Just exactly how many action film franchises have the dead love interest underwater scene? It’s in Lethal Weapon. It’s in Bourne. It’s in Bond.
I’m interested in that alien environment with no air, float and stare moment as a popular aesthetic choice for the brutal, typical plot development of the lead character.
Is it in other films I’m not remembering right now?
Sure, I wanna be a Jason, but I’m really much more a Nicky. That’s Treadstone Psych 101.
He looked me straight in the face. “People are either likable or intelligent.”
I waited but he didn’t smile, nor unhinge his jaw, which was, frankly, disorienting.
“And you consider yourself…?”
“Not people—” he shot back, then diminished “not like, regular people…"
So, people? I thought.
(aside) So, is this the guy?…okay (full throated) It’s the Wicker Man, right, it’s all those fucking antler movies, okay, but, BUT, here’s the thing, BUT—the movie itself is the straw man, y’get it?, the movie is the fucking straw man. Yeah, “summer blockbuster”, that’s good!
“I know what’s going on. We got a bunch of fucking vampires out there, trying to get in here and suck our fucking blood. And that’s it. Plain and simple. I don’t want to hear anything about “I don’t believe in vampires,” because I don’t fucking believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what I saw, is fucking vampires. Now, do we all agree that what we are dealing with is vampires?”
— Seth Gecko, via George Clooney, in From Dusk Till Dawn, 1996
Suggestions for 3 attribution labels better than “content creator”
Authorrex: authors which really author the shit out of it.
Authorette: authors just getting started with smaller keyboards.
Authoroni: authors like me just repackaging the ramen.
DON’T TELL ARTISTS WHAT TO DO.
Nothing says 70’s movie like a P.E. teacher smoking, except everything else in Carrie. I forgot the opening titles are essentially soft-porn—but no surprise, considering the 70’s, even cinema, was pretty gritty. The real horror? Remove her telekinetic powers and now it’s a Dateline episode.
❡ One last thing on Carrie - thinking that telekinetic power is actually a manifestation of satan’s power is a common mistake, just read the papers! Which makes the smoking gym teacher the real culprit here in my book—perhaps apart from DePalma’s sweaty lens. ← snuck a zinger in!
I’m just noticing that a lot of my ground truth on matters internetty is based on the proposition that the internet is on a continuum with other means of individual creative expression; internet, tv, movies, radio…(skip ahead, brother)…live voice, our bodies. And that it is also this way with tools of individual education, certainly. But (ding!) others may see the thing differently. Perhaps as primarily a token game platform, or a herding mechanism.
Dude, you are full on fight-clubbin’, just…chill a momo.
Whatz you need? Diamonds…hnuh…powdered milk? I get it for you. BRIDE? I get it.
You’re just saying white things.
If in city I get it for you…popcornz, bleachez, nurse…
Stop. No, not you, keep walking…
…shark tooth…cueball…marzshmallow…
…mini-marzshmallow…albino monkey…Betty!…I get it.
…talcum…smash potato…polarz bear…crisco…
…mayonaisez…shaves cream…little bent bit o' plastic spork…
I don’t know if it’s worth five dollars… [reads, looks up] …but it’s a pretty good fucking shake
Atomic Blonde is a great spy thriller movie. But let’s say Atomic Blonde was a spy thriller franchise, spanning decades, wherein the iconic character was portrayed by Meryl Streep, then Sigourney Weaver, then Charlize Theron, and then, say, Emma Stone. Now suppose NotFlicks decides that they stand to make more money if the lead is black but not too black, white women being sort of out of fashion and all, so Atomic Blonde 18 — Direct to Stream stars Trevor Noah.
Exploding Cigars? Yeah, it was funny, y’know? Light your cigar, then — bang — it explodes! Funny right?
A quote from Agnes Callard in an essay Art Is for Seeing Evil There is a certain noble lie that we tell students about art. I was told it, and I hear it retold often by those defending great books and humanistic education. The lie is that art is a vehicle for personal moral edification or social progress, that art aims at empathy and happiness and world peace and justice and democracy and the brotherhood of man.
I’m American, honey. Our names don’t mean shit. — Butch Coolidge ❦ A fictional character brought to us via Quentin Tarantino, an actual person, brought to us by incomprehensible genetic material interacting with equally unquantifiable life experience. With that said, the Supreme Court should just stop trying to be stars and instead just a’get on to a’justice’in, as hard and thankless as that job might be.
Goddamn time traveling robots, covering up their goddamn tracks. I knew it!
Tenet Consulting, Inc.
”We tell you what already happened before it already happened again, like we said.”