Everything you need to know about that movie.

Dude, this preview came on right before Snakes on a Plane and the crowd (including all of us) went wild.

But we're horrible people. You knew that.

The teaser trailer for this was shown before Snakes on a Plane last summer, despite the only similarities between the movies being Samuel L. Jackson and the word "snake" in the titles. My impression was that it's one of those movies that goes out of it's way to seem "shocking!" and "edgy!" but doesn't have much else going for it.

I am REALLY looking forward to this movie. Hustle & Flow was great, and if this movie is going to be as unmoored from reality as it looks, it'll be quite different from Hustle & Flow.

Faux outrage over this will make it bigger than Passion of the Christ

In the synopsis: "Refusing to know her in a biblical sense, Lazarus..."

Someone wrote that? Seriously?

And, uh, yes, as Becks points out, we cheered.

It's an exploitation film. There is a long history of such films. Eh.

8: Well, there aren't any nowadays. It's very rare to see an exploitation film that isn't 100% straight from the genre of "horror" or 100% straight from the genre of "action movie". Another way to look at it is that exploitation films are much, much more formulaic nowadays than they were in the 60s and 70s, because it's become clear to studios that there's more money in them than in thoughtful subtle movies, and there's a certain formula they can follow to get a pretty good chance of a hit among stupid people. This one doesn't look formulaic, which is rare now.

I read somewhere (don't remember where, sorry) a review of it that argued that the film handles the fucked-up premise in an allegorical way that actually says some interesting things.

That said, the premise is somewhat off-putting, yes.

Probably Salon.

See, I know I'm no fun at parties and all, but something just strikes me as wrong or dishonest about all this "We're daring to be offensive because we're just so daring and not-PC, and besides, no one is racist any more anyway" stuff. There's all this playing-with-really-creepy-racial-and-sexual-stereotypes stuff around, and I just feel like it's not transgressive-in-a-good-way anymore.

I also think that if you watch a lot of crappy exploitative stuff, it has a powerful effect on your thinking--it's advertising for an ideology just like Coke advertising is advertising for a Coke, and while I freely admit that I'm more of a sucker than the average person, I do find that advertising can have a persuasive effect on me.

And this movie annoys me because it's another one of those pre-empt-the-debate/only-prudes-and-killjoys-get-annoyed movies, and it feels extremely pre-fab.

I don't think I can stomach one more chain the slut to the radiator movie. The romcom genre is so stale.

The "Loading" graphic of the writhing, chained woman alone made me queasy. I think I'd rather watch Dakota Fanning rapesploitation than some kind of touching indie ode to Stockholm Syndrome.

I also remember that week's New York Magazine's approval matrix had "whoever decided to put the preview for Black Snake Moan before Snakes on a Plane" as Lowbrow but Brilliant.

Dakota Fanning rapesploitation

Back when Hollywood was a town of ideas!

...And I know it's pretty sad to be all intellectually puzzled by one's response to an exploitation movie, but I'm still trying to sort it out: I don't think I like movies that say to me "Come on, you know you like blatant racial stereotyping and seeing bitches get smacked down [is that what the kids say now?]--don't like the PC killjoys keep you from your genuine, deep-down pleasures."

This has something to do with my distrust of the Dan-Savagoid narrative of "essential" sexuality, too.

But then, the Frowner family probably wins the "least likely to approve of exploitation movies of anyone including religious fundamentalists" award, so perhaps my upbringing biases me.

17 is full of typos, but just fill in something appropriately joyless and you'll get the general idea.

the premise is somewhat off-putting, yes.

Somewhat, yes.

This really seems to be astonishingly awful. I, too, really liked Hustle and Flow, but a lot of that was liking Terence Howard's performance.

Nooooo, Christina Ricci, don't give in to the blondewaifism of Hollywood!

17: Yeah, I think non-ironic disapproval can be a fair response -- not wanting to see a movie about a woman who gets chained to a radiator for being a slut doesn't seem like being an over-the-top killjoy at all.

I don't think I can stomach one more chain the slut to the radiator movie. The romcom genre is so stale.

You kids today have it so easy. I remember when Shannon Tweed was the only guarantee available that there would bare breast in a movie on Skinimax, and you just had to hope for the best with a movie entitled Chained Heat The lesson, as always, is that adolescent boys should be jailed on general principle.

I think I'd rather watch Dakota Fanning rapesploitation than some kind of touching indie ode to Stockholm Syndrome.

There's no reason you can't do both. Not necessarily in the same movie, though I wouldn't rule out the twofer combined concept movie.

"Astonishingly awful" seems to sum it up, unless there are... snakes on a radiator.

This is totally off-topic, but I just saw this on the history page of a large law firm. It reminded me of some of our discussions of work-life balance and the necessity of working crazy hours.

From the 1930 annual report:

"At the present time an older senior partner is expected to work 5.5 hrs. on weekdays (9-1, 2-3:30) and 2.5 hrs. on Saturdays (9-11:30), with one month vacation."

If only...

This really seems to be astonishingly awful. I, too, really liked Hustle and Flow, but a lot of that was liking Terence Howard's performance.

I liked Taraji P. Henson's performance and Taryn Manning's performance, too. And the music.

I'm surprised at how many people are rejecting a movie by what looks like one of the few creative directors in Hollywood, just because of the subject matter. I like to think I could enjoy a movie about just about anything, as long as it isn't formulaic and predictable.

22. SCMT, the lesson of that movie was that nubile young women must be jailed on general principle, and have occasion for at least one communal shower.

Sadly, I pretty much agree with 12. Just like I don't think you can make an anti-war war movie, I don't think you can make an anti-exploitation exploitation movie--the images always overwhelm the message. On the other hand, I don't want a society where we all pretend that we don't want to do dirty things to Christina Ricci.

25- I recently had a conversation with a older, still-active partner at my firm who told me he had never, in his decades of working here, ever billed 200 hours in a month. And expressed something like genuine shock that anyone could bill that much without wearing down mentally and emotionally.

I was totally floored. I mean, I don't think you could find a first-year associate who hasn't billed 200 hours in a month. You could find plenty who've never billed less. That's not even considered that much. And this partner's never billed that much? The mind boggles.

26: Just because of the subject matter? Just because of the subject matter? You really, honestly don't consider the subject matter significant when you pick a movie? That's weird.

They could make the artiest movie in the world about squishing cute little kittens, for example, and I still wouldn't want to see it.

Honestly, my pleasure in watching anything is really, really decreased if it has terrible politics. I'm not sure that "terrible politics" exactly describes the movie under discussion, but I hate (for example) Last Tango in Paris for ideological reasons.

27: Let's not underestimate the importance of that lesson, though.

Sadly, I pretty much agree with 12. Just like I don't think you can make an anti-war war movie, I don't think you can make an anti-exploitation exploitation movie--the images always overwhelm the message.

I don't know about that, it's pretty easy to omit the awesome/partytime aspects of, for example, drug addiction among wealthy people. Check out "Hurlyburly" for example. And "Spun" for an example featuring young semi-glamorous people.

"At the present time an older senior partner is expected to work 5.5 hrs. on weekdays (9-1, 2-3:30) and 2.5 hrs. on Saturdays (9-11:30), with one month vacation."

If that is billable time, it works out to 30 hours a week, or 1440 hours for 48 weeks a year. I have several partners who billed less than that last year. I can think of one who probably billed less than 500.

Bitter? Me? How could you think that.

The one who looks like Steve Martin?

27, 31: Someone who worked with Tarantino at the video store from which he famously erupted said that his favorite subgenre, by a wide margin, was "Women in Prison." Looking at his movies, I don't find it all that surprising.

28: Well, I'm a little horrified that you agree with me too, Ogged. But don't let it get you down...in an infinite universe anything can happen once, right?

21: not wanting to see a movie about a woman who gets chained to a radiator for being a slut doesn't seem like being an over-the-top killjoy at all.

Phew. I was prepared to join Frowner as a self-identified buzzkill, but Lizardbreath has let me off the hook.

I saw the trailer before Pan's Labyrinth (which is amazing, though very painful) and was appalled.

The one who looks like Steve Martin?

[long rant deleted] Yes.

30: Ditto. Frowner, you are my cinematic soulmate.

Barf.

This, from the Esquire review linked in #1, sounds like the worst part to me:

But, paradoxically, the less offensive Black Snake Moan gets, the more truly offensive it becomes. Wrapping everything up in a neat, morally defensible package only serves to make the twisted smackdown at the film's center feel hypocritical and opportunistic. Brewer wants to tear the lid off, and he clearly has the instincts to do it. But he also wants us to really, really like him.

my pleasure in watching anything is really, really decreased if it has terrible politics

I agree, but I find it's complicated to justify that reaction in a satisfactory way. I wonder if I'm not assuming that other viewers are less sophisticated than I am. Or maybe it's just that the aesthetic reaction isn't something discrete from everything else, though that's complicated to explain.

Somewhat related: I'm watching Enter the Dragon right now. It's making me think violence is the answer sometimes. I'm not comfortable with this reaction.

39: Interesting. I always figured that I was exposed to some kind of left-wing-disapproving-of-movies chemical when I was little, or was frightened by a reel of film or something, but perhaps since there are two of us this is not the case...

No no, violence really is the answer sometimes.

I love Enter the Dragon. Violence is the answer sometimes, duh.

Skanks on a chain?

I understand that violence may be necessary. This film as me almost rooting for it. Weird, to me.

That does look stunningly offensive, based on the website and synopsis. On the other hand, Christina Ricci? Wow.

But mrh, she's gone all skinny and blond!

(Also: I'm a bit Becks-style, as my lovely girlfriend brought over homemade pizza and Sparks™. I don't claim to be thinking coherently right now.)

42: True, and I've tried to reign in some of my more knee-jerk disapproval, or at least complexify it a little. I'd like to be able to consider multiple readings of a film rather than immediately to cleave to the one I disapprove of most.

And I'm never sure where I stand on thinking that other people are less sophisticated than I am...there are plenty of people I meet every day who can read films more cleverly than I can, but then I also meet a bunch of unregenerate racists and really-genuinely-sexist people who love movies that reconfirm their prejudices on the simplest level.

Plus, there are things I really distrust because they're so powerful, like the rush of gratification when the evil villain dies a painful death. That's such a mix of libidinal gratification and plot closure and morality that it really scares me.

Feminists have no sense of humor even about little things like being chained to radiators.

44: I was exposed to the same chemical, or dropped on the same part of the head. Par example, putting aside all the many other possible criticisms of Bond films, I am always bothered by the inevitable scene of a car/motorcycle/hovercraft chase through the marketplace in some impoverished city. Doesn't anyone care about these vendors who are no doubt living a hand-to-mouth existence and sure as hell don't have insurance to rebuild their stalls or replace their inventory?

Seriously, that's what I'm thinking about while other people are admiring the explosions. Every once in a while I wish I could this particular filter off. But usually I just wish the world didn't suck so much.

Sparks tastes like skittles.

I don't want a society where we all pretend that we don't want to do dirty things to Christina Ricci.

Me neither, I guess, but I think I'd rather have sex with her than chain her to a radiator.

I hear she has laundry to wash, teo.

9:Go West, young cinephile. To the other side of the Pacific, where exploitation remains interesting.

Ki-Duk Kim ...this guy has made 4 utterly different movies that I have seen, each of which blew me away, two of which probably make BSM look like Disney.

54: I just figure that my people will come and take me back to my home planet someday. On my home planet everyone is VERY CAREFUL at all times. They're also lazy and a bit anxious, so life is slow-paced and simple.

But yes, there are stories I can't read because I start worrying too much about the minor characters' livelihoods being destroyed in the throes of the action.

57: I'm down.

Doesn't anyone care about these vendors who are no doubt living a hand-to-mouth existence and sure as hell don't have insurance to rebuild their stalls or replace their inventory?

I sort of do that, but, sadly, not on the same decent grounds: I feel for the managers whose crap the rebel is always breaking. Car crashes, people through windows, etc. make me queasy on those grounds.

30: Last Tango wouild have been okay if he'd used low-fat butter.

48: Eastwood's Dirty Harry has (or had) the same effect. I saw that one in '71 in Birmingham, AL, and I'd swear more than half the audience left hoping someone would start something.

58: Hey, hey, I've seen one of his movies: that Summer, Winter...one. It made me so angry that I could barely move or speak. I remember it vividly. Oooooh, I did not like that movie. But perhaps it has more/other things to say to someone who is actually Korean.

51: I started to say that Sparks and the Internet should never mix but honestly the net is probably one of the safest places to be when Sparked.

True: the same unopened cans of Diet Sparks sat on our back deck for more than one season as some kind of terrible warning. It was a bit like having the severed head of Dignity on a pike.

...although given my inability to produce a simple HTML tag, I don't think you should take my opinions too seriously.

Low-fat butter is not butter.

58: Given that I'm leaving to seek out some form of cheap thrills, I suppose I should add: I can see why his movies are compelling. What are your thoughts on them? Which ones have you seen?

56: Teo, come on. If you find yourself unable to have sex with someone because she's currently chained to your radiator, you're just not using a long enough chain. This isn't complicated.

When I first saw the preview, my first reaction was--well, nevermind. But my second was thinking that if it was going to go the "Misery" route, it could be very interesting. From the Esquire article, though, it doesn't seem like that's happening. Oh well, there's always my first reaction.

she's gone all skinny and blond!

Wasn't she the chubby buxom one? Where have I been?

63:If Sporing, Summer... made you really mad...well it is the least brutally sexist of his work.
If it is sexism.

Wasn't she the chubby buxom one? Where have I been?

Let a woman grow as an actress, ogged. Now she can play either roll.

If you find yourself unable to have sex with someone because she's currently chained to your radiator, you're just not using a long enough chain.

True, but Jackson apparently chains her to the radiator to prevent her from having sex. I mean, come on.

Well, with a short enough chain, it could work. You just have to match the chain length to your goals.

She was chubby and buxom--okay, not so much with the chubby--and it looked AWESOME on her.

I have a completely irrational love for Christina Ricci. She looks a lot like one of my sisters did during her angsty teenaged stage.

67:IMDB is ok. Sort the viewer reviews in some way, and see what they have to say.

He is visually beautiful, in ways American movies are not, and many oriental films are. And European films. He is spiritual, and as a Catholic in Buddhist/Secular Korea, mysteriously spiritual. In ways American films can no longer imagine I think.
He is challenging:no it is not cheap thrills. There is nothing about "Spring Summer..." that is cheap thrills, and frankly that is a weird thing to say. Was it the character dragging the statue up the mountain as redemption you thought exploitation?

This morning I watched this document on Asian TV about "Hot Springs of Japan" The two giggly women narrating said things like:"Hot Springs are a Gift of the Earth" The old wood and stone work of the various spas...hey, I like Asia.

Christina Ricci used to look awesome. However, I maintain that she still does.

You just have to match the chain length to your goals.

And by "goals" I think you mean "penis."

Christina Ricci used to look awesome. However, I maintain that she still does.

Gawd, yes.

Yeah, Ricci is otherworldly hot.

But not a classic Hollywood type. I'd bet the only reason she gets work is that she was a child actor -- that she'd never have gotten a first adult role without a long resume.

But not a classic Hollywood type. I'd bet the only reason she gets work is that she was a child actor -- that she'd never have gotten a first adult role without a long resume.

Yeah, that's wrong, I think. I think she would have been fine without the childhood career, though I think the reasons are relatively unsavory.

Ricci is too waifish and otherworldly. a lot of the intelligent young actresses just ooze the Hollywood insecurity thru their pores. Winona Ryder at her peak was like this:5-10 years to make my 50 million dollars if I play my cards right but I can blow it with ten pounds or a bad part. They try too hard.

I am impressed with Camilla Belle recently.

God, I am never going to the movies with any of you people.

With TV, a very large number of actors and actresses start out very young now. Ricci is almost the rule, not the exception, tho she was a young lead.

Fun to go look up Scarlett Johansson's career.

Eighty-two messages and no one's noticed that you can send an e-valentine from the site? I mean, nothing says "I love you" like superimposing your valentine's face on the body of a chained-up Christina Ricci.

29 and 33: I don't think that they had billable hours in 1930. Lawyers just sort of said, "This is fairly simple work. Here's what we'll charge. This is more complicated; we'll charge more." It would be 30 hours/ week * 46 weeks. 1380 hours of work per year. I'm pretty sure that this was considered one of the more grinding firms to work for; it certainly is now.

Re: Christina Ricci

You all really think that she's hot? I've been told that my face looks a bit like hers. I don't really think that it's true, but I assume that it's because I have a high forehead. My forehead happens to be one of less favored features.

My sister used to use a very similar forehead to bludgeon me into compliance. Ah, childhood.

I don't think Christina Ricci is even recognizable on the poster that comes up on the site.

Less so in the clips from the movie itself, but wow.

Christina Ricci used to look awesome. However, I maintain that she still does.

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

Via Salon's Broadsheet, a saddening comparison of pictures of Ricci from the last few years:

http://www.glamour.com/health/articles/2006/12/celebmorph3

76 or 77 or something: No, it wasn't sexism that bugged me about that film...sexism isn't that film's problem particularly unless you think that any depiction of a sexist society (And Korea? For my money, about as sexist as any developed country.) is ipso facto sexist. No, it was the cruelty of the worldview, coupled with a sort of stacked-deck quality--like, everyone had to behave with the absolute maximum inward-turning pathology for the events of the movie to unfold, just as in that Bjork/Von Trier movie everyone had to behave with maximum inward-turning obtuse stubbornness. If even one person had used a little bit of the common sense in either film, grinding crushing tragedy would not ensue. Also, I'm a little suspicious of grindingly crushingly tragic movies, because I always suspect people of enjoying it.

But then, I also always ask myself why Anna Karenina doesn't just appreciate Karenin and stop being such a fool over that transparently annoying oaf Vronsky, so my perspective on sad things in narrative is not perhaps as sophisticated as it might be.

Beauty in movies--that kind of lapidary beauty isn't my favorite, although certainly it is tremendously striking. I like my beauty irregular, beat up and grubby, personally.

Par example, putting aside all the many other possible criticisms of Bond films, I am always bothered by the inevitable scene of a car/motorcycle/hovercraft chase through the marketplace in some impoverished city. Doesn't anyone care about these vendors who are no doubt living a hand-to-mouth existence and sure as hell don't have insurance to rebuild their stalls or replace their inventory?

If I found myself very rich, needing a tax shelter, I'd hire JM to adapt a Bond for the screen as a period movie, without any of this crap. Live and Let Die, with its racial themes, real sensuality and early-fifties American setting, ripe for a remake because it may have been about the worst, would be my choice.

I would make a feminist version with the Bond figure being beaten to death in a shower by several naked Bond girls.

needing a tax shelter

Then the movie would become a runaway hit and you'd be screwed...

They would be Scarlett Johannsen, Keira Knightley, and some non-blonde. Maybe Penelope Cruz, but she may be too old.

I think Tom Ford got as close to that goal as anyone's going to get, John.

"Penelope? We're casting a feminist movie and you were my first choice, though some people tell me you're too old to appear alongside Keira and Scarlett......"

A true feminist would address her as "Miss Cruz", unless you know her personally.

91:"Also, I'm a little suspicious of grindingly crushingly tragic movies, because I always suspect people of enjoying it"

Don't be suspicious. The only part of Breaking the Waves I didn't like was the happy ending. Partly kidding, but if that bothers you, you may have more trouble with his other movies. He is Catholic, and pessimistic.

I like to compare the two versions of Dark Water. The original Japanese had more attractive cinematography, including long hallways shots that were grubby but interesting. Less dialogue. The American Dark Water had more backstory, and Jennifer Connolly was much more individuated, with an emphasis on motivation that completely changed the movie, even tho the plots were almost identical. A haunted house story vs a personal tragedy.

I see this example as "environment/culture is destiny" vs "character/biography is destiny", and I think Oriental art-films still have that emphasis on generative place that is almost gone in America.

There is a politics connected here, and a religion and maybe an irresponsibility. Maybe two different kinds of compassion. I can't quickly explain the appeal of tragedy, but it may not always be wallowing in determinism but sometimes just humility and suspension of judgement.

I'm sure Frowner's been recalling the memorable treatment of this theme in Boy's Weeklies: the heart and the eye are deeply reactionary, and we have to respond and think both. That classic passage, where he asks us to "...imagine a left-wing boy's weekly," and how dreary we could expect it to be.

Contemporary von Trier is, in my view, emotionally dishonest and obnoxious. I'm not harshing on Breaking the Waves but it's all downhill from Bjork.

98 - That's Ms. Cruz to you.

Ki-Duk Kim:

3 Iron is probably the easiest to handle. Very romantic & spiritual, but tragic in that a young wife is condemned to an physically abusive marriage in order to support her family. Kim's movies are so deep and complex that that is only a small part of the story. The wife is a photographers's model, and themes of voyeurism, passivity, objectification are ubiquitous.

Bad Guy A mute impotent street thug kidnaps an upper-middle class coed and forces her into prostitution. He watches thru a 2-way mirror. Although there are hints that this isn't really the plot at all, but fantasy.

Samaritan Girl Two 14 yr old girls dabble in prostitution, one acting as pimp. When the more active girl dies, the other "redeems" herself by going back thru the johns, having sex (nothing explicit or salacious), and giving the money back. Her polceman father finds out, follows her, and kills the johns, without telling her he knows. A widower, he blames himself for everything. It ends in the Korean forests, with multiple spiritual symbolic endings.

So yeah, lapidary beauty, challenging alienating brutal plotlines, symbolic imagery, redemption/acceptance spiritual ambiguous interpretations.

Oh God, he's the Bad Guy director? Oof. For some reason I thought you guys were talking about Chan-wuk Park of Oldboy fame.

You haven't seen The Isle? That one actually has a woman carrying out the strange vague sadism. Roger Ebert loved it.

3-Iron struck me as a bit pretentious...and then I realized that that was pretty much because I couldn't stand all the silence and I wanted there to be songs in the background, dammit. With the right soundtrack that movie could have been as much fun as Band of Outsiders (note: Band of Outsiders would not be much fun without its music).

Me'n' Penelope go way back.

103:Dammit, haven't seen Oldguy. Sympathy for Mr Vengeance was fantastic, and another example of this deterministic tragic thing.

105:Nope, haven't seen The Isle. Most of this is Sundance Sunday Night stuff, although 3-Iron has moved around the other movie networks. Yeah, he makes nearly silent movies.

101:Watched Dogville 10+ times. If you think Lars hates America, or if you a character person and just see very bad people, it is rough stuff. If you are a Marxist, like me & von Trier, you say Ain't Nobody's Fault and cry.

Hah -- so you say -- to her friends she is "Penny".

Her old friends call her Penelope. You're apparently a casual sexual contact.

And her real old friends know that it rhymes with 'antelope'.

Movies are one of my things, tho no good at it.

Back on topic, hasn't the race/gender reversal of Black Snake Moan jumped out at anybody yet? We got a white woman, a black man, some uncontrollable sexualty, and a chain...and people are seeing a male sexual fantasy playing here?

The ending as decribed would bug me tho. Fuckin Americvans, and melodrama, problems that can be solved, and therapy for gawds sake.

Penelope often complains about the quality of her casual sexual contacts, but she never seems to learn.

My problem is not that it is rough stuff, but that no one on earth acts like that or ever has. I am not a delicate flower, but rather a roller of eyes.

(I realize that von Trier's work is stylized. I still feel it is false and self-indulgent.)

113:the chalklines indicatng houses might have alerted you that it was not intended as realism.

I have yet to see anybody who watched Dogville mention Thornton Wilder's Our Town, tho OT is almost always staged that way.

Just because things aren't naturalistic doesn't mean they aren't vulnerable to charges of being dishonest or inept. I love many non-naturalistic films.

114:False & self-indulgent.

Besides the two Wilder plays, I presume von Trier id alluding back to some of the other early 20th century, political expressionistic drama, like The Adding Machine, Liliom and Berthold Brecht

"For this purpose, Brecht employed the use of techniques that remind the spectator that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself, which he called the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as distancing effect, estrangement effect, or alienation effect)."

The only part of Breaking the Waves I didn't like was the happy ending. Partly kidding, but if that bothers you, you may have more trouble with his other movies.

But Bob, that's exactly the problem with Von Trier. He ruined Dogville with his cop-out ending. Haven't seen Manderlay yet, 'cause it only played here for a week. I think "Reget" remains his triumph (though of course I've only seen the first 4 episodes that are subtitled), and it's been all downhill since.

This Black Snake Moan plot sounds like something straight out of a Donald Goines novel, which is nice, except I don't see a story or characters credit for Goines on the imdib.

I don't think Hollywood've forgotten how to make exploitation movies at all: Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is an almost perfect exploitation movie. Snakes On A Plane didn't live up to its initial promise, but there's more where that came from. Just because William Marshall and Max Julien aren't lighting up the screen anymore doesn't mean that plenty of genres and constituencies aren't still being exploited in a tawdry, incomprehensible way.

No really dude, where's my car?

i'm looking forward to Rapebear. A classic theme which has been neglected recently.

86: BG, your forehead didn't make that strong an impression on me, but a comparison of you to Christina Ricci isn't crazy.

It's not that I don't understand what genre of thing it is, it's just that I think it's a crap version of it. If I felt that Brecht were making political commentary about a country he didn't understand and people who seemed to be perfect strawmen, Caucasian Chalk Circle would be crap too. But, anyhow, my greater hate is for Dancer in the Dark.

Maybe later we can get into an argument about how while Ulysses might be abstract like (some) Kandinsky, it's not abstract like Pollock, and while Bello/Bella isn't supposed to be a representation of any kind of real human being, Molly Bloom damn well is!

Aw man, you always want to make it about Joyce, huh.

I get belligerent when I'm not drunk. Jeeves, fetch me a bourbon.

121:was that Maria Bello? Hot.

I think I was joking about the Joyce thing. But maybe not. With the eight sentences, the rhythms, the infinity structure, the fact the Penelope is completely reducible to a verbal picture of a woman's crotch, you doth besmirch fairest womanhood by granting it any veresimilitude! No one grants representation to Anna Livia Plurabelle!

In the hot forge of his imagination, Joyce thru hi constructivism transformed Dublin 1904 into pure idea, he un-reified an actual existing thing, and I would need a plane trip to accept that Martello's Tower was there anymore. It isn't? Exactly! Joyce put in a novel and made it disappear.

Nah, Joyce was this unhappily-married Austro-Hungarian guy in Trieste, which was full of kinky old middle-aged writers (Italo Svevo, Umberto Saba). Dublin was imaginary.

Nah, Ulysses is not a day in the life of a Dublin Jew with the Odyssey superimposed on it. Every word in the book serves multiple functions, and after the mythic, symbolic, constructivist, poetic functions are subtracted there is no naturalistic remainder. Or it is all surface and there is no interpretation. In either case there is no room for representation.

Gertrude Stein did it first anyway.

Re: Christina Ricci

My review of Prozac Nation (funny story: first date, wrong theater in a two-screen place) was that they had to put Christina Ricci's nude scene in the first 10 minutes, because by the end of the movie you won't be attracted to her.

This is what was missing from Paris, Texas—a black dude.

Also, Ricci was super-hot in the Addams Family movies, or so I thought at the time.

"Super-hot" is probably infelicitous.

I just gotta say that 24, 47 and 85 win little snake prizes from me. /slither

Woah, Samuel L. Jackson on the soundtrack is full-on embarrassing.

I hadn't actually thought of Orwell in this context, IDP, but yeah. Really, I was thinking of another commenter on boys' weeklies, my hero Franco Moretti. There's way too much to type in, but in "Kindergarten" he talks about tear-jerkers and their perniciousness, where he talks about crying-at-sad-stories as a kind of turning away from the problem, turning away from the world, turning away from the social. There is this sort of "reconciliation with the world" (Bildung) which requires us to put aside ideals (I am grossly oversimplifying) and when we cry at certain kinds of sad stories we are simply accepting that facts and ideals can never match up, that the world is too strong, that a good society is impossible. Moretti urges us to "press it to the limit, not budging from one's own ideals, and then at the moment of tears, at the moment when facts start mocking values, opening one's eyes wider still to understand their logic." (Signs Taken For Wonders, Kindergarten)** This is what I want always to do.

The thing is, I think Von Trier's recent movies are precisely intended to elicit the tears Moretti condemns. I think they're sloppily sentimental tear-jerkers which are not actually interested in social change. This is not a function of tragedy; it's a function of Von Trier. Now, I don't have any problem with his formal experiments--from that standpoint, I really liked the Bjork movie. I even have the soundtrack. And I liked that no-sets movie too. And I love the series set in the hospital--for me, that series does what Moretti urges us to, and it's really smart, right from the opening sequence.

As far as the Spring, Winter movie goes (as you can see, I have a block about movie titles)...I think Moretti is writing in the Western tradition. His comments don't make sense if you're looking at, say, classical Chinese literature. But it's really hard to be a Westerner and not read a film or a book in a Western manner. Which is why I'm suspicious of how the Spring, Winter movie works on people here. I think it falls naturally into a Moretti-ish reading, although that's not the intent.

Which is, of course, not the same as thinking that people should not see a movie or are awful, AWFUL people if they see movies of which I do not approve.

Actually, though, there's a fine art to producing the left-wing boys' weekly...if you've ever seen a comic called Castle Waiting, that's (metaphorically) a left-wing boys' weekly. It is dullness elevated to the divine; it is a meditative comic of perfect, gentle serenity. Of course, you could certainly write one that was full of excitement and drama, but excitement and drama do not by themselves prevent something from being boring.

A good, doctrinaire left-wing novel? (Well, it's science fiction, so that may let it right out for some among us) China Mieville's The Scar. The prose leaves something to be desired in many places, but man, that's a smart book. It's also--in places--dreamlike in scale and intensity.

**(I should add that Moretti is really the only theory-person whose work I know well...it's not like I'm reading him while also having a rich understanding of Deleuze or something.)

Oh, I want to add that the problem with Von Trier is not that he has tragic endings, or that he is critical of the US--it's that his tragic endings are (to me at least) really fake and hence depressing without being resonant or meaningful; similarly, his criticisms of the US are broad, sweeping, both insufficient and inaccurate, and as a result far, far too easy to dismiss. I would like to like Von Trier, but I don't. And additionally, I think his approach to gender is really dumb.

I do like Brecht, you see--if Brecht had made Dogville, it would have been a comedy. And you would have been hurting while you laughed.

95: wow, that comment made a lot more sense now that it was in context.

134: There shouldn't be all those italics there. They detract from the correct reading.

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is an almost perfect exploitation movie.

Because it plays (brilliantly) on racial and ethnic stereotypes? Isn't there more to an explotation movie than that?

Isn't there more to an explotation movie than that?

Yes. Minneapolitan is just wrong. Exploitation films really should fall into sub subcategory--blacksploitation, sexpsploitation, etc. I just said "exploitation" because I didn't feel like justifying ignoring the race issues; it's a sexploitation film. There are lots of those. See anything he's ever done.

On the theme of exploitation...Dick In A Box.

I believe this tops that on the exploiting your kid scale.

140 - Oh man. My volume was up way too loudd on my computer. I must how hide from my neighbors.

Jesus Christ. I swear I'm not drunk.

I am one of the only people I know who a) liked Dogville, a lot, and b) didn't read it as a criticism of America - the behavior of his characters seemed pretty universal to me...

143: Well, I think you can read it as universal and get some meaning out of it, but there's enough in the setting (to me, anyway) to make it indubitably about the US as far as intent goes. Is Von Trier saying that only Americans ever exploit the weak? No, but in that sense any movie is universal.

Dogville was definitely an endurance test for me, though--I'd after the first three acts I was counting down to get to the end.

But seriously, if you like Von Trier, or even if you don't, you should totally, totally see the hospital series he made. It's fantastic.

144: The Kingdom is fantastic but incredibly frustrating, given that it runs out after eight episodes. All part of the Dogme 95 manifesto, though: crank out bits and pieces of a project over the course of several years, wait for your actors to die off, then switch to ponderously macabre fables about delicate naifs who get raped to death.

If The Scar is the best example of a good, doctrinaire left-wing novel, then that is a depressing thought. It's a good book, but it's no fun.

Iron Council is even more doctrinaire, but even less fun.