rigorousintuition.ca

Shawshank Redemption

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azWVPWGUE1M

The man up and vanished like a fart in the wind.

Who's better at acting (out) than Sam Rockwell? What happened to Frank Darabont?

The Green Mile http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVzbChYhcH8

For Chigs...



You, my friend (if I may), are lucky enough to be both. I have always thought of you as the the member that balanced out for the group, those who practiced "oh so smart" but had no clue as to the definition of "oh so pleasant".

Thank you.



~C

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This film, starring Dennis hopper, is the most RI film ever. And no, it's not Blue Velvet. It's "Tracks"
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No point giving a spoiler warning on the next vid, since a film like Tracks can't be spoiled by "revealing" the "ending", so here's the final scene, in memoriam of Dennis Hopper. A lot of people, including some great film critics, think this scene is melodramatic and pointless and way over-the-top, and deride it (and the film as a whole) as a little Actor's Studio exercise, or as some kind of advert for Janovian Primal Scream therapy. Those people, and critics, we can be almost certain, are all clueless pricks.



Kudos to Laodicean for the "There Will Be Blood" video. I had forgot about that bit, and it's topical relevance to the Deepwater Horizon incident. Daniel laying a deserved annihilation on Abel's personality and worldview is always worth seeing as well. A lesser film would've shown one or the other of them as being right - but they're both as bad as each other. That's realism.

Too many great scenes posted to laud them all here, but Mac done good with posting "Naked", and Gouda especially for updating Mac with Johnny's Chernobyl/Wormwood rant, which is both deeply of it's time, and timeless. Like all the best stuff.

'Blue Velvet' keeps popping up here and there and I'm reminded that it's one of the best films I've never watched to the end. It's too reminiscent of where I lived and those to whom I was exposed during early childhood (my brother, on the other hand, loved the film because it reminded him of those same places and people and it's funny--I mean, what's not to like about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CSoWg3nBeU?). When it was released, my just met future husband took me to see what I thought was a David Lean film . I naively settled in expecting a 'Dr. Zhivago' or 'Lawrence of Arabia' kind of film experience that morphed into something so bizarrely riveting, but traumatizing, I finally bolted from the theater 3/4 of the way through . Years later, I tried to watch it on dvd, twice, but didn't get any further.

David Lynch really taps into the over-the-top surreal experience of weird, outrageous behavior and a comedy of fear; so much so, I have to wonder about his own background. What's he about? Maybe I'm just projecting my own experiences onto someone who's really a genius raised in a 'normal' 1950's family. I think 'The Elephant Man' is a masterpiece in filmmaking, I really liked 'The Straight Story' and watched 'Twin Peaks' in small doses. I'm not really going anywhere with this, except sometimes I wonder about the childhood experiences of visionaries like Lynch. Alice Miller wrote a book, 'The Untouched Key', which analyzed traumatic childhoods of a number of artists and political leaders; Lenore Terr did the same with Stephen King and others in her book, 'Too Scared to Cry'. Both are fascinating reads.

In my veiw, Cordelia, you have figured it all out already. Blue Velvet is a comedy. It was intended as such by it's creator. It's that simple.

It is a terrible and monstrous black comedy, like Happiness, like Orphans, like Dollhouse, like Four Lions, and like Fire Walk With Me.

Most of all, it's like similar Japanese body-horror films from the same era - Tetsuo: The Iron Man, etc. - which were also, somehow, supposed to be comedies. It's a lot like that. And it's a lot like Robocop too. I.E... shite but funny.

Funnier than it is deep. But deeper than it is funny too. I can't figure it out any better than anybody else, come to think of it.

Interesting; I don't know about it being made intentionally as comedy, but probably satire. I guess sometimes genre is in the eyes of the beholder. One (wo)man's drama is another's comedy and vice versa. The film did seem to usher in a new sub-genre (for lack of a better term) of film-making; one I stay away from because I just won't put myself through certain violently bizarre cinematic visions. Quentin Tarantino comes to mind, though I'd watch 'Blue Velvet' 15 times, or anything by David Lynch, before I'd watch 15 minutes of most of his films.

?

The Full Monty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCw-7rk_Oag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BERzL1Qmu58

Kudos to Laodicean for the "There Will Be Blood" video.

Thanks. It's pretty remarkable to watch it now, with events unfolding in the Gulf...

Here - have a milkshake.

Kudos to you for the Dennis Hopper clips! I'm on a Hopper kick as of late. I was looking on YouTube for scenes from Double Crossed, a made for cable TV movie where Hopper played Barry Seal. I thought it was an excellent film. I have not seen it since it came out in '91. May have to re-visit that one.