I can understand the appeal of Twin Peaks, but not of Lynch’s other movies, which I found unwatchable. Prove me wrong.

Seems reasonable and simple. I agree with most of it, Pi being my favorite 90s indy flick.

But it’s a good thing I didn’t have a full coffee cup in my hand when they call The Big Lebowski a sports movie, I’d have spewed on screen and keyboard both.

Getting high is a sport? John Goodman and Jeff Bridges were athletes because they hung out at a bowling alley?

Love them eggheads. Can’t get their categories straight.

1)

2)

3)

Probably the greatest movie of all time.

“People want to go where they wanted to be led.”
— Edward L. Bernays

I read The WEIRDest People in the World recently. It is claimed that the Big Five traits only really work with WEIRD people.

Does anyone know how well these personality tests work on African Americans?

this new academic study at PsyArXiv

PsyArXiv = Privy sax.

he won me over with the extremely Wes Anderson[e]y The Grand Budapest Hotel

Anthony Perkins did a very Keith Carradiney performance alongside Geraldine Chaplin in Remember My Name four decades ago. Indeed, I always misremember it as Carradine’s. Keith and Oona’s spawn did several other films with Alan Rudolph; perhaps that’s why.

I bring it up because it was an intentionally boring story about colorless people, and the only thing that sticks in the mind after 42 years are the news reports every time a character passed a TV or radio. While all this was(n’t) going on in L.A., two million people were killed in an earthquake in Budapest.

(Which doesn’t even have two million.)

Adding to the general creepiness is the fact that Mrs Perkins, the Italian-Swiss-French-Egyptian-Lithuanian-Jewish-American Berry Berenson, also had an important role in it. Years later, long a widow, she boarded a plane in Boston. With Mohammed Atta. Ouch.

Another misrememberance that wasn’t Carradine either is Brad Dourif in Wise Blood. That wasn’t Rudolph’s, but John Huston’s.

“One interesting aspect of this is that the Neurotic like scary movies. In contrast, I’m rather jumpy, so I don’t like loud noises, much less serial killers jumping out of the closet.”

Most of the mentally fragile leftie girls I’ve known were scary/bloody movie fans, I could never understand it. They’d watch some slasher pic then talk about male violence in the same week. Or was that the connection?

But back in my youthful days, an awful lot of people never went to the cinema. I think in three years around age 21 I only saw two films (Star Wars and Close Encounters, and I was pretty intoxicated for the latter). My student cohort weren’t big movie fans. But first VHS, then DVD and now streaming, means that the programming is relentless. My daughter at 20 has probably watched two or three times as many films as I’ve seen in my life. Mostly romcoms, admittedly.

OK, thanks, I’ve never watched Lost Highway. It looks as confusing as Mulholland Drive and even more sinister. Lynch has a very dark mind. We need wholesome, inspiring and Christian movies, not more of this occult stuff.

You may like this one:

and horror movies [The Shining, Alien, Psycho] have fans that are less Agreeable and Extraverted and more Neurotic.

So does this explain why horror movie fanboys are among the failed director category than the working director category? Being both neurotic and less agreeable along with introverted seems to stunt your professional progression. I assumed the relationship might simply be due to how easy it was to make your own horror film and so they tried to get into film school more than fans of other genres since they’d had a go at making their own.

It also describes Quentin Tarantino to a tee, the seemingly only hardcore horror fanboy who has seen major success despite his odious personality.

The best sports movie was “The Monty Stratton Story,” with Jimmy Stewart.

Grand Budapest Hotel, much like the memoirs and stories of Stefan Zweig that inspired it, is putatively a liberal anti-fascist film, and of course Anderson has even added a “person of color” as a hero, Zero Moustafa (an arab-ish character played by a Guatemalan actor).

Ironically though in today’s “woke” climate the film reads more like a tribute to the glories of a now lost well-ordered European civilization, and is very harsh in its treatment of Soviet-style Communism in Central Europe. The Moustafa character is an assimilationist who adopts and cherishes the superior values of his European teacher, and does not go about preaching the glories of his shithole country.

It goes to show how far left we as a society have moved, that this movie is probably the best “conservative” cultural achievement of the last decade. It is also interesting that most hipsters haven’t caught on to that yet.

This is a related concept to Warne’s myth #35, “Everyone’s about as smart as I am” belief, an inability by the elite to comprehend that normal people don’t think like they do.

Me: Grosse Point Blank…

Long range rifle
Range
Time-bomb
Man wears glasses (???)
Assassin
Reunion
High school reunion
High school
Suburb
Hitman

Based on those top ten keywords, the best I can come up with is Low Neurotic, but based on the ex-GF ex-BF relationship and Proposal tags later in the list, also High Extraversion and High Conscientiousness.

Oh don’t even bother with Lynch, or his fans. His films are incoherent garbage and his fans are certifiable.

There is no positive way you can engage crazy.

Where do Whit Stillman movies fit in?

NOTABLY, all DNNs [Deep Neural Networks] face the issue of overfitting as they learn, which is when performance on one data set increases but the network’s performance fails to generalize (often measured by the divergence of performance on training vs testing data sets). This ubiquitous problem in DNNs is often solved by experimenters via “noise injections” in the form of noisy or corrupted inputs. The goal of this paper is to argue that the brain faces a similar challenge of overfitting, and that nightly dreams evolved to combat the brain’s overfitting during its daily learning. […] Finally, it is worth taking the idea of dream substitutions seriously enough to consider whether fictions, like novels or films, act as artificial dreams, accomplishing at least some of the same function.

Gosh, where to begin:

1. Do most modern movies have “plots” anymore? If so , could have fooled me.

2. Let us assume, for the moment, that the OCEAN Personality Model is not complete gibberish.

There remains central problems with the analysis:

Going to the movies is typically a group, or at least dual, activity. The entire set of research only really has much value if you isolate out all the instances where people are going to see a movie alone, as otherwise there is a lot of compromise in choosing which movies to see. As an example, I got dragged off to see both Pitch Perfect and LaLa Land and really liked both films. Even so, I would have never seen them on my own, as Musicals just aren’t my thing. OTOH, I once got my Aunt to watch Enemy at the Gates with me, which I am pretty sure she wouldn’t have seen on her own. And won’t watch again.

Then there are the problems with internet date collection: people are far more likely to rip a film they hated than praise one they loved, and positive reviews, especially on Social Media, are so Bot influenced as to make data point collection completely worthless. Unless this analysis took great pains to insure it was getting actual human input, the whole thing is major league GIGO. (Most everything on Social Media is.)

So, assuming proper controls were used, one can safely say that there is a relationship between one’s personality and the films one likes. It is a subset of the reality that there is a relationship between your personality and everything you like, so…….

back to GIGO.

And it is unforgivable (and wierdly un-Adersony) that at one point the secondary protagonist breaks the fourth wall to bark at the audience that they have no right to reject “refugees.” I thought the most Adersony one was Moonrise Kingdom. Hotel has a cartoonish version of charm and right under that layer is the crudest hate letter you could write. People are fooled by extra words. It’s like how Obama “isn’t” saying he hates America when he says he wants to fundamentally transform it.

I was just thinking about this the other day: who do these “dark comedies” appeal to? I don’t mean the ones with a lot humor, or that contain strong fantasy elements, like supernatural stuff. I mean the more down-to-earth ones that just seem to be about serial killers, like Heathers (1989), the German movie Funny Games (1997), or Better Watch Out (2017).

Regarding Asian films: Korean and Chinese movies have censors. Sometimes you wouldn’t know it, but they are there protecting the morals of the youth. I bet if you went back to when the Hays Code was actually enforced, Hollywood movies would similarly became less affected by openness. Though, I am not sure Japanese films have strong censorship, and I definitely get a unique impression from them. Like, they either have more shy characters, or are just better at depicting shyness. Maybe, it is just something more relevant to animation.

I’ve often thought that good censors would have certain traits which are missing from creative types – more impulse control, greater sense of disgust.

I thought the model there was Sam Raimi, making a dirt cheap jumpfest with some thought and riding it to better success than a “real” movie, but then that’s also similar to George Romero and Tobe Hooper. And John Carpenter.
I’m not into horror, but considered that a failing rather than sensible. A lot of “horror” is actually sadism, a kind of porn where the plot is an excuse to see suffering inflicted on people you do not hate. Often it starts atheist and then becomes highly moralistic, not out of conviction but as a result of writing itself into a corner.
——
Sorcerer is an awesome movie, a movie so good it compels you to gratefully forgive the two (2!) times its special effects completely fail (it has these dummies that are clearly dummies, but the momentum carries you right past). Where does it qualify?

That table of correlations (“Supplementary Figure 1”) has a bunch of unintentionally interesting pairings. For example,

• The longer, bigger budget, or newer a movie, the less that people in relationships like it, perhaps suggesting they have better things to do.

• People in relationships also skew heavily more open, neurotic, old and female. This may confirm the impression that Facebook is mainly anxious married women having whatever is the female equivalent of d**k-measuring contests.

• People not in relationships are younger, more male, more conscientious, and like movies more. So maybe a secondary Facebook demographic well-meaning young loners caught in a web of social media and confected Hollywood reality.

• Movie ROI correlates with almost nothing, except negatively with movie budget. Is this a confirmation of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (except with the footnote to producers not to let your spending get out of control)?

• Movie rating correlates well with runtime. Is this a case of Ben Franklin’s advice that to get someone to like you, make them do you a favor: after donating so much of your time to watching that movie, you have to justify that it was good?

• There is a strong correlation between the recency of the movie and the size of the budget. This may be a sign of the approaching Blockbuster Singularity, or (more likely) it is just currency inflation.

From a decade or more when I was interested in this… openness correlates fairly strongly with IQ. Disagreeableness with testosterone. I am a very open, conscientious but disagreeable bastard. 😉 Hence why I like to argue on Unz with randos on the internet. Doesn’t everyone?

A few things jump out… movies like Pi, sure. No wonder there. Movies that reward thinking. Surrealism. Dark comedies. Hallucination. Smart people like highly rated stuff. Maybe more savvy people rate stuff too.

Oh, and meet a Wes Anderson protagonist…

Never gets old!

Big Lebowski isn’t a sports movie? So now you’re trying to tell me bowling isn’t a sport. C’mon man.

Try “The Straight Story”. A very non-David Lynch David Lynch movie.

That’s pretty much how I feel about all of the Wes Anderson movies I’ve seen. Overly dry humor combined with stilted unrealistic dialog. The Royal Tenenbauns ranks as one of the worst movies I’ve ever sat through.

Fascinating. I’d like to see this type of study run with TV series, which usually fit more neatly than movies into specific genres and categories, and provide a smaller universe of possibilities with more common ground. Would people’s TV-show habits reveal more than their movie-watching habits?

I’m skeptical here because my own taste runs to extremes — I prefer dark conspiracy movies such as Parallax View but also cheerful kiddie cartoon stuff like the Minions. I like sports much more than sports movies (except for Rollerball, which is really a conspiracy flick). My wife would be easier to nail down — she likes anything “heart-warming” or “life-affirming.”

“Patch Adams” sucks. SUCKS. ]I know you’re dying of a horrible disease, and there isn’t anything medicine can do for you so…laugh!!! THANKS,Doc.

Recall Robin Williams got his Oscar for “Good Will Hunting”, the only movie he put away the manic over the top crap for 90 minutes.

Have a soft spot for “Party Monster” because the retired detective in the very last scene was a mutual friend, hung out at a bar we used to frequent in our misspent youths. Had a hot PR girlfriend .

Based on a sample size of one (myself) it seems fairly valid. I’ve seen all of the Low Extroversion movies and none of the High Extroversion ones; most of the High Open to New Experience ones and none of the the Low; all but three of the Low Agreeableness ones and none of the High Agreeableness ones. The other two categories Conscientiousness and Neuroticism haven’t been listed with movies here.

It’s funny how all but Aliens in the Low Extroversion (introverted) list of movies are Japanese (Ghost is a remake of the anime original).

I was amused by ‘gay slurs’ being Highly Extroverted which of course makes perfect sense. It strikes one as odd that NYC and Manhattan show up so often under the High Conscientious elements category – is it down to movies about moral decisions involving cops and mobsters in that setting such as Prince of the City?)

I suspect The Shining, Alien, and Psycho can appeal to neurotics because they have a lot of psychological tension and trigger self-exploration. As opposed to jump scare or slasher movies. But that’s just a guess.

It’s ironic that liberal film critics aren’t open-minded enough to realize their worldview is not the only legitimate way to look at things.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, is there any truth to the rumor (that I’ve just started) that Biden’s first official act will be the purchase of Epstein’s Lolita Island to be the new Camp David?

Film criticism is really easy.

Good film: Life of Brian.

Bad film: nearly all the others.

Only genius of film: Buster Keaton.

And there you have it.

While we are talking about sports movies, if you are about my age (mid-60’s) try to convince me that Bang the Drum Slowly is not the best movie ever made about sports.

I always like those movies featuring one man going against the system or one man taking a stand, and Taxi Driver is indeed one of those movies as well as the original, “Death Wish” ( the only “Death Wish” that was even close to watchable), “Dirty Harry” ( the original and best of the bunch), “Serpico” with Al Pacino, “And Justice For All” with Pacino as well. We have a common theme here, one guy going against scum, corruption, the status quo. Like Travis Bickle said one man who wasn’t going to take it anymore. Even though the Billy Jack movies were anti-White to the core, I equate the Billy Jack character as sort of a leftist Dirty Harry. The original movie featuring the Billy Jack character, “The Born Losers” wasn’t so anti-White and I found it the most enjoyable. Watching it now, it is extremely dated and even laughable because of the dated dialogue, nonetheless I still watch it for the theme of the big heart loner vs. the corrupt world script.

I’ve done a little pro book and movie reviewing and, back in my NYC media days, I knew a lot of pro reviewers. One thing I can testify: it takes a special kind of person to think that he/she deserves to be paid for expressing reactions to books and movies. A few were generally sensible people who were grateful to have a groovy gig, but most were fuckin weirdos.

One thing that makes Steve’s pieces about books and movies valuable and enjoyable is the way he de-emphasizes the opinion-and-reaction dimension of reviewing and foregrounds instead reflections, issues, observations and information. He’s genuinely interested in other people and the larger world, and he wants to give readers material that other reviewers aren’t coming through with. Value added!

In my own case, I was MUCH happier blogging about movies and books than I’d been publishing conventional reviews in pro outlets. The main reason was that as a blogger I could play a role that suited me: being a dinner host who’s setting off a conversation. Everybody join in! As a pro reviewer, you aren’t hosting a party, you’re more like someone at a podium addressing a passive audience, carrying on like a Big Brain and hoping to impress. I’d always been uneasy with that understanding. Why am I up here and why are you readers down there? Let’s circulate and compare notes instead. Opinions and reactions can be cool, but let’s treat ‘em not as ends in themselves but as the beginning of much more interesting conversations.

If you don’t like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Elephant Man or Mulholland Drive, you are simply stating you suffer from Low Openness. Those are great and also critically acclaimed films.

As an old market researcher turned movie reviewer, it has always seemed obvious to me that different kinds of people like different kinds of movies, and that that’s perfectly reasonable. This is not, however, a common view among film critics, most of whom became critics because they have strong views on which movies people should like.

Roger Ebert agreed with your assessment. People always asked why he would give a thumbs up to a Steven Seagal movie, and he said he was not comparing it to Terms of Endearment, it was just that it delivered what it advertised it would and, for people who want to see that kind of movie, he felt that they would enjoy it.

I usually find that movies that are highly hyped are movies that I don’t care for. “The Shape of Water” is one recent example. Anything by Quentin Tarentino follows the same theme, blood porn and Spike Lee makes movies that I find to be unwatchable. I liked one movie by Guy Ritchie, “Snatch” and his first Sherlock Holmes movie was good, but then he turned out junk like “RocknRolla” and “The Gentlemen.” My opinion and no one pays me to watch movies and then write a review. I also never go to the movies, everything I watch is on TV.

Does this mean AA women rank high in conscientiousness? I confess I don’t see the connection with expressing opinions confidently.

Hm I thought those final scenes where they were stopped by border guards alluded to the end of the multicultural Habsburg empire and replacement by hostile nationalist republics after WWI. I suppose it could in fact allude to the later Communist period after WWII but I don’t think the timeline works out (chronological gap too big).

Steve has now wasted an incredible amount of time on movies, one of the main propaganda vectors of the enemy.

a sign of the Boomer i’m afraid. one of several reasons that Boomers were doomed to lose the country to leftists. no matter how openly the left attacks Boomer America, Boomers just can’t quit television, movies, or pro sports leagues.

Boomers WERE able to give up music, or at least current music, but that’s only because it’s normal for old people to stop paying attention to new music. well, they aren’t missing anything here at least.

I find Lynch’s movies to be borderline unwatchable, but also great works of art. (I should also note that I usually rise to the guy’s defense because his art is clearly quite conservative, even reactionary, and cuts against the narrative that great artists tend to be leftist.)

Anyway–many years ago I had a lot of time on my hands and rented Mulholland Drive. Watched it. What the hell was that? Couldn’t follow the plot, wasn’t sure if there was a plot. At any other time in my life when I was busy with 1000 other things I would have returned the movie to the video store and that was that, but, again, a slow time for me, so I watched it again. Even without understanding the plot I had thought a lot of the imagery was compelling so, hey, why not. Second viewing: still didn’t understand what was going on.

At this point I had the idea to do an “internet search”, which at the time was a relatively newfangled thing, about what this was all about. Again, had a lot of time on my hands. I was able to find some fairly credible analysis of what Lynch was going for, and watched it again with this in mind, and was pretty blown away with what he had done.

What I think Lynch was going for in MD was to make a movie that, instead of providing an objective window into another reality, provides a window into someone else’s subjective reality. I don’t mean, ‘gives you insight into their subjective reality by observing as a sympathetic third party’, I mean that it is literally their reality and nothing exists outside it. That is, you see a person’s rationalizations, justifications, etc., of their own sins and weaknesses not as a third party, but rather through their eyes, and thus truth and falsehood are all jumbled up. The viewer’s perspective is not that of a fly on the wall as is the case in 99.99% of movies, rather, the viewer is stuck inside the protagonist’s head, and never leaves, not even for a moment. Even when you are seeing events that directly involve the protagonist, they are shown as the protagonist thinks an outside observer would have (or should have) seen them, not as they actually were. The plot is so difficult to follow because the protagonist’s view of reality is so warped that there are only a few subtle hints as to what objectively happened in reality (or at least, the movie’s reality.)

To do this with words would be one thing; to do it with film, which by its very nature provides a superlative facsimile of the real world but no window into inner human thought, immensely more challenging.

Did I enjoy Mulholland Drive in the conventional sense? If you had measured my brain dopamine levels as I was watching it, probably not. But here I am 20 years later and can describe not only the plot but the viewing experience because the damn thing was so unique. I’m generally not someone who likes things that are different just for the sake of being different. I don’t like Jackson Pollack or Damien Hirst or even Picasso for that matter. But Lynch tried to make something genuinely new and different in an art form where it doesn’t seem like there is much new under the sun, and in my opinion he pulled it off.

Having said that, while I love the movie, I have never once recommended it to anybody, and likely never will.

…blacks expressing their opinions less diffidently…

It’s always been my experience that blacks are extremely consensus-driven within their in-groups.

I have a fondness for sleazy, badly-dubbed Indonesian action movies:

…I found unwatchable. Prove me wrong.

This is either asking to prove that Lynch is objectively unwatchable, or that you personally don’t actually find him unwatchable. Neither request is reasonable.

AAR, these sort of negative comments about weird or surreal things always make me think of a teen girl revealing the astonishing fact that she doesn’t like spiders.

The thing is, re: movies on the list for high agreeableness, and other high traits, most if not all of the films on the list did not perform spectacularly at the box office. If they’re all that regarding desirable traits/characteristics, then why didn’t they find a mass audience? Why were many of them flops?

Someone should create a list of high/low traits of movies that actually, you know, turned a massive profit. I’ve never quite understood how such critically acclaimed and award winning directors have created works where the majority of them have not turned a decent profit, much less have scored a box office credible smash hit.

Example: An art house hit that was critically acclaimed and actually, you know, did do well at the box office, Joker. Where would that film rank on the list of high/low traits? I would also ask Steve, where would the globally successful DC & Marvel franchise films rank/place on these lists?

Sometimes it is best to examine the films that actually have had an audience and didn’t tank, or at least were smash hits during the years of their original release.

Unless it comes down to “You can study Shakespeare and be quite elite, and you can charm the critics and have nothing to eat.”

“The Public is never wrong”–Paramount head (during Hollywood’s golden age) Adolph Zukor

One way I measure a movie is how long I continue thinking about it afterwards. Some movies leave absolutely no impact and I forget about them as soon as I am done watching (which sometimes is before the end). Other movies stay with me for a few days, like a sun tan. The most impactful ones leave something permanent.

I consider myself fairly extroverted, but I must have a strong internal dimensional because I love all those studio ghibli films (except Kiki’s Delivery Service, but when you’re first experience of Miyazaki is Spirited Away, Nausicaa, and Princess Mononoke and you and your friend spend an entire hour watching it before realizing yes, this movie really is just about a young girl and her delivery service when you were expecting a rip-roaring, and psychologically and culturally deep experience, it’s a bit of a let down) and I haven’t even heard of the extroverted list.

Major Wes Anderson fan…but I’ve watched Dredd, the 13th Warrior, and Monster Squad so many times…

I speak as someone who is neurotic, less agreeable, and introverted. Conducting studies like this might help researchers stay away from drugs and off-brand sex to compensate for their meaningless lives. Might.

There’s a subgroup of the population that isn’t much taken with movies in general. It includes several members of my family.

It would be interesting to know the size of that subgroup and whether its members share any personality characteristics.

Does anyone know of any research?

I love Mulholland Drive. It’s exactly like one of my dreams, only more visually beautiful. It’s as if David Lynch got into my subconscious and said to me, “You know, this space has real potential. Let me spruce it up a little and I think you’ll be really pleased with the result.” It’s the most personal (to me) and comfortable movie I’ve ever watched.

I first watched MD about 6 years ago. I was irritated that I couldn’t figure it out. Then I read some analysis and watched again a couple weeks ago. It’s great once you understand what’s really going on. I would guess even the most astute among us would not be able to figure it out the first time around. I would recommend it to others!

The OCEAN model of personality asserts that there are five main dimensions:

The OCEAN model of personality is a spook project. I presume they aren’t paying you anything. Giving them free promotional space is not a great idea.

My favorite bit is from Timothy Leary who claimed (he told many baloney bits) that when they locked him up in Vacaville they gave him a personality test to help determine how to manage his incarceration and he tested as a model prisoner because he had actually written the test back when he was at Harvard.

The only thing I remember about Mulholland Drive was someone (or herself) cupping Naomi Watts white titty

The movie was nothing more than an excuse for some well-filmed well-lighted breast fondling. There was nothing more to it than that.

I was a little surprised that the “Openness” factor predicted my tastes so successfully. Among the top ten for “Openness”, I’ve seen (and generally liked, in some cases loved) eight of them (PI, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, and MULHOLLAND DRIVE I actually went to see at the cinema). Whereas I’ve never seen any of the bottom ten for “Openness”. And would actively choose to avoid nearly all those films (except for a couple that I don’t know anything about).

Exactly, the plot has the logic of a dream, both a literal dream (like REM sleep) but also a metaphorical dream or aspiration.

Here’s a question for anyone familiar with the OCEAN system of characterizing someone’s personality by their rating in five traits: Are there any personality traits that are not closely correlated with these five? For example, let’s consider Religiosity, that is, the degree to which religion is important in a person’s life. Is this trait R decomposable into the other five traits by some formula like
R = 3O – 2.5C + .7E -2A + .1N ? If R is independent of all the other traits, a person’s personality profile would be less maritime and more ocular: the six CORNEA traits.

The new imprimatur of truth is the same as the old — censorship.
From the new news aggregator feature:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/11/27/johns-hopkins-study-saying-covid-19-has-relatively-no-effect-on-deaths-in-u-s-deleted-after-publication-n1178930

The study found that “This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years.” In fact, “the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19.”
Briand concludes that the COVID-19 death toll in the United States is misleading and that deaths from other diseases are being categorized as COVID-19 deaths.

This was a political power grab and not a plague.

It goes to show how far left we as a society have moved, that this movie is probably the best “conservative” cultural achievement of the last decade. It is also interesting that most hipsters haven’t caught on to that

I check Amazon at least a couple times a week for coveted Kindle“cheapies”- prestigious books I’ve always wanted to own but never have on the off chance they might be heavily marked down according to Amazon’s inscrutable pricing algorithms- snatched up GRAVITY’S RAINBOW this year for only $3.99- yeah!

Anyway, during my many browsings I’ve noticed the hate-the-smart-sensitive white guy coefficient going through the roof lately. For example, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has a new novel out called ANT KIND. As you may recall Kauffman, during his late-90’s through mid-00’s hot streak of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, & ADAPTATION, was pretty much the STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE “It Boy”, part of a sort of self-congratulatory hipster Holy Trinity circle jerk along with the likes of Spike Jonez and Bansky.

While Kauffman was never quite my cup of tea (as with Wes Anderson, there is too much self-willed “wow, this is clever and ambitious so I’m going to force myself to delight in it”, rather than actual- you know- spontaneous, feelings of delight) I certainly appreciate his great talent. So I was reading the reviews of ANT KIND to see if this was something I’d want to buy eventually and- gosh- very first review I read the customer-reader is sneering about what a piece of postmodernist white male navel gazing this is. Seen like hate on recent reviews of Rick Moody, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen books as well.

These guys were culture heroes a decade ago, aesthetically and politically impeccable I’m sure, but the era of the great white male hero, even in the mode of great white rebel against his great white father, is so over and problematic. White guys must now be “allies”, which means standing at the back of the room silently until asked to go fetch coffee.

Anderson’s works, which if I could assign a single meaning to I’d say represent a sort of collective dreamscape for smart, sensitive, talented white boys rejoicing in this amazing Earth and all that is of interest in it- is the sort of primordial ooze out of which every once in a while an Elon Musk is made. That is why very soon Wes Anderson will have to be destroyed.

Those weren’t border guards, they were cartoon Nazis (“ZZ” instead of “SS”). Interestingly, an accurate class element is left in, with a dirty twentieth-century morlock finally pummeling the degenerate fin de siecle eloi who had humiliated him.

“I usually find that movies that are highly hyped are movies that I don’t care for. “The Shape of Water” is one recent example. Anything by Quentin Tarentino follows the same theme, blood porn and Spike Lee makes movies that I find to be unwatchable”

Yes. The opposite of what movie critics say is closer the truth.

Spielberg

Jurassic Park – mawkish dinosaur fancying
Shark – mawkish shark fancying
(Slave film) – mawkish numinous negro fancying
Schindler – mawkish simple-minded slave morality – victims are lovely good humoured angels, Euros are all thuggish blonde brutes (same with Karate Kid tho don’t think he did that)

A lot of swarthy looking south Italians in movies are really rat surrogates. Lot of the famous ones – stallone , karate kid, Pacino are v semitic looking, prolly HG-J.

Ireally hate that oh so worthy witch Meryl Streep.

They’re all Facebook people though, right?
That pretty much makes it useless for me.

Also, when did “extrovert” become “extravert”? Seems weird.
Has “introvert” likewise become “intravert”? Also weird.

I used to love movies but now I hate them.

Looking back….I can clearly see how movies and popular music (as well as a liberal arts education) had a HUGE impact on my psyche and thought process. At one time I was actually a virtue signaling liberal and I spouted whatever narrative the media was feeding me at the time.

In fact I am extremely embarrassed as to how much the media had control of my mind….the power of the media is astonishing.

Now if I see a film that I used to love, I will see glaring anti-white/anti-Christian/pro-gay themes throughout.

As a kid I thought The Graduate” was cool….it’s garbage. I liked “Midnight Cowboy.” Garbage.
I loved Deniro….a human piece of garbage.

Hard to think of movies that held up for me. I still like “Shrek” and “The Lion King.”
I love the old standards like “The Wizard of Oz” and “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

I quit going to movies about the time they started making those ultra-horror serial killer garbage movies and “Brokeback Mountain.” That’s when they really jumped the shark.

I’ve mentioned before an excellent book that had a great impact on me, Michael Medved’s “Hollywood vs. America.” It’s a fascinating and scholarly analysis regarding the garbage that Hollywood cranks out and the effect it has on our people.

God, what a bunch of utter “statistical” claptrap. Just a bunch of numbers and words cobbled together. Yeah, psychology is a “science.” Like your ass is a science.

The message of Looking for Mr. Goodbar is “Don’t quit being a slut or some closeted homosexual will kill you.”

The message of American History X is “Don’t quit being a Nazi or some black guy will kill you.”

Most viewers of Archie Bunker thought he was right. Which goes along with the plan. Such “liberal” TV shows are put on by such “liberals” in order to further define and concentrate and refine mostly non-existent differences between us so that we can more avidly fight with each other over these differences–instead of fighting against them.

The only thing I remember about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was Eve’s white titties when she was kicked out of the Garden.

The ceiling was nothing more than an excuse for some realistic T&A. There was nothing more to it than that.

Science today leaves much to be desired.
They seem to only “prove” what they want to hear nowadays.

The pretentiousness of PC is sickening to behold.
An inversion of morality portrayed as some sort of new “piety”.

Much like hypocrites of the past, these new “moralists” do not follow their “principles”.
They do not “tolerate” any diversion from their “pieties”.

Movies no longer are made for audiences to actually enjoy.
Much like television, they are programming for the gullible.

Not getting with the program is a GOOD THING.
The inverted morality makes all things normal a “phobia”.
It makes all things aberrant and abnormal a “right”.

Or, as The Last Psychiatrist said, “If you’re watching it, it’s for you.”

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/

It’s a pity he stopped blogging. I miss his insights.

My personal favorite movies

Vertigo
Raging Bull
Godfather I
Godfather II
Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Brooklyn
Wild Strawberries
2001
Slap Shot
Hud
The Dead
Age of Innocence
Goodfellas
Roman Holiday
The Third Man
Dr Strangelove
Barry Lyndon
La Strada
The Entertainer
War and Peace (Bondarchuk version 1968)
Phantom Thread
Ladybird
Casablanca
America, America
The Last Picture Show
Paper Moon
The Cat’s Meow
Tender Mercies
Knight of Cups
Tree of Life
Metropolitan
The Last Days of Disco
Excalibur
Play Misty for Me
History of the World Part I
Spaceballs
The Big Libowski
O Brother, Where Art Thou
Burn After Reading
This is Spinal Tap
Best In Show
Waiting for Guffman
Chinatown
The Last Detail
Five Easy Pieces
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
The Great Santini
This Boy’s Life
A River Runs Through It
The River
Room With a View
A Streetcar Named Desire
Last Temptation of Christ
Kundun
Dersu Uzala
Zorba the Greek
Spartacus
Ben Hur
Tom Jones
Dr Zhivago
Lawrence of Arabia
Satyricon
Juliette of the Spirits
The Leopard
Zulu
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Night of the Iguana
The Seventh Seal
Black Narcisus
The Red Shoes
In the Name of the Father
Blackhawk Down
Gladiator
Two Lovers
Master and Commander
One-Eyed Jacks
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Rio Grand
Ray
Walk the Line
The Talented Mr Ripley
American Hustle
That Thing You Do
Meet the Fockers
Casino
The Aviator
L.A. Confidential
Black Swan

I mean the more down-to-earth ones that just seem to be about serial killers, like Heathers (1989), the German movie Funny Games (1997)

At least among people who have bothered to formulate an opinion on this question at all, I suspect you are one of the very few people who would characterize HEATHERS and FUNNY GAMES as being part of the same genre. FUNNY GAMES is typically regarded as a horror film. No one regards HEATHERS as a horror film.

Ebert also praised to high heaven that awful film, “The Motorcycle Diaries,” that glorified the communist murderer homosexual Che Guevara.

Ebert was insanely PC and always promoted marxist crap.

This is huge news if true. Over 1 million fraudulent Biden votes in PA.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1332552283553476608

Ok, let me rephrase the question. Does anybody find Lynch’s movies fun, enjoyable, coherent and absolutely not pretentious.

Mostly these are films that appeal to fans of the director but not as much to outsiders, although Mulholland Drive is probably peak David Lynch.

Definitely agree that it is. After that, Inland Empire is endless and full of all the noir cliches. He can’t even seem to resist ‘prostitutes in Pomona’, and still trying to ‘demystify’ Los Angeles, when that helicopter in bright, cold air hovering above the HOLLYWOOD sign seems to already do that, as well as explain and declaim that that’s why and where noir came to be, and is the only great location for that genre. But I think it was the apotheosis of noir and that it now is basically non-existent. The Black Dahlia proved that (for me, at least; I thought it was awful, but then I think all the adaptations of Ellroy’s novels are bad. He’s one of the few novelists who don’t seem to care if their work is twisted and torn apart.)

The earlier ones were often good, as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, but MD is surely his best. He’s sort of a cult, though, I’m not in it. But not as bad as Tarantino, all of whose movies I despise–but that’s just me.

Speaking of Mulholland, “Mulholland Falls” is interesting.

What!? To each their own I suppose. The scene where Gene Hackman argues with Danny Glover is a riot.

I found this essay of Steve’s incomprehensible. I wonder what percentage of his readers understood the argument much less the charts. The charts sport undefined labels. ROI what is that? Or log gross or log budget.

Discussions of overt and implied meanings in ambitious dramatic movies are interesting to me and others in this forum. Why should we care that movies that move us and leave lasting traces in our memories are not much liked by children or football game enthousiasts or the hoi polloi in general? High brow reviews (the best IMO are those of Variety Magazine) are usually useful in picking movies to watch.

I don’t buy it.

1. the big 5 is a personality test not universally accepted (there is none, as far as I know). But, the weakest thing about OCEAN is that it has no theory of psyche or personality behind it. It is just semi-empirically concocted test.

2. we just don’t know what random people will like when it comes to experience (movies, music, sport, literature,..). If we test a random person, I am certain we will not know whether that person would like or dislike certain types of movies, let alone specific films.

Tastes differ, and I don’t think there is a reliable way to predict anything. Moreover, cultural codes may make many films absolutely incomprehensible to viewers. For instance, most Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus… will not understand Christian-themed movie like Russian masterpiece “The Island” (nor most secular Westerners).

Even those who understand it, will object to some aspects of it. A friend of mine, who belongs to an Orthodox family but has converted to a very liberal version of Islamic Sufism, perceived the film as a great artistic & spiritual achievement, but objected that main character’s internal suffering was “too much” because God is more loving than wrathful. So, in his view- because he is essentially healthy-minded – the protagonist’s suffering was a bit morbid & too masochistically self-flagellating.

My response-which he understood & accepted- was that we do not react to the world according to formulas, or even according to our general world-view, but that dominant trends of our psyches’ unconscious make us feel & behave this- and not that way. Psychic energies are not reducible to some arithmetic of our crystallized world-view (if we have one).

The same could be said about reception of other forms of art/amusement. Why did Tolstoy so completely dismiss Shakespeare? Why was Gyorgy Lukacs so wrong in his assessment of Solzhenitsyn, whom he considered to be a pinnacle of Socialist Realism?

Why do many “artistic” people find Chantal Akerman’s films liberating? Why does Jonathan Rosenbaum adore Welles & Kiarostami, and denigrates Bergman & Kieslowski?

There are no answers to these questions.

Personally, I’ve found most films too schematic to watch them anymore. I’ve ceased reading science fiction when I was 25, and high imaginative literature when I was 36. Now, I don’t watch movies anymore, just parts of them- I find them a waste of time.

Kiki was my first Ghibli film. It looked like a cute film my young children (3 & 4) would enjoy. I was impressed with the point of conflict being solely internal rather than having external elements.

I agree that Spirited Away and Mononoke are better films, but I still love Kiki.

>I really hate that oh so worthy witch Meryl Streep.

Come on! Streep was radiant in The Deer Hunter. How ’bout as the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg in Mike Nichols directed Angels in America? I grant that she has been in a good many crappy movies. But so has Di Nero. So who is the best American actor? Possibly Leonardo di Caprio although his aging face has betrayed him.

Movies I have disliked the most, or, in my opinion, are overrated

My Dinner With Andre
Youth Without Youth
Restoration
Inglorious Basterds
Slumdog Millionaire
Maps to the Stars
The Great Beauty
A Winter’s Tale
Movie 43
Orlando
Gigi
The Shining
Miss Julie
Atonement
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Something’s Gotta Give
Terms of Endearment
The Crying Game
The Birdman
Boyhood
Godfather III
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Sacrament
Field of Dreams
Interstellar
Revolution Road
Ex Machina
The Great Gatsby (both recent versions)
Gangs of New York
August: Osage County
Ricki and the Flash

Holly smokes! I’ve been looking for that song. I thought that it was by Curve, which was probably why I couldn’t find it.

It is interesting how people differ….

That’s what I wrote about Twin Peaks, but is more about Lynch.

Lynch is fascinated by style & he is good at it. But, there is not much substance in his work. I am not saying he is “shallow”; he is a creative stylist, so to speak. But not more, I guess. Even a clumsier director like Woody Allen has a world-view which can be articulated; Lynch does not have one.

I think that Lynch cannot be categorized along conservative & liberal lines. He is a visual artist, in this genre- and yet, he doesn’t possess a developed national consciousness. He’s socio-culturally dumb.

He’s a rootless cosmopolitan, whether one likes it or not. Let me repeat-his work cannot be dissociated, completely, from his life. And he is a lifelong practitioner of Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation. I’ve been initiated into TM when I was in my early 20’s, practiced it for 3-4 months, had very good experiences (positive altered states of consciousness etc.), and dropped it soon after I realized it’s just a diluted neo-Vedanta with added quantum mysticism mumbo-jumbo plus fakery. Basically, they sell mantras or sacred words for meditation. The story is that you get some special mantra, a word to repeat when meditating, and that mantra is specifically designed to match your psycho-spiritual profile.

So far, so good.

But- it’s all fake. I’ve gotten a list of mantras, and have found mine. These are just names of Hindu gods categorized into time segments of two years: you’ll get one mantra if you are initiated when you’re in the 17-19 years old category; another if you are 20-22 & so on. Basically, mantra yoga does work, differently, but it is irrelevant how the sound sounds; also, it is mostly a good relaxation practice when done during 20-30 minutes. After that, it becomes either irritating, or boring, or simply you fall asleep. And nothing truly transformative happens.

Plus, there are genuine wisdom traditions operating with images, sounds, breathing,.. (Hermetism, Christian contemplative traditions, Sufism, Taoism, Kabbalah, ancient Greek traditions, Buddhism, Vedanta, …) that make TM basically a joke.

And Lynch has stuck, uncritically, with TM for decades. If I appreciate him as a visual artist/fantasist- how can I take him seriously if he has shown to be so uncritical in one significant matter which colored all his life? Or his attitude towards cultural & historical traditions of his own country?

I don’t expect filmmakers to be thinkers, but if we discuss Lynch’s case, my position is that he just doesn’t have a cognitive ability to see what’s right & what’s wrong re some social, cultural, let alone existential crucial issues.

Funny, I don’t remember that at all. Probably says more about you than the movie. For almost all other humans who saw the movie, this scene probably stands out…

…or this scene…

…or this scene…

…or this scene…

But I guess that you see this sort of stuff all the time, right? Titties, in contrast, are hardly ever seen.

I forgot who it was, but someone once said that an activity cannot qualify as a sport if you can smoke while doing it.

Most of the people who claim to enjoy Lynch are midwits and middlebrows trying to signal that they’re sophisticated. He’s one of the go-to directors to cite when people wish to appear to be above the normies and proles and more mainstream movies, but at this point citing him for that purpose is cliche and pedestrian.

I wouldn’t say his movies are unwatchable, except perhaps Inland Empire. He’s a good craftsman of individual scenes, moods, bits of dialogue, short sequences, dreamy digressions, etc., but lacking as an architect and constructor of a coherent, full narrative and film. He masks these shortcomings by playing up quirkiness and obscurity, which seems to have worked well for him and his career. He’s ultimately better as a cinematographer than a screenwriter or director.

Hm I thought those final scenes where they were stopped by border guards alluded to the end of the multicultural Habsburg empire and replacement by hostile nationalist republics after WWI.

One of the few (sole?) examples of the very thin veneer of intellectuality on the HOWARD STERN SHOW (like an inch-deep slick of mountain spring water atop a Great Lake-size accumulation of pond scum) was Howard’s frequent goofing on his own father for Stern Pere’s voluble fascination with the fact that WWII-era Hungary’s semi-fascist strongman leader was an admiral. An admiral! In famously landlocked Hungary!

Yet to anyone with even a basic education the paradox quickly resolves itself. Hungary. Once Austria-Hungary. Encompassing Trieste, the Dalmatian Coast, and hundreds of miles of Blue Danube. It was of course in the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Navy where old Admiral Horthy made his bones, and so the impossibility quickly dissolves and in its place you find standing a mere absurdity. Absurd as the Hapsburg Empire itself, where German royals were constantly lecturing the Magyar nobility to ease up on THEIR ethnic chauvinism towards the Slavs lest the Empire burst apart over it (“Ja, Herr Attila-son. Try zum ov this diverzity, inkluzion, und ekquality. Die DIE.”)

It was on one of these Hasburg riverine absurdities that Wittgenstein served out his first tour of duty during WWI. Yes, Wittgenstein the most playful, boyish, and therefore Wes Anderson-ish of all major 20th Century philosophers, patrolling the Vistula on the look-out for Cossacks all the while writing the first few chapters of TRACTATUS among shipmates so course and swinish he could barely hold down his disgust. Wittgenstein, rich as Midas in 1913 (his family fortune was such that his father would be the modern day equivalent of a Walton heir, if not- eventually- one of the Bezos kids), getting badgering letters from Cambridge University on his Viennese gunboat about that fellowship he had expressed interest in (not for him to receive, but for him to endow). Wittgenstein, the three-quarters Jewish German nationalist Cathlolic pietist who’d eventual give away his fortune to his brothers, three-quarters of whom would kill themselves.

If Wes Anderson is not to be liquidated from Hollywood for the crimes of both whiteness and maleness (terms to be served consecutively, not concurrently) THIS is the movie he was born to make. The life aquatic. Everything-is-illuminated philosophizing. Funny-looking yet stylish Mitteleuropa clothes and headgear. GRAND HOTEL BUDAPEST was a near-great film, but ultimately only a journeyman’s work compared to this masterpiece (a crazy mix of all his previous films plus APOCALYPSE NOW crossed with MY DINNER WITH ANDRE crossed with AGUIRRE WRATH OF GOD). Let GRAND HOTEL become his mere LED ZEPPELIN III.

There is no positive way you can engage crazy.

Meaning what? That you can’t convince them that they’re ‘wrong’ to like something odd or surreal?

But the guy who wrote it had a strange fixation on Richard Nixon. At one point (In IIRC the early 1960s) he confessed in print that he considered killing him while he was following him around as a journalist. A nutcase who thought Alger Hiss was innocent? It’s a good thing he didn’t live to see Trump the politician.

…people who claim to enjoy Lynch are midwits and middlebrows trying to signal that they’re sophisticated….

When I was a kid I had a babysitter who insisted that I only pretended to have an interest in science so as to look smart. Appeals to mind-reading are liable to backfire. They’re more likely to tell us something about you than the intended target. Believe it or not, some people genuinely enjoy surreal things.

Liberals always meet me and assume I’m a liberal and finish my sentences…

The best one was…

“….you would abort the baby!”

I’m still scratching my head on how Comment A got to abortion

But the liberal mind is a mystery

The Usual ones I get are ….

Me: ‘I’m a bit upset over…’
Liberal Answer A: Brexit…I know..
Liberal Answer B: Trump…I know…
Liberal Answer C: Boris surviving Covid
{Liberal Answer D that actually happened when no one was pregnant: An abortion!?!? Are you getting an abortion?!?!?!}
Me: Ummm….no….my dishwasher broke

No. But he is an authentic visual fantasist with a shallow world-view. To say it in an old-fashioned way, his soul doesn’t weight much. But, he can be entertaining if you have enough of real life & want to relax with visual firecrackers & a mix of the sentimental & the unexpected.

That is completely fair and understandable. I also believe if I had gone into the movie with the knowledge of what it was, rather than the expectation of what it was not, I would have enjoyed it myself.

The entire set of research only really has much value if you isolate out all the instances where people are going to see a movie alone

That is what is called “noise” in statistics. And there is a statistical law that as n (sample size) approaches infinity, the distorting power of noise approaches zero. This is why they are using years of education as a proxy for IQ in the big million genome GWAS studies without worrying about how closely the correlation is: It doesn’t matter at that sample size. The rank order of people’s IQ and people’s years of education is, on average, the same when you get that many people.

“Does anybody find Lynch’s movies fun, enjoyable…”

Yes!

As well as grotesque…

..and terrifying…

….and beautiful…

…and touching.

“…coherent…”

Nope. Not at all. Is that a bad thing?

“…and absolutely not pretentious.”

Quite the opposite: his stuff comes across as folksy and heartfelt, just like Lynch himself. Surreal, to be sure, and his dialog always comes across as weirdly stilted, but I can hardly imagine how anyone can see it as ‘pretentious.’

This and I would also offer The Damned, United. Both are about the money-making aspect opposing the sport itself, with the first managing to justify grabbing as big a deal as you can, and the second advocating for a kind of anti-New England Patriot, pure, unadorned play, seeing how well you can do by yourself as opposed to seeing how well you can do with all the little modern helps.

Interesting list, I agree with a lot of them. BUT Raiders of the Lost Arc??? Wow.

Ebert was insanely PC and always promoted marxist crap.

Siskel was way more down-to-earth.

Ebert was a mad Kraut from a college town. An altar boy-gone-bad. A lot of that going around.

We need wholesome, inspiring and Christian movies, not more of this occult stuff.

Two specifically Christian movies with good production values that I’ve seen in the last five years were Risen (directed by Kevin Reynolds) and Paul, Apostle of Christ. There are several that have come out of a Baptist church in Georgia but I wouldn’t consider any of them good.

If you’re willing to go back forty years for major studio films with cast members you would recognize, Chariots of Fire, Shadowlands (starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger) and Luther (with Joseph Fiennes in the title role) are good.

If you have Amazon Prime, all of these movies are available, though three of them are not free.

In 2021, Fellowship for Performing Arts is dropping a movie based on the one man play, C.S. Lewis; God’s Most Reluctant Convert. A film version of the play is sometimes available on Prime or Netflix, but this movie is a real production, shot on location in England, with a good cast and Max McClean playing the older, mature Lewis. The play/movie traces Lewis’ intellectual journey from atheist to theist to Christian.

Basically, it is the old stuff: tell me what you like, and I’ll tell you what kind of person you are.

Just, it doesn’t work that way.

And it is not worth the trouble:

a) person’s predilections change over time

b) there are too many social/cultural/aesthetic/taboo/…elements that influence out viewing of a film. So, you may enjoy a film that is, basically, not “real you”, but are temporarily zombified, robotized.

The big 5 are not very scientific; a study conducted 4-8 years ago among Indians somewhere in Central America has shown that they cannot be assessed by OCEAN tests. In short, this test is not universally applicable to all humans.

And, as I’ve said- it is purely constructed, without any solid ideas of human personality. Agreeableness is another world for conformism. For instance, a promising test by Roberto Assagioli- which has theoretical structure behind it- cannot be “translated” or interpreted by OCEAN, as Universal wave function or Pilot wave interpretation of QM can be analyzed through standard Copenhagen.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11089-017-0753-5

Without tests, we know what kind of people watches martial arts films; or rom-coms; or spy-thrillers; or drama films; or comedies; or sci fi technically interesting films; or horrors; or slashers; or westerns; or political films; or …

Anyway, I’d been liking it all.

Part of makes it difficult to create a great movie is that it has to be unique enough for the public to find it compelling. After it has been done once everything after that is derivative. So you are not too much looking for the formula but looking to break the formula, at least enough to trigger the appropriate dose of dopamine etc.

The other thing to remember is that after 30-50 years the classics can be given a retread in some cases, much like magazine content, and no one cares enough that it impacts the bottom line. See Joker.

True. And a certain portion of the dreams we have will always be incomprehensible.

Well in any event you confirm my understanding that he was referring to the interwar nationalist-fascist period, not Communism.

RE: Mulholland Drive,

Try watching it back-to-back with Lynch’s favorite film, The Wizard of Oz.

MD winds up being about 80% comprehensible, 20% still incomprehensible, which is, apparently, Lynch’s ideal ratio.

Whereas Inland Empire is the reverse ratio…..

Sorcerer the Roy Schneider movie? I remember being impressed with it when I finally saw it. Pretty bleak though. For some reason I pair it with Lost Command in my mind.

I thought Tenenbaums stupid, inane, pointless, and trying way to hard to achieve way to little, but it is hardly Myra Breckinridge.

Come to think of it, I wouldn’t rate it any worse than Knives Out, which was complete garbage.

Does anybody find Lynch’s movies fun, enjoyable, coherent and absolutely not pretentious.

That’s not a question.
Are you unhappy that others do not share your tastes in entertainment?

1,823,148 was the exact number of ballots sent for the June 2 *primary election* in Pennsylvania. Not the general election. See for yourself here: https://t.co/O3UCqGQdSl

They're just mashing together random sets of numbers and screaming fraud!https://t.co/4BdBeDlXdz

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 28, 2020

Well, by that measure Calvary, which had Brendan Gleason in the lead role, is the movie which I’ve given the most thought to over the years. I’m still not sure what to make of it. Local Hero is my favorite movie though.

That comment makes me want to watch it again. Really well done. Thank you!

Anyway, I’ve been fascinated with Austria Hungary ever since I read John Biggins’ “A Sailor of Austria” as a teenager. Last gasp of the medieval, pre-national Europe, where your main loyalties were to the king and the church, not the nation state.

How many hipsters in Portland are starting to realize that their bike lanes and craft beer depend on rough men tear gassing Antifa rioters and jailing black rapists?

Let’s see, Openness Top 10:

WAKING LFE: Pretty good.

PI: Perfect for a high IQ 18-year old (I was 18 when I saw it; I liked it, but I’ve never felt the urge to watch it again).

A SCANNER DARKLY: Maybe the most faithful PKD adaptation. Not as good as the book, though.

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP: Makes a good double bill with WAKING LIFE.

THE FOUNTAIN: Maybe Aronofsky’s best film. It’s certainly the one that I’ve re-watched the most often.

MULHOLLAND DRIVE: Lynch’s masterpiece.

DARJEELING LIMITED: Meh. Nowhere near as good as GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL….And GBH is not as good as the film that inspired it, Lubitsch’s magnificent THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER.

BEING JOHN MALKOVITCH: Extremely good…But I prefer ADAPTATION

THE BUDDHA: Never seen it.

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU: I like it better than DARJEELING…but it’s still not as good as GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL.

High Openness Bottom ten:

Haven’t seen any of them.

I know, but this is as weak as Wolfram’s New kind of science. Simulation is not explanation; observing patterns is not understanding anything.

Historically, this not unlike Ptolemy & his universe. He got regularities. But, he did not have a theory, gravity, mass, force etc.

Meaning, among other things, that you can’t convince fan boys that just because you like a film, it is therefore a good film. It is ok to like a film that is basically garbage, it is not ok to pretend it is a masterpiece because you like it.

Bro, check out the knockers on this Venus chick. I was at the Uffizi and thought I was at a dang titty bar.

https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/birth-of-venus

Siskel & Ebert – Pi review (1998)

I think your second theory- that it’s easy to make your own horror movie- is probably closer to the truth. But what makes you say that horror movie fanboys tend to be among the failed director category? Is that the case?

If I had money to put up to produce movies, it would be horror, all the way. It gives you a much, much better chance of turning a profit off of a smaller initial investment. Horror movies are also more likely to turn into enduring intellectual property, with schlock sequels and remakes after 20 years being almost guaranteed for successful movies. Yes, if given the option I would have put my money behind the young Wes Craven and not the young Wes Anderson.

But then again I spent last night watching Castle Freak on Joe Bob Briggs’ Last Drive-In, so maybe I’m biased.

When I was a kid I had a babysitter who insisted that I only pretended to have an interest in science so as to look smart.

Incidentally, there’s lots of overlap between the “I f*cking love science!” crowd and people who say they like Lynch a lot.

“The best sports movie”

Either Slap Shot (1977) or Number One (1969). Brian’s Song (1971) is the gay man’s pick for best sports movie. All baseball movies are gay.

Best of the Worst: Lady Terminator, Lost in Dinosaur World, and Low Blow

Colin from Canada joins the gang to watch a terminator film, a film about a theme park filled with dinosaurs, and a movie where an old man punches people.

Simple, one of the funniest comments ever here at iSteve.

“It’s well enough made that if somebody else got roped into watching it, he or she would likely reply that it was “interesting” but wouldn’t go out of the way to Like it on Facebook.”

Then by definition, that film is a borderline flop. Films such as these won’t do a studio much good when attempting to remain in the black, especially considering at how fickle the movie public can be from decade to decade.

Film must be run like a business or it will never survive long as an art.

There are many examples of massive hits that appeal to broad range of audiences and are not dependent upon one gender. The films of classic filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, one of the rare filmmakers who’s appeal to both genders, tended to offer something for both: Adjusted for inflation, The Ten Commandments, ranks among the top 5-10 most commercially successful films ever made. It’s not a chick film, but neither is it exactly an all male film either. Gibson’s The Passion, is also a massive unquantified hit. It’s not a chick flick either.

The other massive hit of 1939, The Wizard of Oz, is not a chick hit per se. It does tend to offer something for everyone: women, some men, and of course families and children in particular.

Unlike Scorcese’s Taxi Driver, (which flopped during its initial run, or at least did not turn a profit), the “other” film of 1976, Rocky, finished first at the box office, won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and launched sequels that spanned multi-generations. Rocky, while it does tend to have elements that appeal to women, is certainly not concerned with primarily appealing to women. Same with the Godfather franchise. Most of the James Bond films, one of the world’s most commercially successful franchises for over half a century tends to market itself to both women and men.

The fact does tend to remain: many of critically acclaimed filmmakers tend to have a small audience. If they ever have a commercial hit, its almost by accident. Why aren’t they making a conscious effort to craft their images and work in order to increase a larger share of the paying public? If Joker could do it, then it puts the lie to the idea that ‘In order to be considered a true artiste, you can’t possibly attempt to appeal to the public at large’. That is bolderdash. It used to be done in Hollywood, and fairly regularly. Perhaps the fault lies with the filmmakers themselves.

One of the most commercially successful franchises in the world remains the Marvel Franchise. There must be a reason why that is the case. They aren’t chick flicks per se, and special effects can only take one so far, especially if there’s no compelling story with interesting characters behind it. Because many of the Marvel/DC characters first enjoyed success in the comic format before appearing on the screen is no guarantee that they would (or have) perform(ed) beyond expectations at the box office. After all, there are many big budgeted flops that litter Tinseltown’s celluloid screens that “everyone” thought were destined to be massive hits but failed.

In other words if a studio has too many flops it soon finds itself in bankruptcy.

All of what you said can describe the reviews for Hillbilly Elegy. The reviewers who trashed the movie because of the politics behind what J.D.Vance had written and how it was surgically removed, had it all wrong. The reviewers who said that the characters lacked any depth and that some of the dialog seemed like it was from a Twitter self help group were right about it. One tells us what movies they think we should like, the other talks about if the movie worked.

Nawwwwww, be a real lynchmob: get two TVs and sync ’em.

‘After it has been done once everything after that is derivative.”

Basically, from a creative standpoint, everything in film had been done by about 1927. And then sound came along. After Citizen Kane (1941), everything has been done. Nothing new under the sun that can’t be found in the past in world film somewhere at sometime.

What it really boils down to then, is a compelling story with characters that the public cares about. At a basic level, filmmakers are storytellers. How successful their stories are, the one clear consensus measure is the box office. Do people enjoy the story well enough to buy what they’re being sold on the screen?

Sometimes it really is best to take the film away from the filmmakers and let the studios decide on how the final cut should look. After all, 99% of the time, it’s their money that’s funding the budget and not the filmmaker. It’s not a soup kitchen, not a charity case. It’s a business, and the art won’t survive long if the medium isn’t run accordingly like a business.

Agree 100%. And one hit with a huge ROI can grant someone a long career behind the camera, justified or not. Worst case you collect autograph money from conventions for a few decades.

I’m hoping Shudder lets JBB pick a few more titles himself, versus forcing their garbage on him. You always know when the breaks are infrequent and not as informative as usual. Looking at you, Haunt.

That is the dirty secret of science. There is no “explanation” or “understanding”. There are mathematical equations that describe and predict behavior. That’s what modern mathematical science is, and it is basically what Ptolemy was doing:

https://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/archives/2014-08/001530.html

There is no theory behind Maxwell’s equations: the equations are the theory. To the extent they produce the correct results when experimental conditions are plugged in, and predict new phenomena which are subsequently confirmed by experiment, they are valuable. If they err, they should be supplanted by something more precise. But they say nothing about what is really going on—they only seek to model what happens when you do experiments. Today, we are so accustomed to working with theories of this kind: quantum mechanics, special and general relativity, and the standard model of particle physics, that we don’t think much about it, but it was revolutionary in Maxwell’s time. His mathematical approach, like Newton’s, eschewed explanation in favour of prediction: “We have no idea how it works, but here’s what will happen if you do this experiment.” This is perhaps Maxwell’s greatest legacy.

“people who claim to enjoy Lynch are midwits and middlebrows”

David Lynch is incredibly sincere. He is quite funny. Both are middlebrow qualities. Middlebrow: It’s where life exists. Homes begin in the mid 500,000s!

Siskel was way more down-to-earth.

I once saw S&E’s review of Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Siskel thought it was very good. Ebert panned it. Among Ebert’s criticisms was that the first half of the movie had nothing to do with the second half, and that the fighting in the second half took place in a city not a jungle. I.e., Ebert got everything wrong. The first half of the FMJ showed, as few movies ever have, what a lot of military training is about – overcoming normal people’s aversion to aggression, brutality, and killing – turning regular guys into killers. As such, it had everything to do with the second half of the movie. And the fighting was in a city because it was supposed to be during the battle of Hue, which is a city. Does Ebert imagine that all of Vietnam is jungle? That it has no cities?

When I was younger, I agreed with Ebert’s reviews more. As I got older, I found I agreed more with Siskel. And Siskel seemed like a likeable guy, whereas Ebert always came across as an A-hole. That said, Ebert’s commentary on Citizen Kane is pretty interesting.

All baseball movies are gay.

C’mon. What about Major League?

Only seen about half the films on your list, but every one of those is, in fact, wildly overrated.

Especially Raiders, on two levels:

1. As TBBT pointed out, Indiana Jones is completely superfluous to the events: with or without him, the Nazis find the Ark, take it to the island and die.

2. Some films bend history, Raiders craps all over it. A group of Nazis, in uniforms not yet adopted, are running around British Protectorate Egypt, in a marked aircraft, using a u-boat years away from development, leaving RPG’s lying around for Indy to use, when they a decade in the future, and this theater of the absurd is played straight.

Raiders is an insult to our intelligence.

“All baseball movies are gay.”

Two words: Bull. Durham.

So nobody can call a movie ‘good’ or a ‘masterpiece,’ or just people who like movies that you don’t?

There was a riot yesterday between black power for blacks BLM and White anti fa troops in Portland. BLM wants the Whites to drop out of the cause. Or at least move to the back, be silent and let BLM rule the revolution.

While I enjoyed all of Full Metal Jacket, Ebert is hardly the only one who found the first half of the movie superior to the second half. After all, the two most compelling characters are not in the second half.

And Siskel seemed like a likeable guy, whereas Ebert always came across as an A-hole.

If you watch any of their appearances on talk shows, you will see the opposite is true. Siskel always came across as the Ivy League snob, while Ebert was the man of the people. Of couse, Siskel’s brain turned to pudding, so we never got to read his memoirs. Then again, he was always the more stoic of the two, with Ebert wearing his heart on this sleeve.

Scrolling through the comments, why is everyone discussing so much about David Lynch here? (I guess it is the effect of Netflix parochialism). It’s like if you were talking about art history, but somehow everyone is talking only about Barnett Newman, when there is a world of Van Gough or Michelangelo to explore.

We can find (and somewhat easily access) dozens of more interesting directors, just in a society like postwar Japan. For example, in 1950s Japan, there were about 20 interesting film directors.

The better cinema of the 20th century is not available on Netflix. But it’s not excessively difficult to order some DVD or blu-ray boxsets from more interesting film directors. It’s just a few dollars to buy the “Apu Trilogy” by Satyajit Ray.

Yes! Jennifer Connolly pre breast reduction is worth the ticket price alone. Plus Nick Nolte playing Nick Nolte like no one can.

There is a MORE feature here so your posts don’t take up too much space. You should learn to avail yourself of it.

Sorcerer, which is brilliant, is a remake of a French movie, The Wages of Fear. Love both.

Calvary (2014) has a tricky tone that some may find confusing. Irish films strike a chord in me, and Brendan Gleeson is always interesting. It’s a film I’ve recommended to an ex-wife but no one else.

There used to be a lot of big budget box office bombs, but there seem to be fewer in the 21st Century as movie studios have gotten things down more to a science with franchises, pre-existing intellectual property, and the like.

I thought the intellectual property thing would be much more of a problem now that piracy is so much easier than in the 20th century.

I’m not any kind of film expert (although I watched a lot of blu-ray boxsets this year because of the coronavirus lockdown, and have a Lynch blu-ray boxset).

You can see how Lynch has some interesting references to older Hollywood films, by directors like Billy Wilder (“Sunset Boulevard”) or Charles Vidor (“Gilda”). Mulholland Drive will make sense for people who know the world and atmosphere of those Hollywood 1940s films.

I wouldn’t criticize Lynch’s films for “rootless cosmopolitanism”, as they are part of a Hollywood tradition. Although perhaps you could criticize him for “formalism”. He makes films about films, and is trying to revive some of the traditional Hollywood iconography.

But of course, Lynch’s are minor and unambitious, and are less interesting than the original 1940s film noir world that they reference to. Lynch’s films are like minor, pleasant, improvised codas on certain Hollywood mythologies.

–
But why waste too much time talking about it, when there are so many interesting directors? 20th century also produced many more humanistic and ambitious films.

Netflix and streaming sites can encourage provincialism, as they exclude most of the good films of the 20th century.

But if you don’t mind ordering boxsets of DVDs and blu-rays, never before can our generation so easily access the 20th century cinema.

We have better televisions then before (a perfect OLED television can be bought for less than a couple thousand dollars).

And nowadays the work on restorations is improving. For example, how much skilled labour was applied to try to restore the “Apu Trilogy” for blu-ray:

“That comment makes me want to watch it [Mulholland Drive] again. Really well done. Thank you!”

You’re so welcome and I hope you enjoy it! I’m a lifelong movie buff and am always thrilled when I say anything that prompts someone to enjoy/revisit/reflect on a movie.

Such is the nightmare/blessing of digital streaming. I’m sure Shudder would let JBB host whatever he wanted, if they could. I can’t even keep digital movies that I’ve bought and theoretically “own.” I routinely have movies in my Amazon Prime account become unavailable after I’ve paid for digital copies. It’s infuriating, and I’m sure that it’s no better for streaming platforms like Shudder and it’s owner AMC.

Yes, these absolute plebians that didn’t take in all 9 hours of The Cremaster Cycle while it was on display at the Musée d’Art Moderne.

Coincidentally, 1998 was the same year that “The Blair Witch Project” was released. It was made by a few film school students for about 50k, basically the budget was put on credit cards. It was picked up, I believe, by Warner Bros. Worldwide, it grossed at the time, somewhere in the neighborhood of $250 million (in 1998 dollars).

So it is possible for a low budget/art film to become a runaway commercially successful hit.

Five words.

The Pride of the Yankees (1942). Gary Cooper was Oscar nominated for the performance. Awesome family film.

Satyajit Ray is overrated. Now, if you want to talk about a non-Occidental filmmaker that more people should be watching, Yasujirō Ozu is the guy. An Autumn Afternoon is a genuine masterpiece:

Do you think Trump is deliberately trying to look like a fool?

I don’t think that I’ve seen any of the movies on the lists. I wonder what it says about me that my favorite movie, by a wide margin, is Fargo.

One interesting aspect of this is that the Neurotic like scary movies. In contrast, I’m rather jumpy, so I don’t like loud noises, much less serial killers jumping out of the closet. Hence, I almost never go to horror movies. That strikes me as pretty sensible. On the other hand, most people don’t seem to see it that way.

I, too, like Steve, am jumpy and thus avoided horror movies for a long time. But then things changed, largely thanks to Scream.

Although I was lukewarm on Scream and thought it was far overrated (and these days, I realize it was pushed to the moon because its creator was a gay man), the film launched a lot of serious discussion about slasher/ horror/scary movies, making more mainstream terms like “Final Girl” and describing the formula to most slasher movies—things that had eluded me in my jumpiness.

The internet was also beginning then, too, and I was a teenager, and thus I was able to read a lot about this formulaic approach during my formative years, as well as the fact that some folks watched horror movies as comedies, cheering when characters died.

So I ended up reading a lot of commentary about slasher films that demystified them and made them less scary and more ironic and scrutable. I also dated a girl who was a film major, and she watched a lot of horror movies for her thesis, so I ended up watching them and becoming a bit inured to it.

And then the streaming services and YouTube kicked in about 10 years ago, making it easier to view a lot of horror movies in the safety of the home with the lights on. And then review shows like the Red Letter Media guys (i.e. the Mr. Plinkett guys) and Rob Ager made reviewing horror films either funny or scholarly, and not scary.

All in all, since Scream , horror/slasher movies have been mainstreamed from the ghetto they once existed in (e.g. Paramount wanted really badly to cancel the Friday the 13th Series by # 3 because they were so embarrassed by them, but they kept making money, so Paramount kept churning them out, to the chagrin of critics of the time). Nowadays, horror is meta.

I’m still a jumpy guy, but flipping on a low-budget new horror film at night is good entertainment for me, as I can see the seams, make fun of the bad acting, see the special effects (or lack thereof), and appreciate when one on a shoestring manages to make me care or make me a scared. Blumhouse churns them out and makes a steady profit by keeping the formula intact and getting quality out of their modest budgets.

P.S. There’s a notable split in horror movies: pre-1970 and post-1970. The death of the Hays Code and the rise of shock cinema, especially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, really created the modern horror film. Pre-1970 horror films are far more watchable and less bloody (if any blood is there at all). The post-1970 rise of gore in movies made low budget horror films more profitable, since some cheap special effects went a long way to grossing out/scaring the audience.

Thanks for your list making. Ask me if I care. No, better not.

Are you a “tweenager”?

Basically, mantra yoga does work, differently, but it is irrelevant how the sound sounds; also, it is mostly a good relaxation practice when done during 20-30 minutes. After that, it becomes either irritating, or boring, or simply you fall asleep. And nothing truly transformative happens.

Bravo.

One theory about mantras is that they give you something to concentrate on, helping to let go of mental chatter, which over time is conducive to transforming consciousness. Certain badthinkers say you could just as well repeat any word out of the dictionary or focus on a knothole in the wood paneling. Anybody who joins a cult or pays for a mantra is digging deeper into the material world.

David Lynch, not unlike Quentin Tarantino, has vintage lower-budget Italian director doppelgangers, whom I recommend to everyone.

David Lynch’s doppelganger is Dario Argento. All one has to do is watch the first 5-10 minutes of Suspiria, 1977 (not to be confused with the ghastly remake); Deep Red, 1975; Phenomena, 1985; to see that in terms of atmospherics and skill Argento and Lynch are blow-for-blow equals. Only Argento does more pulpy adventure horror things, with less pretentiousness. As much as that’s possible for an Italian director.

Compare the opening scenes of Phenomena or Suspiria with the opening scenes of Twin Peaks. Same level, different budgets, different cultural baggage, different goals (pseudo pulp vs turbo pulp).

Inferno and Tenebre are also magnificent Dario Argento films, which are again, “Pulpy David Lynch with testosterone, Italian style”.

Quentin Tarantino’s dopplegangers are spread across a very wide spectrum in the genre adjacent to the Giallo genre–the Poliziotteschi genre. To enjoy a “proto-Tarantino” experience from the 1970s, I would recommend the following films:
Live Like a Cop Die Like a Man, 1976 (a lesson in stylish over-the-toppery)
Kidnapped, 1974 (a lesson of how to set tension in an enclosed space)
Almost Human, 1974

It is great that back in the day American pop culture was still vital enough to let through the filters directors like Lynch and Tarantino. But outrageous 1970s Italian horror, giallo, and Poliziotteschi flicks are delightful turbo pulp experiences I would also recommend to everyone who wants something stylish and sleazy and macho to counteract current year. It’s an endless treasury over there. One could spend years evening after evening checking out these cheap thrills over a favorite beverage.

Did I enjoy Mulholland Drive in the conventional sense? If you had measured my brain dopamine levels as I was watching it, probably not. But here I am 20 years later and can describe not only the plot but the viewing experience because the damn thing was so unique. I’m generally not someone who likes things that are different just for the sake of being different. I don’t like Jackson Pollack or Damien Hirst or even Picasso for that matter. But Lynch tried to make something genuinely new and different in an art form where it doesn’t seem like there is much new under the sun, and in my opinion he pulled it off.

Having said that, while I love the movie, I have never once recommended it to anybody, and likely never will.

I love that film so much, and definitely the best work of art i’ve ever experienced. it describes the misery of unreciprocated obsession/love so vividly. It’s such an unusual emotion to concentrate on. Absolutely outstanding and should be recommended to everyone

That’s one of those quotes that seems to be apocryphal, but John Kruk was once upbraided by a fan who caught him smoking. She said that athletes shouldn’t smoke, but Kruk retorted that he wasn’t an athlete; he was a baseball player.

“There’s a notable split in horror movies: pre-1970 and post-1970. The death of the Hays Code and the rise of shock cinema, especially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, really created the modern horror film.”

Not so sure I agree with you there. That’s the accepted narrative, but I think it’s wrong. Sure, films got nastier in the later quarter or the 20th century, but I think things had started to shift far earlier. The 1960s gave us Eyes Without a Face, Peeping Tom, Blood Feast, Witchfinder General, and a few other dozen truly gory and nasty films. Earlier films were probably a little edgier thank they’re given credit for now. In particular, the Universal Frankenstein movies and The Creature From the Black Lagoon still hold up. The bottoms line is, there is something in human nature that wants to confront the darkest and most terrible aspects of life, and that impulse knows no era.

For my Jennifer Connnely fans from earlier in the thread, here’s her prototype from 40 years earlier in the form of Julie Adams in The Creature From the Black Lagoon. Times might change, but people don’t.

https://i2.wp.com/universalmonstersuniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/annex-adams-julie-creature-from-the-black-lagoon_01.jpg?fit=2066%2C1382&ssl=1

Good thing he only reviewed movies!

Floating Weeds (both versions) as well. And Tokyo Story.

Sansho the Bailiff by Kenji Mizoguchi shouldn’t be overlooked either.

But of course, when a Westerner thinks of Japan’s golden age of filmmaking, the one filmmaker who prominently stands out is Akira Kurosawa. From Rashomon, Ikiru, Seven Samurai to minor classics like Ran, Kurosawa stands alone (or on his own) in the annuals of Japanese filmmakers.

He has had an awful lot of practice, say, several decades so by now he’s a master at it. Behaving as if stupidity is a virtue. And The Donald is one spectacular virtuoso.

The better cinema of the 20th century is not available on Netflix.

The movie selection on Netflix and the other major streaming services Amazon and Hulu is absolutely terrible. The vast majority of the movies on there are literal B-movies and Straight-to-Video movies that you’ve never heard of. Most of the stuff on there is unwatchable. You spend more time endlessly scrolling through the film list looking for something tolerable to watch than actually watching stuff. And most of the Netflix Originals are geared towards women viewers and tend to have lots of SJW and Wokeness stuff added in.

It wasn’t always like this. When Netflix was a DVD by mail service and early on in its streaming service, it had a good catalogue. But once streaming became big, I think the studios pulled a lot of the good movies available from Netflix. Blockbuster and the other old video rental places had a better selection than Netflix does now.

My list-making was something like attempting idle chat with a few friends. Funny that it should bother you so much. Actually, I was surprised that our host didn’t throw it away.

Tell me, what films have you starred in? I’m sure they must be terribly esoteric.

It wasn’t always like this. When Netflix was a DVD by mail service and early on in its streaming service, it had a good catalogue.

Good lord, yes. It was once so easy to find new and interesting things in the Netflix catalog. Now it’s exactly as you say: no better than Blockbuster was.

Preciously few apparently.

David Lynch creates fascinating characters, and shoots fascinating scenes. But his movies are somehow far less than the sum of their parts. So, you aren’t wrong about that.

Where do Whit Stillman movies fit in?

Good question. Probably high on openness like other 80s and 90s Indie flicks. Those were great movies, though. He deserves more renown.

But the bigger question is why no rating of Woody Allen movies? According to Steve’s theory, those should be off the chart as a marker of neuroticism.

“That is, you see a person’s rationalizations, justifications, etc., of their own sins and weaknesses not as a third party, but rather through their eyes, and thus truth and falsehood are all jumbled up.”

That describes pretty much every Nabokov novel – viz: the unreliable narrator. It’s a pretty old device. Poe dabbled in it too. Describes a lot of my girlfriends, too, ba-dum tzzzz.

Before this thread sinks too low, where would “Bushwick” (2017) fit on that chart?

It’s an action picture with the wrestler Dave Bautista which should put it somewhere in the “Rambo” category. Lots of gunfire, chaos, and the sort of fighting you’d expect of Bautista from his world wrestling years.

Except, as somebody pointed out, it’s sort of “Red Dawn” for the Antifa crowd. The enemy consists of white guys invading New York City to secede from the union, which somehow don’t make much sense. The heroes are the diverse locals who… never mind. Maybe it’s just too idiotic to be considered for anything.

It’s the earliest anti-Trump movie I know of, though.

A while back I did some number crunching on political party and movie popularity. Democrat: City of God (Cidade de Deus), Lost in Translation. Republican: The Hunger Games, Twilight. Spielberg had an eerie ability to land in the dead center.

I wonder what it says about me that my favorite movie, by a wide margin, is Fargo.

Strange, this is the only mention of that movie in this thread. It’s also one of my all-time favourites.

I see watching a movie as entertainment. I don’t think you should have to make some kind of effort to appreciate it, the way you would when reading literary classics that were written centuries ago.

My two criteria for rating a film highly: Does it linger in my mind for a long time after I’ve watched it? And, would I like to watch it again some time?

I never argue with anyone who praises a film I hate, if they genuinely think it’s worth 100 minutes or whatever of their time to sit down and watch it. I’d be embarrassed to name some of the films I’ve enjoyed, for fear of being accused of having no taste.

Are you going to review Ron Howard’s “Hillbilly Elegie”? Why do the critics hate it so much?

I get it: you’re a Lynch fanboy.

Thanks for the tips. Of the films you mentioned, I was fortunate enough to catch Paul, Apostle of Christ on Netflix, and I found it excellent, with Caviezel playing Timothy (who was not Greek, BTW, as mentioned in the film) with a great screenplay, acting and tempo. That film should have made it to the Oscars.
I’ll try to watch Luther though I’m not a fan of Reform, though Calvin was more odious as a historical figure and wrong on theological grounds than Luther. That’s not to say that Rome were the good guys.

This is a post-modernist talk Bohr & other quantum guys had been selling from the 20’s on to the wider audience. Einstein was right in ditching it.

Of course physical models describe the universe, and these models are based on our concepts on the world “out there” and “in here”. These concepts did not arise out of blue, but reflect our understanding of the world. The entire edifice of physical sciences in based of our perceptions of the world: force, energy, mass,… These concept are rooted in our experience of the world, but to become scientific, they had to be defined (mathematically) and then re-defined etc. But they mean something to us, and we can intuitively grasp their meaning. They didn’t appear out of blue.

With agreeableness, neuroticism,…- it is the same, but they are not as basic concepts of human existence as are emotion, thinking, imagination etc. At best, they are similar to thermodynamics which is, basically, statistical physics. So, OCEAN is simply a rough sketch which does not possess “aha!” element, the building block of any sustainable theory.

Maxwell’s equations describe the EM world according to Faraday, who has in words described the state of nature perfectly understandable to a layman.

Lynch has made a lot of fine movies (esp Blue Velvet, Mulholland, and Elephant Man) but his finest moment, the one shot that sums up his entire work, and is also one of the best shots in any movie, is Patricia Arquette in Lost Highway saying “You’ll never have me.”

That’s his entire work, right there.

All great wisdom doctrines are based on some grand theory. Their practices did not arise out of nothing.

For instance, one way to think is to consider a word/sound as a focus of concentration which will eliminate the chaos of inner chattering. This is both modern approach & is rooted in some aspects of traditional, Patanjali’s Yoga.

The other is a form of primitive magical identification of subject & object, in essence- you become what you think. According to that approach, images or sounds are considered conduits to higher, invisible realities. Regarding mantras, it is a magical linking of name with the existence of being. The name represents the very being of the thing. So, in this theory, if you repeat the name of something representing higher, invisible reality, you will, in time, become, existentially, the being that lives or has a life in supra-physical world (of course your body will not be transformed thus, but your inner mind will).

That’s why in many religions it is forbidden to utter a deity’s name, because name represents the very deity & in the scheme of magical identification- it is deity.

One may add that this invisible being could act when you focus on them- for instance, in Orthodox Christian prayer Kriste eleison, kyrie eleison, they think that not only will the repetition of the mantra prayer calm their other thoughts & urges, but Christ will “pour down” his energies, his grace on their hearts because he will “see” them striving to get into contact with him.

As regards Lynch, Eastwood etc. & Transcendental meditation- it is not bad they practice it for their well being etc. Just, Lynch has bought into TM’s paraphysical “theories” which had been empirically proven to be wrong. For instance, TM claims that if the square root of 1% of the population meditates in unison, the whole community will be better because mental waves-so to speak- will calm down all surrounding populace & the crime rate will drop off. They tried it in Washington DC, with a number of the meditators exceeding sqrt of 1% of DC’s population.

The result?

The crime rate had risen.

The OCEAN model, of course, is un-replicable horse shit. Whatever applicability it has is limited to basic WEIRD types who take psychological tests while in college. Dipshit psychologists blame translation problems when it consistently refuses to work on non WEIRD people. I think Cattell’s 16 factor test measures more important and actually measurable things, but unlike OCEAN and Japanese blood type theories of personalities, it’s fairly complicated and has too many moving parts for pea brained psych major types to keep in their heads.

FWIIW I like Mel Gibson movies and Taxi driver and hate everything else on the agreeable/disagreeable axis.

I think Scarlet is right about Ebert being much more likeable in real life and Siskel being the complete asshole. If you doubt it, watch the outtake below where Siskel has clearly had a liquid lunch and can’t keep from bellowing out his personal hates even though they’re trying to film some promos. You can see that Ebert is humoring him to the degree necessary to keep things on track but would prefer not being around him.

Perhaps you’re right on the timing. But I think the 1970s with its “porn chic” also had “horror chic”, whereas the pre-1970 gore fests weren’t as big a hits.

But there was also definitely a move to a specific very recurrent, near-dominant theme in horror movies from the 1970s onward: city/suburban folk going to the country and being overwhelmed by whatever was out in the woods/on the edge of civilization: either (1) the locals or (2) monsters.

E.g. Last House on the Left, Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc.

I believe these very common theme spoke to specific fears by the children of Boomers that, unlike their parents and grandparents, they had no survival skills for actual rural living and were just LARPing at it. So the woods really were terrifying to them, and it made them feel weak, especially next to Dad who grew up on a farm in the woods and then killed Nazis/Commies and then married their mom.

That, and Jewish filmmakers and producers felt free to really crap on rural white folks as murderous inbred crazies out to kill (((everyone))) from the city.

Perhaps film is intrinsically limited, as German theorist Heinrich Wölfflin speculated: Film is a picture book of life for the illiterate.

It is first & foremost an entertainment; then, possibly, it may become a work of art-for some time. It has two weaknesses: a) it is a product of too many people plus budget constraints, so it cannot be fully authorial, b) it depends too much on technology, so most older movies become absurd or inadvertently funny. Or boring.

One can listen to a piece of music 50-100 times; one can read a piece of literature 50-100 times. Just, I don’t think one can watch a movie 50-100 times.

Movies have wider appeal, but this form of entertainment is much more limited than others.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: The Birth of Venus

Uma Thurman’s entrance as Venus in the 1988 film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Movies you should watch, but won’t.
The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai
Wired
Kick-Ass
Dr.Strangelove
Rancho Deluxe
Sideways
Little Fauss and Big Halsey.
You’re welcome (not a movie).

Sailer said it himself–different kinds of people like different kinds of movies. You ain’t a Lynch fan–nothing wrong with that.

Sorry to repeat (I’m sure someone’s already commented this, just don’t want to read through, currently, 191 comments): “The Big Lebowski” was categorized as a sports movie? Just because the Dude et al are recreational bowlers? That’s quite mystifying. TBL would be categorized as a comedy, obviously.

Which was probably why he was seen as such a family-friendly, all-American film-maker. Just enough liberalism to make Hollywood happy (Nazis are bad!) but still with positive views of family, America, and even masculinity in Indiana Jones.

1. The guy who wrote the book was a conservative.

2. It focuses on a white male character.

3. The guy escapes poverty through hard work.

4. See number 1.

Also, when did “extrovert” become “extravert”? Seems weird.
Has “introvert” likewise become “intravert”? Also weird.

And very cis-sexist. Should be intrxvert and extrxvert.

They clearly intended to study Most Effective Date Movies, until being informed that no one actually “dates” anymore. So research into the Mel Brooks Effect and the Redford-Streisand Coefficient remains sadly anecdotal

That describes pretty much every Nabokov novel – viz: the unreliable narrator. It’s a pretty old device. Poe dabbled in it too. Describes a lot of my girlfriends, too,

That is so true about women — it’s like the Gell-Mann effect where you hear them discussing something that you know about, and it’s just pure fiction.

Unreliable narrator is as much fun as a novel can get, but it doesn’t translate so well for movies (though I’m sure someone here will have a good example) or work with actual relationships. Sci-fi writer Barry Malzberg, the master of unreliable narrators, said Pale Fire was his own favorite novel so I went ahead and read it — twice!

Yes, that too, and I could name five more baseball films that are the opposite of “gay” as SunBakedSuburb so charmingly put it.

Seriously, using “gay” as an insult? I’m not a PC cop, but using that as an insult is just lazy.

Seconds is the film that has lingered in my mind, even though it’s none too pleasant to watch at times. Sinister organization gives unhappy people new faces and new lives — aging executive John Randolph is reborn as handsome young artist Rock Hudson, but all does not go well. Hudson is amazingly good, plagued by a who’s who of ominous character actors — Will Geer, Jeff Corey etc. Frankenheimer directed and James Wong Howe did the gripping photography.

Far more fun is Three Strangers — Lorre and Greenstreet do their thing with hot/crazy Geraldine Fitzgerald as the catalyst. Writer John Huston was just warming up for Treasure of Sierra Madre with this little ditty on greed, luck and fate. Arthur Edeson — of Casablanca fame — handled the cinematography. Catch it if you can find it.

Ballplayers used to smoke in the dugout. Dick Allen, Keith Hernandez, and others. But they didn’t have a cigarette dangling from their mouths in the batter’s box. Golfers will take a drag in their backswing.