I think of Se7en as sort of the epitome of the "It's all, like, dark and gritty and stuff...ooohhhh!" aesthetic trend of the 90s.
1: You'd have to be quite impressively oblivious to pop culture not to have had Se7en spoiled for you by now.
I knew 7 is about a serial killer and it has something to do with the deadly sins, but I didn't even remember (possibly I never knew) that Ms. Paltrow was in it.
I reckon I hear a "What's in the box?!" gag on average about once a week.
What did Gwyneth Paltrow ever do to you? I even checked her Wikipedia page before asking. Her most objectionable lifetime achievements seem to be marrying that guy from Coldplay and something called transcendental meditation. I know everyone loves to hate Coldplay, but they got divorced, so that should redeem her a bit, right?
7: Wasn't she an anti-vaxxer at some point? Maybe I'm confusing her with someone else.
I'm on the fence when it comes to decapitating anti-vaxx crackpots.
Ginger, most of us aren't in the hostage negotiation business.
7: Goop, Cyrus, Goop. Some will never forgive her.
The details in this thread cover the full extent of my knowledge about this, aside from the fact that I remember some debate about how to pronounce the title. Wasn't there also some movie that inappropriately used a 3 as an E?
Did the trend of arbitrarily replacing c's with k's peak in the 90s, or was that more the late 80s?
Bekause that was kompletely kool.
I'm kind of disappointed that the Martha Stewart vs Paltrow conflict wasn't sustained.
She described the divorce as "conscious uncoupling" in a series of interviews where she was kind enough to share her thoughts on life.
Reality TV idea: Paltrow, Žižek, and Manafort are roommates on a smallish fixed budget somewhere in the US, with part-time Olive Garden or Cinnabon jobs (shared shifts)-- maybe Albuquerque, with occasional reuse of Breaking Bad settings.
What did Gwyneth Paltrow ever do to you? I even checked her Wikipedia page before asking. Her most objectionable lifetime achievements seem to be marrying that guy from Coldplay and something called transcendental meditation.
As peep says, Goop is unforgivable. She's like a parody of Hollywood woo, except it's apparently entirely earnest. And she's conning idiots out of their money in the process.
The Goop pseudoscience hate is grounded; the hate for a pretentious description of a breakup, I would think less so.
11: Murder by Numbers did it in the movie poster but not the actual title, or something like that. I tried to watch it because ehh, why not see what Michael Pitt does after Hedwig but failed. The Dreamers worked better, with the unfair advantage of Eva Green and nudity.
Wasn't there also some movie that inappropriately used a 3 as an E?
Definitely some video games: Driv3r and F3AR spring to mind.
16: Speaking of Eva Green and nudity, I just finished binge watching Penny Dreadful a few days ago. Not bad, if vampires, werewolves, witches, Frankenstein's monsters, Eva Green, and nudity are your sort of thing.
15. I certainly don't wish her harm, any more than SŽ, but much of what both of them say is unimaginative carefully groomed nonsense, and they both manage convincing impressions of spineless sellouts.
Goop is not just pseudoscience, it's a disgusting fusion of luxury aesthetic and lifestyle fantasy peddling self improvement or at least the status that comes with having an improved self without sacrifice or effort. Also, what about selling matched covers of books so they'll look good on a shelf in the home decor part of goop, there's that too.
Was not familiar with "Goop." Google search results claims its "A modern lifestyle brand offering cutting-edge wellness advice...."
Sounds horrible. I'm not clicking on that.
Also, brand-name wellness advice is bullshit... you can go to TJ Maxx and get the same wellness advice for like 60% off the price.
Fair enough, somehow I missed Goop. Checking Wikipedia again, I found this paragraph:
In September 2008, she launched the weekly lifestyle newsletter Goop, encouraging readers to 'nourish the inner aspect'. The website's title is derived from her initials. Paltrow documented a food stamp challenge on Goop. In 2015, a report in The Guardian criticised her views in Goop on vaginal steaming. In 2016, she said she planned to discontinue her involvement with Goop
There is a link in that paragraph, which I will definitely not be following while at work.
Stamps are totally ok nowadays.
cutting-edge wellness advice
1. Ensure all cutting edges are pointed away from you.
22: "do you smoke after sex?"
"No, I steam."
17
I get unreasonably annoyed when people trying create text relating to Russia use the Cyrillic letter "ya" for R, "i" for for N, and "d" for A, etc.
26: me too. That annoyed me about "Red Plenty" among other things. It's the equivalent of that faux-bamboo typeface for Chinese titles.
21.last It's not actually the same wellness advice. Like textile production, there are now customized lines of wellness advice made to order for discount retail, (that is shoddier ideas put together carelessly) but branded identically to the pricier versions.
Drives me spare, I tell you. It's rife in gaming. Even smart developers like Introversion. But, it's not quite as bad as using Arabic instead of Urdu.
22: Judging by this, "discontinue her involvement" means "farm out the work, but keep making the money and focus on new ways to fleece the devotees."
But I still think this is all symptomatic of a greater level of habitual scrutiny and readiness to judge than is applied to male celebrities.
Male celebrities don't even stream their vaginas.
The grocery store by my parents had a life-sized Markey Mark selling some kind of nutritional supplement. Objectively worse than Goop, but maybe not as bad considering.
21: Sounds horrible. I'm not clicking that.
It's even worse than that. You should totally click it; it's glorious.
29 At least they connected the letters correctly. It's hilarious how so many tv shows and other media get that wrong.
The only male equivalent of Goop I can think of is Tom Brady's TB12. He sells "IR-reflecting bioceramic" lined pajamas that help you recover while you sleep. Only $200! Also loads of other crap. He's nowhere near Paltrow level though.
Is there something that she did in the last week or two that's pissing everyone off? I feel like I've seen a bunch of Paltrow-hating lately.
For the uninitiated: the thing that everyone hates Goop for is that she is the poster-child for the kind of advice that goes, "Are you an overworked single mother who's carrying an extra 15 pounds? I can relate. What I've found works is to have your trainer collaborate with your nutritionist/chef to really exploit the power of infusing your rhubarb with oxygen. You should also be walking to the farmer's market at least four days a week. Don't forget to drink your asparagus-water!"
37 Is there vaginal steaming in that link? Because if there isn't I'm going to be disappointed.
It mentions putting rocks in there. I didn't see steaming but I didn't read it all.
"Asparagus water" is just urine, right?
36.last don't drink barley water if you're about to take a long trip with limited bathroom facilities.
22.2 You raise a good point. I'm not connected enogh to celebrity culture to be able to thoughtfully confirm/deny.
That said, the gossip sites I look at (one has just recently been sold and so the snarky and occasionally knowing commentary is now juvenile and nothing more) are uniformly hard on Shia LeBoeuf and Mickey Rourke among other men, Shia because he does irritating pretentious stunts in a way that suggests he may think quite highly of himself. Maybe being pretentious is gendered, and seeking ceteris paribus cases to think about this is pointless.
Speaking of finer with age: Gwyneth's mom IYKWIM.
So my plan A for getting rich through grift is to market some health/wellness beauty product to gullible celebrities. Maybe some qi calibrating cream? A toxin roller? Avocado pit water?
Avocado pit water?
You need some sort of expensive press to crush the pit. You should get in touch with Juicero folks, I'll bet they'd be interested.
For they must be humiliated as well as fleeced.
46
Oooh, synergy!!
48
The taint is a major blockage point for qi, so highly susceptible to the build-up of toxins. Bee sting wax is the best way to stimulate your body's natural toxin removal endorphins and eliminate negative energy from your taint.
Buying advertising and paying for venues to make that work is really going to cut into profits. Have you considered getting access to media and physical resources necessary for a succesful business by getting elected to office somewhere corrupt and backward?
Hopefully the rich people will delay their relocation enough for you to extract something from them before they leave.
Ok, I guess that I am now old and out of touch-- These look like poorly-made sneakers sold by an itinerant peddler, maybe a low-rent dollar store Purposely ugly but not in a flashy way, just an imitation of poor design with cheap materials.
Vaguely related to the title of the OP, I'm sort of tempted to see the next Jurassic World movie purely because Jeff Goldblum is apparently going to reprise his Ian Malcolm character one more time.
It's kind of funny that the most superfluous character from the original movie will have appeared in more Jurassic Park movies than anyone else.
26-27: Let me recommend this bar for your next meetup.
Bee sting wax is the best way to stimulate your body's natural toxin removal endorphins and eliminate negative energy from your taint.
I Can't Believe 'Taint Beeswax
Those with further desire for Gwyneth dismemberment should check out "Contagion" where you can revel in the joys of her face being yanked off her skull.
I used to get really strung out on asparagus water. Its a terrible habit.
Wegman's has a bunch of overpriced waters like that -watermelon, cucumber.
My office cafeteria was trying to get in on the racket too with a flavored hydration station.
News you need: The factoid that the cells of microbes in your body outnumber your own cells by ten to one is only true right before you take a dump.
In conclusion, if somebody says you don't seem like yourself, take a crap.
There's something really very subversive about the end of Se7en I think, and I don't mean the decapitation of Paltrow. I mean this: I genuinely can't think of another American film that represents a policeman taking his gun out of his holster and shooting dead the bad guy as a disempowering act, the way this movie does. I mean, whatever your position on firearms in the States (and as a Brit my position is: you guys are all crazy) you have to concede, there is a stacked cliff-face of movies in which the good guy unholstering his (usually his) gun and shooting the bad guy is a climactic positive, an orgasmic release of Justice Power. What other films show that action as disempowering, the way this one does? That's really remarkable.
61: "Black Rain" sort of does - there's a climactic chase through the fields (with motorbikes, because it's the Eighties) and at the end of it the villain is struggling with the hero and being forced slowly back towards a sharp stake sticking out of the ground, with the strong implication that he's about to be impaled, which is the way you're expecting the scene to go. Cut. Next shot - villain is in handcuffs, and hero is taking him into the police station, to general quiet respect from other detectives.
But that isn't quite as disempowering (and I am sure there were other films with similar endings). The hero takes the decision to arrest rather than kill the villain. There aren't many films where the decision to kill the villain is disempowering because there just aren't many films that finish with the disempowerment and defeat of the hero, however that happens.
Oldboy springs to mind, but he's not a cop.
It annoys me that I can't deny that 62 makes a good point about a movie that I prefer to think of as purely irredeemable for the decades-long deluge of perversion unleashed by Seven, following the same "brilliant psychopath + torture porn" formula.
Whoops, 61 I meant.
Also, fuck Seven.
I started to read 64 and thought "Black Rain, irredeemable? Nonsense!"
61/62: On a related note, I've long thought that Thor, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Doctor Strange all deserve recognition as the very rare superhero movies in which the hero wins by not fighting. (Sorry to spoil the endings for the four people who haven't seen those movies and still want to.)
Thor is a particularly good example. He starts the movie with vast power and able to kick everyone's ass. The plot kicks off when he loses that power. Throughout the movie he gets humiliated and one thing after another goes wrong for him. He gets character development, he gets his power back, there is Freudian subtext and in some cases just plain text. He kicks ass again for a while, but in the really important part, what he needs to do is just temporarily restrain Loki so he can deal with the real crisis that's in motion elsewhere. Pre-character-development Thor would have just hit Loki again and again and ignored the actual problem. Smartened Thor, instead, gently places his hammer on Loki's chest, and Loki can't move it for the same reason pre-epiphany Thor couldn't. DOFP: Xavier has been relying on his power all movie, and it hasn't worked, and he finally begs the wild card in the conflict to do the right thing and takes a leap of faith on it, and that works. DS: he can't win, but he can lose repeatedly.
I know I'm taking these movies more seriously than most people do, but I think the climaxes of those movies are different enough from the rest of the genre (superhero movies, and even action movies in general) that it's worth pointing out.
67 is actually good to know. I haven't seen any of the Marvel movies since, um, before the new era anyway and I've been putting it off because I can't handle more world-smashy property damage. Knowing there are alternatives is encouraging.
67: also true of "The Lord of the Rings", of course.
It's the wrong way to treat Thor, of course, because in the Edda etc. Thor doesn't get character growth. He's basically light relief. You have all the grimdark legends - Ragnarok, the death of Baldur, Odin paying the price for the runes - and then to break up the Nordic gloom you have these stories about Thor, who is just this well-meaning extremely strong but short-tempered and not very bright bro with a hammer, who likes fighting and drinking and having sex with his wife, and is constantly outsmarted by everyone - Loki, the Giants, everyone - but ends up winning because he is (vide supra) extremely strong and well-meaning and has a heroic capacity for beer, and of course a hammer.
They get the portrayal of Thor in the films exactly right in this sense. Chris whatever his name is. There are too many Chrises.
61/62: On a related note, I've long thought that Thor, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Doctor Strange all deserve recognition as the very rare superhero movies in which the hero wins by not fighting. (Sorry to spoil the endings for the four people who haven't seen those movies and still want to.)
Guardians too, no?
I haven't seen any of the Marvel movies since, um, before the new era anyway and I've been putting it off because I can't handle more world-smashy property damage.
There's a fair to large amount of that in all the cited movies, it's just not the climactic solution (very much unlike Avengers 1, btw).
I enjoyed Guardians but have no memory whatsoever of how it ended; I remember lots of false climaxes. I think all of these movies still hew to Save the Cat strictures.
After typing all that including the link, I now remember the climax of Guardians. It did have a cute moment of pulling something completely out of left field that was an alternative to fighting.
68:
Thor: a little world-smashy property damage on Earth, a moderate amount in other dimensions, but it's still probably in the bottom quarter of smashiness for the genre.
DOFP: one big overblown smashy scene in a "real-world" setting. Lots of more understated conflict, and/or conflict in a dystopian hellhole alternate reality.
DS: lots of world-bendy stuff in alternate realities. One world-smashy scene in reverse. If that sounds weird (a) it's supposed to and (b) I guess I should avoid spoilers after all, so I'll be vague.
71: eh, kinda, I guess? Yeah, in the actual bit with the swelling music where the bad guy is definitively beat, the protagonists are holding hands, and they got to it with that out-of-left-field moment. But they got to that point by shooting the bad guy repeatedly, and in that bit they're still showing heroic stamina and fortitude and stuff. It's not as bloodthirsty as Deadpool but it's not as subversive as the three above.
Oh, I'm not claiming it's subversive. It's basically "they defeated violence with love". And dancing. But it's definitely not the usual shoot/beat up a bad guy until you think he's dead, turn around, celebrate prematurely, then kill him for real.
61 makes me want to rewatch Se7en.
The violence in both Se7en and Fight Club (both Fincher films, probably not a coincidence) seemed a lot more understated when I saw them in the early to mid 2000s than I had been led to believe by reputation. In both cases, I wondered if the violence had more impact because the movies don't have the constant violence of action films or the detailed, drawn out violence of the more graphic horror films. They try to de-desensitize you, I guess.
The violence in Se7en is horrific, but most of what you see are the results, not the process of it happening. In Fight Club it's more human scale and direct, you have bloody faces, and someone does get shot, but it's mostly not weapons at a distance, or fights that look like extended dance numbers.
I liked both movies, and I'll watch the foot chase in the middle of Se7evn pretty much any time I see it on tv, but when I first got a computer that could play Blu-Ray discs and I was looking for a movie I could use to try it out, I couldn't bring myself to buy the discount copy I saw in a store. I guess I'm ok with liking it, but not with being someone who would like it enough to own it.
Se7evn
What the fuck is up with my typing today?
SPOILERS
Doesn't the Marvel Civil War movie end with the heroes losing by fighting?
Inside the Goop Summit
In the day's first lecture, Sadeghi spoke for nearly 90 minutes about "integrative photosynthesis," "spiritual Wi-Fi," "laterality to the body," "neuro-vegetative signs" and "the ontological experience called your life."
