes.

Now I'm reminded of this:

Can you imagine if you were an astronomer looking in a telescope (or however they do it these days) and you saw something like this? Just imagine a Galactus/Celestial like creature out there...

 

[The Cat]

Now I'm reminded of this:

View attachment 30193

Can you imagine if you were an astronomer looking in a telescope (or however they do it these days) and you saw something like this? Just imagine a Galactus/Celestial like creature out there...

I don't need to imagine. I know.

​

 

[ceecee]

I really love this film.

View attachment 30128

I think this is one of the best kids movies out there, my grandson also loves it and wants to watch all of Jack Black's movies. Hmm...maybe in a few years (he's 7).

 

[ceecee]

Will Ferrell’s Trans Road Trip Documentary Will Save Lives

When his friend of 30 years came out as transgender, Ferrell suggested they drive across the country together. “Will & Harper” is the sensational documentary about that journey.

www.thedailybeast.com

Thanks, Will and Harper.

I know I will need a whole box of tissue for this movie.

 

[ceecee]

View attachment 30181

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1753508571961344259

 

[Totenkindly]

I think this is one of the best kids movies out there, my grandson also loves it and wants to watch all of Jack Black's movies. Hmm...maybe in a few years (he's 7).

Kung Fu Panda is decent Jack Black and might be more his speed right now at least, although he might have already seen it.

SoR works on both a 10-15 year old level and an adult level. Linklater did a decent directing job and Joan Cusack is memorable.

 

[The Cat]

The Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle is a fun Jack Black movie