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by iambiguous » Fri Jan 04, 2013 6:37 pm
Crash. The sound of racial stereotypes colliding in Los Angeles. And most other places too.
The point being that prejudice is ubiquitous. The most common hardly ever dressed up in a hood or plastered with swastikas. And it goes all the way up the chain of command. And it's by no means whites versus everybody else. It permeates the entire human race. And that's before we get to things like gender, age, disabilty, sexual orientation, ethnicity etc.
As a white male, I only know what I've seen in all these years. And this film merely scratches the surface. Why? Because you need to go deep down into the working class if you want to see real stereotyping. In action, for example.
Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain, wrote a strong polemic against this one in the British newspaper "The Guardian", venting her disgust and disappointment that her film was beaten by Paul Haggis' at the Oscars, one of the Academy's more controversial decisions in years.
The story of Officer John Ryan and his father comes from a piece of hate mail Paul Haggis received while he was working as a writer in the TV series Family Law.
Two Koreans were intentionally cast as the "Chinese" couple to underscore the fact that most non-Asians cannot or don't care to differentiate between the various Asian nationalities and instead choose to refer to all of them (Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, etc.) as "Chinese", like the characters in the movie do.
CRASH [2004]
Written and directed by Paul Haggis
Graham: It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something. You don't think that's true?
Ria: Graham, I think we got rear-ended. I think we spun around twice. And somewhere in there, one of us lost our frame of reference. And I'm gonna go look for it.
Motorcycle Cop: Calm down, ma'am.
Kim Lee: I am calm.
Motorcycle Cop: I need to see your registration and insurance.
Kim Lee: Why? Not my fault! It's her fault! She do this!
Ria [approaching]: My fault?
Motorcycle Cop: Ma'am, you really need to wait in your vehicle.
Kim Lee: Stop in the middle of street! Mexicans! No know how to drive! She blake too fast!
Ria: I "blake" too fast? I "blake" too fast? I'm sorry, you no see my "blake lights"?
Motorcycle Cop [to Ria]: Ma'am...
Ria [to Kim Lee]: See, I stop when I see long line of cars stop in front of me. Maybe you see over steering wheel, you "blake" too.
Ria: Officer, can you please write down in your report how shocked I am to be hit by an Asian driver?
Gun Store Owner [to Farhad]: Yo, Osama! Plan a jihad on your own time. What do you want?
Farhad: Are you making insult at me?
Gun Store Owner: Am I making insult "at" you? Is that the closest you can come to English?
Farhad: Yes, I speak English! I am American citizen.
Gun Store Owner: Oh, God, here we go again.
Farhad: I have right like you. I have right to buy gun.
Gun Store Owner: Not in my store, you don't! Andy, get him out of here now!
Dorri [to Farhad]: Go, wait in the car.
Farhad [to Gun Store Owner]: You are ignorant man!
Gun Store Owner: I'm ignorant. You're liberating my country, and I'm flying 747s into your mud huts and incinerating your friends? Get the fuck out of my store!
Anthony: Look around! You couldn't find a whiter, safer or better lit part of this city. But this white woman sees two black guys, who look like UCLA students, strolling down the sidewalk and her reaction is blind fear. I mean, look at us! Are we dressed like gang-bangers? Huh? No. Do we look threatening? No. Fact, if anybody should be scared around here, it's us: We're the only two black faces surrounded by a sea of over-caffeinated white people, patrolled by the triggerhappy LAPD. So you tell me, why aren't we scared?
Peter: Because we have guns?
Anthony: You could be right.
Jean: I would like the locks changed again in the morning. And you know what, you might mention that next time we'd appreciate it if they didn't send a gang member...
Rick: A gang member?
Jean: Yes, yes.
Rick: What do you mean? That kid in there?
Jean: Yes. The guy in there with the shaved head, the pants around his ass, the prison tattoos.
Rick: Those are not prison tattoos.
Jean [Interrupting]: Oh really? And he's not gonna go sell our key to one of his gang banger friends the moment he is out our door?
Rick: Fuck! Why do these guys have to be black? I mean, why? No matter how we spin this thing, I'm either gonna lose the black vote or I'm gonna lose the law and order vote!
Karen: You know, I think you're worrying too much. You have a lot of support in the black community.
Rick: All right. If we can't duck this thing, we're gonna have to neutralize it. What we need is a picture of me pinning a medal on a black man. Bruce? The firefighter - the one that saved the camp or something - Northridge... what's his name?
Bruce: He's Iraqi.
Rick: He's Iraqi? Well, he looks black.
Bruce: He's dark-skinned, sir, but he's Iraqi, his name's Saddam Hassif.
Rick: Saddam? His name's Saddam? Oh, that's real good, Bruce. Yeah, I'm gonna pin a medal on an Iraqi named Saddam. Give yourself a raise, will you?
Ryan [on phone]: I wanna talk to your supervisor...
Shaniqua: I am my supervisor!
Ryan: Yeah, what's your name?
Shaniqua: Shaniqua Johnson.
Ryan: Shaniqua. Big fucking surprise that is!
Christine: [to Cameron] Fuck you, Cameron!
[to Ryan]
Christine: And you, keep your filthy fuckin' hands off me! Ow! You fucking pig!
Cameron: Christine, just stop taking.
Ryan [to Christine]: That's quite a mouth you have.
[to Cameron]
Ryan: Course, you know that.
Christine: Fuck you! That's what this is all about, isn't it? You thought you saw a white woman blowing a black man, and that just drove your little cracker ass crazy!
Cameron: Christine, shut your fuckin' mouth!
Ryan: I'd listen to your husband, Ma'am. Put your legs open. Now, do you have any guns or knives or anything I might get stuck with?
Christine: What I need is a husband who will not just stand there while I am being molested!
Cameron: They were cops for God sakes! They had guns! Maybe I should've let them arrest your ass. Sooner or later you gotta find out what it is really like to be black.
Christine: Fuck you, man. Like you know. The closest you ever came to being black, Cameron, was watching The Cosby Show.
Cameron: At least I wasn't watching it with the rest of the equestrian team.
Christine: You're right, Cameron. I got a lot to learn 'cause I haven't quite learned how to shuck and jive. Let me hear it again. Thank you, mister policeman. You sure is mighty kind to us poor black folk. You be sure to let me know next time you wanna finger-fuck my wife.
Cameron: How the fuck do you say something like that to me? You know, fuck you!
Christine: That's good. A little anger. It's a bit late, but it's nice to see!
Anthony: You wanna listen to music of the oppressor, you go right ahead, man.
Peter: How in the lunacy of your mind is hip-hop music of the oppressor?
Anthony: Listen to it man. Nigga this, Nigga that. You think white people go around callin' each other "honky" all day, man? "Hey, honky, how's business?" "Going great, cracker, we're diversifying!"
Anthony: You have absolutely no idea where hip-hop music comes from, do you? See, back in the 60's we had smart, articulate black men. Like Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton. These brothers were speaking out, and people were listening! Then the FBI said, "No, we can't have that. I know, let's give the niggers this music by a bunch of mumbling idiots and sooner or later, they'll all copy it, and nobody will be able to understand a fucking word they say. End of problem."
[thump]
Anthony: What the fuck was that, dawg?
[Peter gets out and looks under the truck]
Peter: Holy shit!
Anthony: What?
Peter: Man, we done ran over a Chinaman.
Anthony: You're sayin' there's a Chinaman under this truck?
Peter: What part don't you understand? There's a Chinaman stuck underneath the fucking truck!
Lucien: You watch the Discovery Channel?
Anthony: Not a lot.
Peter: They got some good shit on that channel.
Lucien: Every night there is a show with somebody shining a little blue light and finding tiny specks of blood splattered on carpets and walls and ceiling fans, bathroom fixtures and special-edition plastic Burger King tray cups. The next thing they show is some stupid redneck in handcuffs who looks absolutely stunned that this is happening to him. Sometimes the redneck is actually WATCHING the Discovery Channel when they break in to arrest him. And he still can't figure out how on earth they could've caught him!
Lucien: Psst. Do I look like I wanna be on the Discovery Channel?
Anthony: No.
Lucien: Then get the fuck outta my shop.
Anthony [while Peter takes his St. Christopher out of the stolen Lincoln Navigator]: Oh yeah, make sure you get that. Without him, things could've gone really fucking wrong tonight.
Graham [on the phone]: Mom, I can't talk to you right now, okay? I'm having sex with a white woman.
[hangs up]
Graham: OK, where were we?
Ria: I was white, and you were about to jerk off in the shower.
Ria: You want a lesson? I'll give you a lesson. How 'bout a geography lesson? My father's from Puerto Rico. My mother's from El Salvador. Neither one of those is Mexico.
Graham: Ah. Well then I guess the big mystery is, who gathered all those remarkably different cultures together and taught them all how to park their cars on their lawns?
Anthony: Only reason black people steal from their own is 'cause they terrified of white people.
Peter: Oh, man, please.
Anthony: Think about it. Sherman Oaks. Burbank. Santa Monica. All scary-ass places for a brother to find himself. Drop Mo Phat at a Starbucks in Toluca Lake, that nigger will run like a rabbit soon as somebody say "decaf latte."
Fred: Cam, you got a second?
Cameron: Yeah, Fred, I just wanna grab some coffee.
Fred: Yeah. Listen. I think we need another take, buddy.
Cameron: That looked pretty terrific, man.
Fred: This is gonna sound strange, but is Jamal seeing a speech coach or something?
Cameron: What do you mean?
Fred: Have you noticed, uh... this is weird for a white guy to say, but have you noticed he's talking a lot less black lately?
Cameron: No, I haven't noticed that.
Fred: Really? Like in this scene, he was supposed to say, "Don't be talkin' 'bout that." And he changed it to, "Don't talk to me about that."
Cameron: Wait a minute. You think because of that, the audience won't recognize him as being a black man? Come on!
Fred: Is there a problem, Cam?
Cameron: Excuse me?
Cameron: No, we don't have a problem.
Fred: I mean, 'cause all I'm saying is it's not his character. Eddie's supposed to be the smart one, not Jamal, right? You're the expert here. But to me, it rings false.
Cameron: We're gonna do it one more time.
Fred: Thanks, buddy.
Ryan: You know what I can't do? I can't look at you without thinking about the five or six more qualified white men who didn't get your job.
Shaniqua: It's time for you to go.
Ryan: I'm saying this 'cause I'm hoping that I'm wrong about you. I'm hoping that someone like yourself, someone who may have been given a helping hand, might have a little compassion for someone in a similar situation.
Shaniqua: Carol, I need security in my office!
Ryan: You don't like me, that's fine. I'm a prick. My father doesn't deserve to suffer like this. He was a janitor. He struggled his whole life. Saved enough to start his own company. Twenty-three employees, all of them black. Paid 'em equal wages when no one else was doing that. For years he worked side by side with those men, sweeping and carrying garbage. Then the city council decides to give minority-owned companies preference in city contracts. And overnight, my father loses everything. His business, his home, his wife. Everything! Not once does he blame your people. I'm not asking you to help me. I'm asking that you do this small thing for a man who lost everything so people like yourself could reap the benefits. And do you know what it's gonna cost you? Nothing. Just a flick of your pen.
Shaniqua: Your father sounds like a good man. And if he'd come in here today, I probably would've approved this request. But he didn't come in. You did. And for his sake, it's a real shame. [to security] Get him the hell outta my office.
Ryan: Wait till you've been on the job a few more years.
Hanson: Yeah.
Ryan grabbing his arm]: Look at me, look at me. Wait till you've been doin' it a little longer. You think you know who you are, hmm? You have no idea.
Flanagan: Fucking black people, huh?
Graham: What did you just say?
Flanagan: I mean, I know all the sociological reasons why, per capita eight times more black men are incarcerated than white men... Schools are a disgrace, lack of opportunity, bias in the judicial system, all that stuff... But still... but still, it's... it's gotta get to you, I mean, on a gut level, as a black man. They just can't keep their hands out of the cookie jar. Of course, you and I know that's not the truth. But that's the way it always plays, doesn't it? And assholes like Lewis keep feeding the flames. It's gotta get to you.
Flanagan: Actually, we were thinking of you until we saw that. It's your brothers file. Twenty something years old and already three felonys. Three Strikes Law, the kid's going away for life for stealing a car. Christ, that's a shitty law. There's a warrant in there. But still, he had every opportunity you had. Fucking black people, huh?
Graham: So, uh... all I need to do to make this disappear is to frame a potentially innocent man.
Flanagan: What are you? The fucking Defender of All Things White? We're talking about a white that shot three black men and you're arguing with me, that maybe we're not being "fair" to him? You know, what? Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. Maybe Lewis did provoke this. Maybe he got exactly what was coming to him. Or, maybe, stoned or not, being a black man in the valley was enough to get him killed. There was no one there to see who shot first, so there is no way way to know. Which means, we could get this wrong. Maybe that's what happened with your brother. Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe Lewis isn't the only one who deserves the benefit of the doubt. You're the one closest to all this. You need to tell us. What does your gut tell you?
Conklin is going down.
Cameron [to Anthony]: Look at me. You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself.
Lara: He doesn't have it!
Elizabeth: [confused] He doesn't have what?
Lara: I have it. He doesn't have the impenetrable cloak!
Lucien: I'll take the van.
Anthony: They're chained to the van.
Lucien: So I'll take them too.
Anthony: You wanna buy these Chinamen?
Lucien: Don't be ignorant. They're Thai or Cambodian. Entirely different kind of chinks.
Anthony: What the hell are you gonna do with 'em?
Lucien: Sell 'em. What you think? I'll give you $500 apiece, and you can keep the van.
Graham: Mom, I promise. I promise. I'll find whoever killed him.
Graham's Mother: Oh, I already know who killed him. You did. I asked you to find your brother, but you were too busy for us. We weren't much good to you anymore, were we? You got things to do. You go ahead. I'll sign the papers.
Jean: Do you want to hear something funny?
Maria: What's that Mrs. Jean?
Jean: You're the best friend I've got.
Anthony: Everybody out, man. You're free to go. All right, come on. Come on now! This is America. Time is money. Chop, chop! Come on, y'all. Come on. That's $40. Buy everybody chop suey. You understand? Dopey fucking Chinaman.
Shaniqua [after her car is hit from behind]: Ahh! Oh, my God. What the hell is wrong with you people? Uh-uh! Don't talk to me unless you speak American!
by iambiguous » Sat Jan 05, 2013 12:55 am
The DVD cover says it all. An ominous young man [a boy, really...Sweat Pea in the film] with a gun. He is blown up to gigantic proportions. He trods upon the city of Naples menacing everything in sight.
This is the scariest of worlds for most of us. One in which those who "run the place" are basically thugs making up the rules as they go along. And only up to a point is "the law" able to intervene. That is, the parts not already bought and paid for by the mobsters.
The only good thing is that most of the violence is internal. Different factions [clans] vying for power or control over one or another "enterprise". But if they bump into you and you are not in one of the clans it is almost always best to reconfigure your own plans to be more in line with their plans.
And then there are all the ethnic factions.
And the "initiation". Let's just say it leaves a mark.
There is absolutely no attempt to glamourize or to romanticism the amoral thuggery that goes on here. There is not even really a code to abide by. And no matter how much you steel yourself for the violence, time after time it just jumps right off the screen at you. It's, uh, jolting.
And, of course, this is a world populated almost entirely by men.
http://youtu.be/hky53gXyjX0
Gomorra intertwines five stories of individuals whose lives are touched by the Camorra. One story revolves around Don Ciro, an aging money runner who comes between two feuding clan factions. Another storyline focuses on Totò, a 13-year old delivery boy who is accepted into the Camorra. The story of Roberto revolves around his coming to grips with the Camorra's toxic waste management. In the fourth story, fashion designer Pasquale crosses the Camorra. In another storyline, two knucklehead gangster wannabees, Marco and Ciro, also come up against the Camorra.
Roberto Saviano got death threats from the Camorra for exposing their activities in the novel and movie, and is now permanently under police protection.
Director Matteo Garrone lived for two months in the infamous Neapolitan quarter Scampia before making the movie.
Gomorra is a play on words, refering to both the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Camorra, a high-crime, mafia-type organization that works out of the city of Naples, Italy.
The Camorra at wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camorra
GOMORRAH [Gomorra] 2008
Directed by Matteo Garrone
Sweet Pea [to Marcos]: You really looked like Scarface. You were good.
Giovanni [to Sweet Pea and Marcos]: I can't be looking bad because of two snot-nosed kids. Next time I hear anything about you I'll blow your heads off. If and when I decide you two are any good then you come work for me.
Marcos [stealing a cache of hidden weapons]: That bearded bum. Let him try to blow my head off now.
Pasquale [to Maria]: Where was I? China? They were all bowing to me. "Master". They called me "master".
Woman: Ciro, help me understand. I talked with my son this morning. He said, "Mom. pack my bag, I leaving. I'm joining the secessionists."
Ciro: What did you say?
Woman: His mind is made up. He said, "We've got the strength and the numbers. We'll win the war. The others are losers."
Ciro: What war? A handful of idiots making war on us. You have to stop him. We're on the right side.
Woman: Have you seen what is happening? There are killings everyday.
Toto: When will we see each other again?
Simon: When you change sides.
Toto: Want to stay loyal, go ahead. You go your way and I go mine. But we can still have a pizza together with friends.
Simon: I'm telling you again: Friends turn into enemies.
Toto: We've known each other a long time. Why go with them?
Simon: Once we were brothers. Now we are enemies. If you don't change sides, we might kill you. Or you might kill us. Because we're at war. People are dying everyday.
Toto: You could have stayed with us.
Simon: What for? I'm better off on the other side.
[They kiss goodbye]
These kids are about 12 years old. Both already initiated.
Giovanni: Zio Vittorio, they can't be acting like big shots on my turf. I've warned them more than once. I can't treat them like kids anymore. They have to die. That's all.
Giovanni: Toto, are you with us or against us?
Toto: I'll see what I can do.
Giovanni: No "I'll see." You're either with us or against us. One or the other. And if you are against us you're not leavin' here. We can't trust you.
Maria [his friend] is dead.
Ciro: You've known me for years. You know everything I've done. I've brought people their money, including your family. I did it because I was ordered to. War isn't for me.
Mobster: But you're in the middle of it, you know that.
Ciro: Yes.
Mobster: Well then?
Ciro: You tell me.
Mobster: Tell you what? Why'd you come here? To talk about what?
Ciro: I want to save myself.
Mobster: You'll have to buy your life. I won't just give it to you.
Ciro: What I did for them, I'll do for you.
Mobster: No, we don't need money-carriers. We have to score, kill people, and we need money. You've wasting your time. You're more dead than alive.
Ciro: We were all brothers before.
Mobster: I don't want to hear it! That was before! Then your friends started fucking around. Our relatives were good people and then BOOM! BOOM! They killed them. So don't come asking to join our side. We have to score, kill, and we need money. Otherwise you die, because you're in this war too. You bring the money and I kill the people.
Ciro [trapped]: I understand.
Father: All these people have been saved by you and me.
Roberto: I've seen how you help them. You save a worker in Mestre and kill a family in Mondragone.
Father: That's how it works. I didn't make the rules. We solve problems created by others. I didn't create chromium and asbestos. I didn't dig up the mountains. That's how it works.
Roberto: That's how it works? Well, I won't work that way.
[he turns and walks down the road]
Father: Go make pizzas then. You're different.
Titlecard: In Europe the Camorra has killed more people than any other criminal organization. 4,000 deaths in the last 30 years. One every three days. Scampia is the largest open-air drug market in the world. Daily sales per clan run about 500,000 euros. If clan managed toxic waste were piled up, it would reach 47,900 feet. Mount Everest is only 29,000 feet high. Cancer rates have increased 20% in the poisoned areas. Profits from illegal activities are reinvested in legal activities worldwide. The Camorra has invested in the reconstructed of the Twin Towers.
by iambiguous » Sat Jan 05, 2013 9:31 pm
More fucking Nazis. And two more brave people doing what they can to resist them. And what else can we do but to ask ourselves: Would we do it?
Divided we fall or every man for himself? It always comes down to a particular context understood from a particular frame of mind.
But we are still forced to judge what others say and do as though this were not the case at all. What else is there? We are forced to choose.
And the characters here are not even close to the real horrors of the Holocaust. But always: Everyone is just one "wrong" choice away from it.
Here's the thing: They are hiding a Jew in their house while, from time to time, hosting a Nazi sympathizer.
http://youtu.be/XAYjBHUIS7A
DIVIDED WE FALL [Musíme Si Pomáhat] 2000
Written and directed by Jan Hrebejk
Man: Mr. Wiener, what are you doing here?
David: I need help.
Man: If somebody sees you, they'll execute the whole street.
David: I don't have a choice. I have to hide.
Man: Good God, get out of here. We have children.
[the man sees a German soldier]
Man: Jew! A Jew is here! A Jew is here! Help!
The wrong, the cowardly thing to do? And if it was your children facing execution?
Josef: Before the war many people had these secret rooms made. They suspected what was to come.
Josef: ...but mainly you have to be quiet.
Josef: But what about him?
Marie: What? Do you want to send him away?
Josef: Come on. Want. Don't want. Does it depend on what I want? Could I have imagined I'd be left out of this? We watched from the window and told ourselves the war was just passing by. Today it's after us.
Marie: You want to turn him in? You want to report him?
Josef: Oh, please, really, Marie.
Marie: You decided for him, for you, for me and for everyone on this street.
Josef: And are you blaming me or what?
Marie: No, I'm not blaming you. It's just good we have no children.
Then comes the pig problem.
Horst: Get rid of everything. Properly. People are pigs. You might be turned in and what could I do about it? To be safe, skin a rabbit to be able to show the bones.
David: Kaje, my sister could have saved herself. At least for a while. After arriving at the camp, she was offered to be a kapo, provided she'd be hard enough. She was given a club and told to beat our parents to death. I could see my mother and father kneeling there, begging her to do it.
Horst: Marie, there's be no danger from me even if you had a buffalo in the closet.
Horst: You voluntarily live in a tomb.
Marie: We all do.
Josef: This is just great. The whole city can see me walking around with Nazis. Collabortor! I took a job at their office and know you want to leave!!
Josep: There's only one thing to do.
Marie: What?
Josef: You've got to get pregnant as fast as possible. Otherwise, we go to the gallows. Our only hope is David.
This is how bizarre life can get. Then things really get strange as irony upon irony piles up.
Allies Captain: Where's that Jew of yours?
by iambiguous » Sun Jan 06, 2013 1:36 am
In some respects this is just a run of the mill "thriller". Every 20 minutes or so another shark is jumped. But the subject it tackles is medical ethics. And I thought it did so very effectively. It really shows the difference between morality "up there" and morality that actually concerns you personally. And regarding something truly important -- even vital -- in your life.
It's like the pro-life, anti-abortionist couple who suddenly find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy at the worst possible time in their lives. Some will go in one direction, some in another; but there is no longer any doubt that the issue is "just academic".
Kant always seems so much more persusive when there is little at stake "out in the world".
Admittedly, there's no way I'd go along with this either. But existentially it would truly be an agonizing predicament for many. And I'm not paralyzed.
And then there are the "mole people". Do they really exist down there? Seem to:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/rea ... -york-city
In the movie, security for the illegal medical experiments is provided by two supposed police officers named Hare and Burke. In reality, William Hare and William Burke were two men in the business of supplying human cadavers to medical schools in 1820s Edinburgh - until it was learned that the ones they hadn't stolen from graveyards, they had murdered themselves.
http://youtu.be/V-KEeWtHg3k
EXTREME MEASURES [1996]
Det. Stone: Any time you need me, give me a call. It's Stone, as in Sharon.
Dr. Trammel: You made a moral choice and not a medical one. I guess I'm kind of surprised, that's all.
Dr. Luthan: On my right I see a cop with pictures of his kids in his wallet, and on my left some guy who's taken out a gun on a city bus! I had ten seconds to make a choice. I had to make it. I hope I made the right one. I hope I did the right thing.
Dr. Luthan: Obviously, I'm having trouble understanding why it's so easy for all of you to believe I just threw my life away which was going quite well. Why I suddenly out of the blue, took up drugs and threw it all away. It's hard to grasp why that's easier for you to believe than that someone in this hospital set me up to stop me asking about a patient whose body disappeared into thin fucking air.
Dr. Luthan [as Half-Mole stops at the top of a staircase, deep underground]: Is it down there? Well I'm not paying you until I get there.
Half-Mole [after a long pause and speaking for the first time]: I don't go down there.
Dr. Luthan: How do I know you're telling the truth?
Half-Mole: You're still alive.
Mole-Woman: What are they doing to all these people?
Dr. Luthan: What do you mean, "all these people"? Claude and Teddy?
Mole-Woman: And the others.
Dr. Luthan: What others?
Mole-Man: Gramercy. That's where we all go.
Dr. Luthan: What are you talking about?
Mole-Man: He knows! And this motherfucker's in on it.
Dr. Luthan: Jesus...That's why they do the lab tests.
Mole Woman: Who's 'they'?
Dr. Luthan [not appearing to hear]: That's why they do the lab tests. Someone's using healthy subjects.
Mole Leader: Why us?
Dr. Luthan: They think you won't be missed.
Dr. Luthan: Jesus Christ. They're playing with healthy spines!
Doctor: My name is Dr. Mingus. You're in the Acute Care Ward at Riverside Hospital. You were found five days ago by the boat basin in Central Park. You'd been shot. You lost a great deal of blood. You've been in a coma until today. I have some tough news, Guy. Listen to me very carefully. Can you do that? You sustained a serious blow to your upper back. There was a severe cervical fracture of the sixth vertebra. Somehow we're not quite sure your spinal cord was cut. At the moment, you're paralyzed from the neck down. We did everything we could. I'm terribly sorry. Guy, listen to me. This is not the end of your life. Not by any means. I know it's hard to accept, but you'll learn to do things that you wouldn't believe possible right now. You're going to have a different life, that's for sure but it can still be a great life and a fulfilling life, believe me. Whenever you feel ready, you can meet with our counseling people. We have an amazing program here.
Dr. Luthan [completely stunned and devastated]: Please...leave me alone.
But it's all a set up...
Dr. Myrick: Guy. It's Dr. Myrick. I came over as soon as I heard. Dr. Mingus was a student of mine. I've seen your chart. It's a terrible thing. I'd like to try to help.
Dr. Luthan: If you want to help me...let me die.
Dr. Myrick: What if there was hope?
Dr. Luthan: There isn't.
Dr. Myrick: But what if there was hope? What would it be worth to be able to walk again, to be able to feed yourself? To go back to your old life? To be a doctor. What would you endure?
Dr. Myrick: I'm asking you a question. What would that be worth?
Dr. Luthan: I can't live like this.
Dr. Myrick: With proper care you can live 20 years like this. What would you do? What would you risk to change that?
Dr. Luthan: I have a C6 break in my cord.
Dr. Myrick: What if I told you there was a chance you could be healed? That there was a procedure that offered you a good chance that you might walk again? What would you do to make that happen?
Dr. Luthan: Anything.
Dr. Myrick: Anything? You'd better think about that.
[Dr. Myrick turn and walks away]
Dr. Luthan: What do you mean? What do you mean? Wait! Dr. Myrick?
Dr. Trammel: Quiet. We have to be quiet. You're not paralyzed. It's an epidural drip. I turned it off. You're not at Riverside Hospital. This is Triphase. You're not paralyzed.
Dr. Luthan: How can you be part of this?
Dr. Trammel: For my brother. He is paralyzed. I was driving the car when he was hurt. Because I was drunk.
Dr. Myrick [over loud speaker]: Guy, you have to understand. We never wanted you involved. All the way along, we tried to get you to walk away. I'm not a murderer. I didn't know what to do with you. It was terrible to put you through it, but I had to do it. I had to make it real. You had to feel it to understand what it is we're trying to do. And it is real.
Dr. Myrick [over loud speaker]: I can grow nerves. I can grow nerves and control their patterns. Thirty hours before he came to you, Claude Minkins had his spine surgically severed at the fourth vertebra. Teddy Dolson lived for 12 days. I can show you their charts. Complete neural regeneration. I can grow nerves. But I needed human subjects. That's the awful truth. Growth factors only code to species. To do the work, you need human subjects. And most of them will die. These men they're not victims. These men are heroes. Because of them millions of people will walk again. You see them every night. They're lost or cold or stoned or worse. They have nothing. No future. No family. Nothing. But here, with us here they're performing miracles.
See, a rationalization. That they aren't permitted to give their consent is just further rationalized: If they really understood our humanitarian motives they would go along.
Dr. Myrick: I'm 68 years old. I don't have much time. Three years with a rat to get to a dog? And after five years, if I'm lucky, maybe I can work on a chimp? We have to move faster than that. I'm doing medicine no one's ever dreamed of. This is baseline neural chemistry, Guy.
Dr. Luthan: You're killing people.
Dr. Myrick: People die everyday. And for what? For nothing. Plane crash. Train wreck. Bosnia. Pick your tragedy. Sniper in a restaurant, 15 dead. News at 11. What do we do? What do you do? You change the channel. You move on to the next patient. You take care of the ones you think you can save. Good doctors do the correct thing. Great doctors have the guts to do the right thing. Your father had those guts. So do you. Two patients on either side. One, a gold-shield cop the other, a maniac that pulled a gun on a bus. Who do you work on first? You knew. You knew. If you could cure cancer by killing one person, wouldn't you? Wouldn't that be brave? One person and cancer's gone tomorrow? When you thought you were paralyzed what would you have done to be able to walk again? "Anything." You said it yourself. Anything. You were like that for 24 hours. Helen [his daughter next to him in a wheelchair] hasn't walked for 12 years. I can cure her. And everyone like her. The door's open. You can go out there and put a stop to everything and it'll be over. Or we can go upstairs and change medicine forever. It's your call.
Helen: Guy...
Dr. Luthan: Maybe you're right. Those men upstairs, maybe there isn't much point to their lives. Maybe they are doing a great thing for the world. Maybe they are heroes. But they didn't choose to be. You didn't choose your wife or your granddaughter to experiment on. You didn't ask for volunteers. You chose for them. And you can't do that. Because you're a doctor. And you took an oath. And you're not God. So I don't care. I don't care if you can do what you say you can. I don't care if you find a cure for every disease on the planet! You tortured and murdered those men upstairs, and that makes you a disgrace to your profession! And I hope you go to jail for the rest of your life. [to Helen]. I'm sorry.
See? Conflicting goods. They are both right. They are both wrong. It just depends on what you assume is true.
Or it can all be reduced down to this: What's right for me is what's right period.
Unless, of course, as the objectivists do, you take the argument back "up there".
by iambiguous » Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:35 pm
The film follows the story of a vengeful man who embarks on a murderous rampage when the only person that seems to understand him is taken from him. wiki
Nobody does this stuff better than the South Koreans. Well, maybe the Japanese.
It's basically a remake of A man on Fire.
In other words, a violent gangster film. And if you hate violent gangster films you will loathe this one. Me, if the anti-hero is appealing and it involves righteous revenge...I make allowances. And it's got a great big heart as soon as you see So-mi and Cha Tae-sik interacting [same as with Creasy and Pita].
Child abuse on an epic scale.
These things really do happen and it reflects a world that always fascinates me: one where morality has almost nothing whatsoever to do with objectivity. Not that I condone it of course. I simply acknowledge that sometimes there is really no effective way of getting around it. And broaching the arguments of philosophers here is nothing short of surreal.
Besides, if this isn't the most adorable little girl in the world...
So, you're goddamned right: I'll be backing whatever the hell he chooses to do to those who would harm her.
Plus: You have to wonder sometimes if mindless mayhem [or the potential for it] isn't built right into the genetic code of men.
http://youtu.be/38rPoGSr19U
THE MAN FROM NOWHERE [Ajeossi] 2010
Written and directed by Jeong-beom Lee
So-mi: Are you really a gangster? They say you are hiding because you did something bad. And Mom warned me that you are a child molester. Why?
Cha Tae-sik: Do you think I'm a bad guy, too?
So-mi [thinks about it]: Well, you do look like the prison type.
Hyo-jeong [So-mi's heroin addict mother]: I'm warning you. Stop luring my kid in there. If you touch her, I'll kill you. You can go screw married women, but don't mess with kids. If you do, I'll rip your balls off. If you're that desparate then ask me out. You're easy on the eyes.
So-mi: My nickname is "garbage". My Aunt told me, Mom kicked a garbage can when she got pregnant with me. It's been garbage ever since.
Crime boss: 160 million Chinese do weed, 26 million do meth and 11 million do herioin. It's a goldmine. The UN says so!
Storekeeper [to Tae-Sik Cha]: Kids will learn from their mistakes. Parenting isn't just giving birth. She's always by herself. Bring her around more often, like the other dads. It's on me.
So-mi [with tears in her eyes]: Mister? I embarrass you too, right? That's why you ignored me. It's okay. My teacher and all the kids do that, too. Mom said that if I get lost, I should forget our address and phone number. She gets drunk and says we should die. Even that pig called me a bum. You're meaner. But I don't hate you. Because if I do, I won't have anyone I like. Thinking about it hurts me here. So I won't hate you.
What breaks your heart is that you know there are tens of thousands of kids like her out in the real world. Reminds you of Todd from Parenthood:
"You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father." Or, here, a mother
Cop [of Cha Tae-sik]: This is one complicated motherfucker. The lock code on him is 011. Guess who? Military intelligence. A lock on a civilian file, that's a first.
Cha Tae-Sik: You live only for tomorrow.
Man-seok: What?
Cha Tae-Sik: The ones that live for tomorrow, get fucked by the ones living for today.
Man-seok: What are you babbling about?
Cha Tae-Sik: I only live for today. And I will show you just how fucked up that can be.
Cha Tae-Sik: When the kids dies, you took out their organs. Sent the liver to one district, the eyes to another. And the heart to Seoul. Those young children...wandering the earth even after death. Did that ever cross your mind.
Jong-seok [smirking]: What about you? You ever wonder how much they're worth. Even their parents don't want them anymore. It's a win-win situation.
Men who do this to children should be made to suffer grieously in prison. Day after day after day. Let the other bastards know that they can expect the same fate. See if that doesn't slow it down some. So, what's that make me? You decide.
Detective: I got a name. Oh Sang-man, a surgeon. Served three and a half for drug use. Known as "500". His goal is to cut open 500 bodies.
So-mi is on the operating table right now.
Cha Tae-Sik: How many cavities do you have?
So-mi: Mister...Mister. Did you come to save me? You came to save me, right?
Cha Tae-Sik: Stay there. You'll get blood on you.
Cha Tae-Sik [to detectives]: Could I ask you a favor?
Cha Tae-Sik [to So-mi]: Just once...Let me hug you just once. Let me hug you, just once.
So-mi: Mister. Are you crying?
by iambiguous » Mon Jan 07, 2013 5:52 am
Within five minutes you know that Yukio and Aiko are not Ozzie and Harriet. But what they do turn out to be is not what you are thinking either. Not even close.
The film is based [loosely] on a true story. This one:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20010322a3.html
The scene in the "church" alone is mindboggling.
Most will tend to focus their attention on Nobuyuki. He is the one who comes closest to an everyman. It's easier to wonder what the hell you would do if you were in his place. This guy tumbled into the Twilight Zone by way of Saw. You keep wondering: Will he become one of them? Or one of their victums? It's a fucking nightmare.
Are they crazy? If so, does that make them more or less scary? Just pray to god you never come across someone like them.
This film is both absolutely grotesque and absolutely mesmerizing. I've never seen anything quite like it.
The movie was "inspired by true events" known as the "Saitama serial murders of dog lovers"; the convicted killers in the real-life case are Gen Sekine (b. January 2, 1942) and his ex-wife Hiroko Kazama (b. February 19, 1957).
Film Business Asia gave Cold Fish a 8 out of 10 rating praising the actor Denden who without his "tour-de-force performance...Cold Fish may never have worked." The review went on to state that "Though there's considerable gore on display, it's largely cartoonish. Cold Fish is not so much a blood-and-guts horror movie, more a danse macabre about social breakdown."
http://youtu.be/HmQPIBNPFBE
Note: Some explicit dialogue.
COLD FISH [Tsumetai Nettaigyo] 2010
Written and directed by Shion Sono
Yukio: Mitsko-chan, I like your honesty. I, too, hated both school and my parents.
Yukio: Now listen good. We all die one day, right? We usually depart one day, without warning. Unfortunately, we all die, right? Nobody knows when the day will come. That's what they say, but there are some people who do know! I'm one of them. I know how long a man lives, and when he dies. I also know where he dies, Who arranges that? I do!
Nobuyuki [watching Yoshida choke to death]: Mr. Yoshida...
Yukio: Pay no attention to him. He'll calm down soon. No need to panic. We all die one day without exception. He'll die today, that's all! There's nothing you can do....You love stars, don't you? And the planetarium? What a joke! You think the earth is a smooth, blue sphere? I think the earth is just a chunk of rocks. Jagged, ugly rocks! That's all there is! No planet is smooth and nice. That doesn't exist! Look at him. Do you want to be like him? How was Mitsuka? I hope she'll stay okay. Finally he's gone. I hate superfical guys like him! Are you a man of substance? Look. If you try to defy me, that's what you get. To kill someone makes you on edge at first. But after the first few, you'll get used to it. This is my 58th. I could get hanged for it. But, you know I'm a perfectionist. I'll never get caught.
Aiko [to Nobuyuki after Yukio leaves]: It's best to just go along with it.
This is without much doubt one of the most goddamn bizarre scenes I have ever seen in a movie. You have to watch it 3 times though. Once focusing on Yukio, once on Aiko, once on Nobuyuki.
Yukio [to Nobuyuki after he and his wife have carved up Mr. Yoshida]: Eat some sushi! The smell? You'll soon get used to it.
But I repeat myself: This is without much doubt one of the most goddamn bizarre scenes I have ever seen in a movie.
Then the enormous gap between Nobuyuki's abject horror and the jocular, matter-of-fact manner in which Yukio and Aiko playfully react to the whole sanguineous spectacle.
Yukio: The body's invisible now. Nobody will know. I always win in the end.
Nobuyuki [to Taeko]: Let's go to the planetarium...
Woman's voice over the loud speaker at the planetarium: Please enjoy the winter sky. Our blue planet, Earth, was born 4.6 billion years ago. [Nobuyuki closes his eyes] And 4.6 billion years from now, it is said that the earth will end its life...
Taeko: I remember...This is where we had our first date. I was really shy at the time. I'd never known someone who loved stars. I realized then that you were a romantic. I was kind of exicited...and happy.
Nobuyuki [reaching for her hand]: I love you.
Detective [to Nobuyuki]: Please don't tell Mr. Maruta we approached you. If he found out that the police had spoken to you, you'd probably become another missing person.
Yukio: First you chop the body into small pieces. As small as you can. Bite size. Always no larger than chicken nuggets.
Nobuyuki [gagging]: Yes.
Yukio: Next, separate bones from meat. It's important!
Nobuyuki: Yes.
Aiko: Look, it's his penis.
Yukio: I'll take care of it. [grabs the penis] Shit. She put a pearl on his dick, damn it. Show-off!
Yukio [holding up Tsu-Tsui's severed head]: Shamoto, look!
[Nobuyuki turns away gasping...Yukio and Aiko burst into laughter]
Yukio: Mitsuko-chan made a decision to leave home for your sake, you understand? So that you can make up with your wife. So that you could fuck your wife without her around. Your wife has a nice body too. She is a screamer. A cute mole on her back.
[Nobuyuki grabs him by the throat]
Yukio: That's good. It's about time you got mad.
[Nobuyuki punches him in the face]
Yukio [massaging his jaw and grinning]: It's the story of your sad life. Because of you, your wife weeps. Because of you, your daughter became a criminal. But you have done nothing about it! Me, I'm different. Sure, I kill people, but I take care of myself. Look back at your sorry life and tell me you have ever dealt with a problem on your own. Have you? Well, have you?
Yukio: Come on, put your hatred in your fist. Hit me!
[Nobuyuki falls to the ground screaming in anguish, crying, wimpering. He's completely broken]
Yukio: Hey. Hey, Samoto, are we in this together? Answer me!
Nobuyuki [practically catatonic]: Yes.
Yukio: Good. Get up then and fuck Aiko!
Nobuyuki: I can't.
[Yukio shoves him on top of his wife who is laughing]
Yukio: We're in this together. So do it now!
[Aiko starts taking off his pants while Yukio holds him]
Aiko: He's getting hard.
Yukio: Aiko lead him in...All right, is he in?
[Yukio pushes and pulls him in and out of Aiko]
Yukio [letting go of Nobuyuki who is now, uh, on his own]: Shamoto, you're doing fine. You're doing good. Aiko, how do you feel? Samoto, keep going, keep going! Harder! Harder! That's good! Atta boy!
[Out of the blue Nobuyuki takes a ball point pen and stabs both Yukio and Aiko in the neck]
Another simply surreal scene as Nobuyuki continues to stab Yukio and Aiko looks back and starts to giggle with blood coming out of her neck. Then she bursts into gales of laughter.
Nobuyuki [at the "church"]: Get him out.
Aiko: Okay.
Nobuyuki [holding out a butcher knife]: Aiko, finish him off.
[Aiko ignores the knife. She grabs a television set and pummels a barely breathing Yukio over and over and over again]
Nobuyuki: Good. Take his body to the bath.
[Aiko drags it across the floor screeching like a banshee]
Nobuyuki: Make him invisible like the others. I'm the new Murata from today. And you're my woman now.
This, to answer the question above: He becomes one of them. And what a fucking transformation!
Nobuyuki [to Taeko]: Prepare the meal.
[She hesitates, barely recognizing her husband....Nobuyuki picks up a kitchen chair]
Nobuyuki: PREPARE THE MEAL!!!
Planetarium man is now a million miles a way.
Nobuyuki: By the way, Taeko I know what you did. I know you fucked Murata.
[the tension in the air is explosive]
Nobuyuki [slapping her across the face]: YOU FUCKED HIM! YOU WHORE!
[he pins her to the ground]
Nobuyuki: Go ahead, say what you really think!
Taeko [struggling]: Our marriage is the pits! A big mistake! I hate your daughter's guts! I hate our sorry life! I want my life back! Give it back to me!!
Then another absolutely mindboggling scene
Nobuyuki: I'm going to rape you.
Mitsuko: What the hell are you doing?
[Nobuyuki punches his daughter in the face and knocks her out]
Then back to the "church". I won't even attempt to describe what happens there between him and Aiko. You simply have to see it to believe it. It's stuptifying. I'm, well, speechless.
[Nobuyuki stabs and kills his wife. He approaches Mitsuko with the big butcher knife]
Nobuyuki: Mitsuko, you can take care of yourself, right? You want to live on your own.
[he jabs her with the knife]
Nobuyuki: Does it hurt?
[he jabs her again]
Mitsuko: You're hurting me !
Nobuyuki: It hurts?
[he jabs her again'
Nobuyuki: Do you want to live?
Mitsuko: I do, I do want to live!
Nobuyuki: Okay, you want to live.
[jabs her again]
Mitsuko: I don't like pain!
Nobuyuki: Mitsuko, let me kill you!...LIFE IS PAIN!! Living your life hurts.
[he then takes the knife and slits his own throat]
Mitsuko [hovering hesitantly over his body]: Now you're dead you fuckhead!
Nobuyuki's dead vacant eyes stare out into the void. Then a final shot of the blue Earth against the expanse of an endless universe.
Last edited by iambiguous on Mon Jan 07, 2013 6:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
by iambiguous » Mon Jan 07, 2013 11:29 pm
With Tartan Asia Extreme films you take your chances. Some are just gorefests with various supernatural elements I tend to avoid. But others are far more sophisticated. This is one of those. Sure, there are the usual way-over-the-top action scenes. But interspersed between them is some great dialogue and an actual story that is built around actual characters. Though, admitedly, rather far-fetched at times.
And even though some will see "the twist" coming, the important thing is this: Dae-su Oh doesn't.
And there will be those who think: What's all the fuss?! In fact, they'll boastfully endorse this sort of behavior! Which is to say that what one person will commit suicide regarding another will joyfully celebrate. Dasein.
It's the not knowing that consumes him. Who did this to me? What is the reason?
The part about hypnosis. Different people have different opinions. Is it real? And, if so, what can or cannot be done with it?
Four live octopodes were eaten for the scene with Dae-su in the sushi bar, a scene which provoked some controversy abroad. Eating live octopus in Korea is commonplace although it is usually sliced first. When the film won the Grand Prix at Cannes, the director thanked the octopodes along with the cast and crew. Min-sik Choi is a Buddhist and had to pray after eating the octopuses.
The line on the painting of Dae Su's cell reads "Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone." These are the first lines of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's famous poem, "Solitude".
Film critic Roger Ebert has claimed that Oldboy is a "powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare".
An American remake is planned for release in 2013, which will be directed by Spike Lee.
http://youtu.be/YLn1y9v6yno
OLDBOY [Oldeuboi] 2003
Directed by Chan-wook Park
Dae-su Oh: Sir, sir Wait come here Come talk to me. I won't tell you to let me go. Just tell me why I'm here, okay? I should know the reason at least. Shit, I've been locked up here for two months already. Sir, wait, come here. Sir, wait. What is this place? Sir, just tell me how long I have to stay in here. Just tell me that, huh? Sir! Fuck you! Come here, you asshole! Son of a bitch! I saw your face, asshole! You're dead if I get out! Come here, asshole!!
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: If they had told me it was going to be fifteen years, would it have been easier to endure? Or harder?
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: When the melody turns on, gas comes out. When the gas comes out, I fall asleep. I found out later it's the same Valium gas the Russians used on those Chechen terrorists.
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: If you stand aimlessly at a phone booth on a rainy day, and meet a man whose face is hidden by a violet umbrella, my advice is that you make friends with a TV.
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: The TV is both a clock and a calendar. It's your school, your home, your church, your friend...
[Dae-su masturbates to a pop star onscreen]
Dae-su Oh: ... and your lover. But my lover's song is too short.
Dae-su Oh [voiceover after receiving three chopsticks with his prison rations]: All I could think about in that moment was the guy in the next room was eating with only one chopstick.
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: 9 years.......10 years.......11 years......12 years......13 years.....14 years
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: The most important thing is what floor I'm on. What if I pierce through the wall and it's the 52nd floor? But even if I fall to my death I'm still getting out.
Thug: You dickshit!
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: Dickshit. New word. Never heard of it. The TV doesn't teach you curse words.
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: Can 10 years' worth of imaginary training be put to use?
[he beats up all the thugs]
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: Apparently, it can.
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: She looks familiar...
Dae-su Oh [on phone]: Why did you imprison me?
Woo-jin Lee: Who do you think I am?
Dae-su Oh: Yoo Heungsam?
Woo-jin Lee: Wrong
Dae-su Oh: Did Lee Soyoung hire you?
Woo-jin Lee: No, wrong again.
Dae-su Oh: Lee Jongyong? Kang Changsuk? Hwang Jooyeun? Kim Nasung? Park Ji woo? Im Dukyoon? Lee Jaepyung? Kuk Suran?
Who the hell are you?!
Woo-jin Lee: Me? I'm a sort of scholar. And my major is you. A scholar studying Dae-su Oh; an expert on Dae-su Oh.
Woo-jin Lee: Who I am isn't important. Why, however, is important. Remember this: "Be it a rock or a grain of sand, in water they sink as the same."
Dae-su Oh [about to use a clawhammer to yank out Mr. Park's teeth]: I am going to avenge 15 years in prison. Each one I yank out will make you age for one year. Ready to talk?
Dae-su Oh [after a very bloody beating]: Anyone here with an AB blood type, raise your hand.
Dae-su Oh [voiceover]: I've now become a monster. When my vengeance is over, can I return as the old Dae-su?
Woo-jin Lee: First, "who?". Then, "why?". If you figure it out come see me anytime. I'll raise your score. You have until July 5th. Oh no, only five days left. Too short? Chin up. If you succeed I'll kill myself and not Mi-do. That's right, Mi-do. I'm going to kill every woman you love until you die.
Woo-jin Lee: You really are the very monster I created, aren't you? But you won't find out the "why" of this if you kill me. Fifteen years of being curious would go to waste. What a dilemma: Revenge or truth?
Just as in The Vanishing, right? It's the not knowing that tears you apart.
Dae-su Oh: Revenge is good for your soul. But after you have had your revenge the pain will find you again.
Mr. Park [handing Dae-Su a business card while sporting a big gold-toothed grin]: This dentist is very good.
Mr. Park: You see, they say that people shrivel up from fear because of what they imagine. So, don't imagine anything and you'll become brave as hell.
Mi-do: So, do you trust me now, you bastard!
Dae-su Oh: You need not worry about the future. Just imagine nothing.
Dae-su Oh [holding up a sign in electronics store]: I'VE BEEN BUGGED. PLEASE FIND IT.
Dae-su Oh: What was she like?
No Joo-hwan: Her? She was a total slut. On the outside she acted like a prude but she was a filthy whore on the inside. A total slut.
Woo-jin Lee [on telephone with Dae-su after stabbing No Joo-hwan to death]: Dae-su...My sister was no slut.
Mi-do [looking around the inside of Dae-su's "cell"]: You stayed in this place for fifteen years?
Dae-su Oh: Yeah, but after the first ten years it felt like home.
Mi-do: You get locked up for 15 years just for saying that?
Dae-su Oh: Whether it be it a grain of sand or rock in water they sink as the same. That's what Lee Woojin believes.
Mi-do: So, what is the significance of July 5th?
Dae-su Oh: That's the day Lee Soo-ah died.
Mi-do: What should I pray for?
Dae-su Oh: "Dear Lord, next time let me meet a younger man."
Woo-jin Lee: Your tongue got my sister pregnant! It wasn't Woo-jin Lee's dick; it was Dae-su Oh's tongue!
The irony embedded in the denouement then becomes crystal clear.
Woo-jin Lee: Your gravest mistake wasn't failing to find the answer. You can't find the right answer if you ask the wrong questions. It's not "Why did Woo-jin imprison me?" It's "Why did he release me?"
Mi-do: Dae Su. In front of me is some kind of box. Mr. Park is telling me to open it. It's the same violet box...
Dae-su Oh [shouting frantically]: No! No Mi-do don't. Don't open it no matter what!
Dae-su Oh [on his knees, pleading with Woo-jin Lee]: Please. Don't tell Mido. What has she done wrong? You know it was all my fault...I have committed an unforgivable sin against your sister. And I also...I did you wrong. Please leave Mido alone...If by any chance Mido finds out the truth, you son of a bitch, I'll tear you limb from limb! And your remains will never be found. Why? Because I'm going to swallow every last bit of it!
Then back to begging, groveling at Woo-jin's feet:
Dae-su Oh: I'll do anything I beg you. Woo-jin, if you want me to be a dog, I will! I'm Woo-jin's dog from now on! I'm your puppy! Woof Woof Woof Woof. Look, I'm wagging my tail I'm a dog. I'll guard the house. I'll be your slave dog. The box...Just leave it closed.
Then he takes a pair of scissors and cuts off his own tongue---for starting the rumor that led to Soo-ah's death.
Woo-jin Lee [to Mr. Park on the phone]: The box...Leave it closed.
by iambiguous » Tue Jan 08, 2013 5:18 am
I wasn't a teenage girl living in the 1970's so what do I know. But I once attempted suicide and [over and over again] I have been aound folks who make you want to. So I do know a little about that frame of mind.
And sure: God is smack dab in the middle of the repression. Him and exurbia.
Is this another...Heathers? No, it's not even remotely a caricature of "teen suicide". No Martha Dumptrucks here. But in being more down to earth it's still in a tug of war [at times] between real and surreal.
There really are parents like this. Lots and lots of them. Down in the Bible Belt I'm sure. Or in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. And ask yourself this: Would you be the same today if you had been raised in a home like them?
http://youtu.be/uZ6cvgIGfH4
Written and directed by Sofia Coppola
Narrator: Cecilia was the first to go.
Doctor: What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets.
Cecilia: Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl.
Narrator: Everyone dates the demise of our neighbourhood from the suicides of the Lisbon girls. People saw their clairvoyance in the wiped-out elms, the harsh sunlight...and the continuing decline of our auto industry.
Narrator: No one could understand how Mrs. Lisbon and Mr. Lisbon, our math teacher, could produce such beautiful creatures.
Narrator: We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind dreamy...so you ended up knowing what colours went together. We knew the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love, and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them. We knew that they knew everything about us. And that we couldn't fathom them at all.
They know everything about teenage boys because there are really only 3 things to know: 1] Sex 2] Sex and 3] Sex.
TV Reporter: Psychologists agree that adolescence today is much more fraught by pressures and complexities than in years past. More and more doctors say this frustration can lead to acts of violence whose reality the adolescent cannot separate from its intended drama.
Rannie: I baked a pie full of rat poison. I thought I could eat it, you know, without being suspicious. My nana, who is 86...
[starts to break down sobbing]
Rannie: ...she really likes sweets. She had three pieces.
Narrator: Quickly thereafter green pamphlets were distributed. They told us there were 80 suicides a day in America -- 30,000 a year -- and alerted us to danger signals we couldn't help but look for. Were the Lisbon girls' pupils dilated? Had they lost interest in school activities, in sports and hobbies? Had they withdrawn from their peers?
Narrator: It made no difference which pattern of their dream dresses the girls chose. Mrs Lisbon added an inch to the bust line and two to the waist and hems. And the dresses came out as four identical sacks.
Narrator: Given Lux's failure to make curfew everyone expected a crackdown, but few anticipated it would be so drastic. The girls were taken out of school, and Mrs. Lisbon turned the house into a maximum-security prison.
Narrator: This was about the time we began to see Lux making love on the roof with random boys and men.
Principal Woodhouse: Your daughters haven't been in school for over two weeks.
Mr. Lisbon: Have you checked out back?
Narrator: We would never be sure of the sequence of events. Most likely Bonnie had hung herself while we were waiting in the living room...dreaming of highways. Mary put her head in the oven shortly thereafter. Therese, stuffed with sleeping pills, was gone by the time we got there. Lux was the last to go, sitting in a car in the garage filled with gas exhaust.
Mrs. Lisbon [voiceover]: None of my daughters lacked for any love. There was plenty of love in our house. I never understood why...
Really, she didn't. They almost never do.
Narrator: In the end we had pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained. Oddly shaped emptiness mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name. What lingered after them was not life, but the most trivial list of mundane facts. A clock ticking on the wall, a room dim at noon, the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself.
Narrator: We began the impossible process of trying to forget them. Our parents seemed better able to do this, returning to their tennis foursomes and cocktail cruises as though they'd seen this all before. It was full-fledged summer again, over a year since Cecilia had slit her wrists, preading the poison in the air. A spill at the plant increased the phosphates in the lake and produced a scum of algae so thick that the swamp smell filled the air, infiltrating the genteel mansions. Debutantes cried over the misfortune of coming out in a season everyone would remember for its bad smell. The O'Conners, however, came up with the ingenious solution of making the theme of their daughter Alice's debutante party "Asphyxiation".
Narrator: So much has been said about the girls over the years. But we have never found an answer. It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls but only that we had loved them and that they hadn't heard us calling..still do not hear us calling them from out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time; and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.
by iambiguous » Wed Jan 09, 2013 1:06 am
The authoritarian mind. And the fucked up one.
And cults. There are hundreds and hundreds of them. And they all revolve around the same thing: rooting "I" in the Whole Truth. Here on earth and then later [for most] after "I" dies. It's not what you believe that counts nearly as much as that you believe. In something, the one thing said to be really true.
Especially in the modern world. Here "I" is tossed and turned, yanked about, drawn and quartered...sent tumbling about in so many conflicting directions. Give it something to make that vertigo go away and the weakest of minds will almost always jump at it. Here virtually every aspect of your life is ritualized. You do what you do because it is necessary in order to be connected to the Whole Truth.
The "leaders" of course can have many motives: money, sex, power.....or even actual "spirituality".
This one is just particularly bizarre. And bursting at the seams with subtexts.
On the other hand: Lots of these folks are very intelligent. And they have insights into human psychology that is not entirely irrelevent regarding anyone. Oh, and some have motives that are, well, ulterior.
And then there's the end of the film. What the fuck are we to make of that?! It'll blow your mind. Well, it blew mine. I don't know if it enchanted me more than it pissed me off.
Manohla Dargis writes in her review in The New York Times: "Nobody is gutted in Sound of My Voice, a smart, effectively unsettling movie about the need to believe and the hard, cruel arts of persuasion. But over time the men and women who meet in a mysterious house in an anonymous Los Angeles neighborhood – where they shed their clothes and cleanse their bodies in a ritual – are opened up bit by bit, wound by wound, until they're sobbing and laughing, their insides smeared across the carpet."
Did she see the end? Start here:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/ ... interview/
http://youtu.be/W20Fl5m5FdM
Written and directed by Zal Batmanglij
Timothy: Be thorough with the soap.
Klaus: Now, let me say a few words to you new folk. No sudden movements. And no questions for tonight. The first night is always the most difficult. But as our other members can attest an unforgettable experience.
Maggie: Open your eyes I want to show you something. You see, the anchor is the sign of the traveler. And the number 54 refers to where I come from. You see, I come from 54. 2054. Your future.
Peter: What's the matter?
Lorna: Nothing.
Peter: You're, like, shaking.
Lorna: I'm not shaking, Peter. I'm a little racy.
Peter: It's just a bunch of crap, Lorna. They're weak and they're looking for meaning. You know, those people are suckers. That's it.
Lorna: But what if she is?
Peter: What? From the future? Nobody is from the future.
Lorna: Well, then who is she?
Peter: She's a con artist. She's dangerous. That's why we are making this film. We have to expose her before she has all those people killing themselves.
Narrator: Peter Aitken likes math, reason, himself. Things he can count on. When Peter was 12, his mother was diagnosed with cancer. A longtime member of a New Age Cult she believed that modern medicine shouldn't intervene in her faith. She died on the eve of Peter's birthday, while they were both asleep. Peter awoke 13 and motherless.
Dasein: everyone of us has a backstory.
Peter [into a recording device]: Maggie says that the future is already written and that her members are the chosen ones.
Narrator: Lorna Michalson. Lorna was left to an unchaperoned adolescence of movie premiers and club openings. Lorna had her first hangover at 12, her first intervention at 16. By 23 she was burnt out, tired of playing entourage. So Lorna cleaned up her act. Tequila shots replaced with wheatgrass shots. But in the end, it was one addiction traded for another.
Joanne: Don't be worried. Maggie's tests will get harder. But if you pass, then you were meant to be with us. Then you'll be ready when it begins.
Joanne: We'll be alright though. Maggie is taking us to a safe place.
Maggie: Do you know what's in that apple? Logic. Bitterness. It's intellectual bullshit. You've already eaten the apple. That's what it means to grow up. The question is: How much of it can you get rid of?...How can we purge ourselves of shame, of self-hatred...and rise to our callings as chosen ones?
Maggie [of Peter]: Do you want to know what I see? An anal-retentive prick. Who can't dance, who can't breathe. Probably can't make his girlfriend come because he's so self-involved.
Maggie [to Peter]: Who took you're power away from you? Who made you feel so powerless you've become obsessed with control? With thinking everything through instead of feeling anything. Who? Who hurt you so much you never wanna feel that way again? Was it your father? Was it your mother?
Peter [fiercely]: Shut up! Shut up you fucking cunt!
[Maggie doesn't flinch]
Maggie: What are you hiding from me, Peter? Did she abandon you? She leave you to start another family? Was she a whore?
Peter: I'll hit you. I'll hit you in the face.
Maggie: What did she do to make you so angry?
Peter: Shut up. This is so stupid.
Maggie: What did she do to you.
Peter: She gave up. She died. I was a kid. She gave up. She died. Everybody happy?
[Again, Maggie doesn't flinch]
Maggie: What happened next.
Then she claws all the way down to the bone. Or does she?
Lorna: I guess I've never seen you cry.
Peter: Those weren't real tears.
Lorna: But they weren't fake.
Peter: Yes, they were. They were fake tears. She's a megalomaniac, Lorna.
Lorna: She knew things about you.
Peter: No. She didn't know anything about me. She asked questions about me. She wanted to be right and I let her think she was.
Lorna: So all that stuff was...?
Peter: It was not true. Come on, of course it wasn't true. I'm Sorry. I'm sorry if I scared you but I had to do what I had to do to get us out of there.
Now you are not sure where this is going.
Lorna: Peter, I just feel like we're in over our heads with this whole thing. We started out wanting to make a documentary on cults. And now we're in one?
Peter: Yeah. That's investigative journalism.
Lorna: But she's dangerous, Peter. You said so yourself.
Peter: What do you want to do, go back to our normal lives? That's fine, we can do that. I can teach all day. You can stay home and write and surf the web. But somewhere in the Valley there is a woman living in a basement who claims to be from the future. She's actually amassing followers. These people who believe that she'll lead them to salvation or whatever. And, yes, she's dangerous....but we have to see this thing through all the way or we're chumps.
Peter: Uh, why is Joanne teaching you how to shoot a gun?
Maggie [swigging a forty and lighting up a cigarette]: I'm from the future, Peter, I'm not a saint.
Peter [after Maggie shows him a picture of a little girl -- one he teaches -- in a school yearbook]: This is Abigail Pritchett. I don't understand.
Maggie: I need you to bring her to me.
Peter: Uh...are you joking? What would you want with an 8 year old girl?
Maggie: Don't worry about that.
Peter [flustered]: Well, theres no way that I'm bringing a little 8 year old girls in to this basement. That's...
Maggie: Then perhaps you and Lorna should stay away from "this" basement as well.
Maggie: I just need to see Abigail Pritchett.
Peter: Why?
Maggie: Bring her to me and stay, or don't and go.
Peter: You are asking me to kidnap an 8 year old child. I need to know why.
Maggie: She's important.
Peter: How?
Maggie: She's a very bright little girl.
Peter: What do you want with her?
Maggie: Just to see her.
Peter: For what?
Maggie: Because I need to.
Peter: Need to? Who is she?
Maggie: Abigail Pritchett is my mother.
Trust me: Abigail is a very strange little girl. I'm thinking: Uh, oh, is this heading down into the realm of the supernatural?
Lorna: So?
Peter: So, she wants me to bring her one of my students....Abigail Pritchett.
Lorna: Did she say why?
Lorna: How did they even know that she worked at the school?...I think we should go to the police.
Peter [pretending to be talking on the phone]: "Hello, Officier Randall, I'd like to report a time-traveler living in a basement somewhere. I don't know where exactly..."
Lorna: They want you to bring them an 8 year old girl. That's kidnapping.
Lorna: Let me get this straight. You're actually considering bringing them the girl?
Peter: No, No. But it's a test. If we don't do this, they're gonna kick us out.
Lorna: Are you listening to yourself?
Peter: I'm willing to go all the way.
Lorna: Maggie. I see the way you look at her, Peter.
Peter: You're kidding right? Are you really jealous of that fraud.
Lorna: Why not? She's beautiful. Mesmerizing. In 15 minutes she brought you to an emotional orgasm that I have never seen in 3 years, Peter.
Peter: "Emotional orgasm". What the fuck is that?
Lorna: You tell me.
Lorna: You know what I think, Peter? I think it's you who is the fuckup. You haven't logged tapes or captured any fucking footage in weeks. Yeah. You don't give a shit about making this documentary. This is about Maggie. You're now willing to do anything for her.
Carol: Lorna?
Lorna [startled]: How do you know my name?
Carol: I think I can help you restore Peter to his senses.
Carol [after giving Lorna a photo to look at]: You know her as Maggie. Her real name is Shelly Whipple.
Lorna: And who are you?
Carol: Carol Briggs. I'm with the Justice Department. Maggie is wanted in Sacramento for armed robbery and in Fresno for arson.
Okay, I never saw that coming.
Lorna: I'm not walking back into a smakepit.
Carol: All you have to do is help us lure the snake out.
Lorna: I'm sorry. I am done.
Carol: Have they asked for a kid?
Lorna [startled again]: Yeah, a little girl.
Carol: That's part of their con. Did they say what they wanted her for?
Carol: Can you keep a secret from Peter? Then I'll tell you what they really want her for.
Abigail: Who is she?
Yeah, exactly.
by iambiguous » Wed Jan 09, 2013 9:30 pm
This guy is big. Really big. And it's all muscle. If synthetic. But there's a reason for that.
He's used to getting his way. And you'll get used to it too. There are guys like this everywhere. And a lot closer than you think. But there are also guys that he is afraid of too. After all, being big doesn't mean much to a bullet.
What, you don't think the world works this way? Well, there is the part that is legal and the part that is illegal. And the part that is illegal can be considerably more amoral. Dangerous, in other words. Fortunately, as close as most of us will get to it is here.
All the way through this film is a truly ominous sense of forboding. And sometimes, let's face it, we are just completely and utterly lost in each other's worlds.
According to Michael Roskam, his inspiration for the film was based on a crime scene in Belgium known as the Belgium Hormone Mafia.
This: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17041056
http://youtu.be/-z6C_PiB5pM
BULLHEAD [Rundskop] 2011
Written and directed by Michael R. Roskam
Narrated: Sometimes in a man's life, stuff happens that makes everyone so quiet...so quiet that no one even dares to talk about it. Not to anyone, not even to themselves. Not in their head and not out loud. Not a fucking word. 'Cause everything has somehow gotten stuck. There, deep in the fields, under the trees and leaves, year after year. Then suddenly it all comes back, just like that, from one day to the next. No matter how long ago it was, there will always be someone to bring it all back. Because no matter what you think or do, one thing is for sure---you're always fucked. Now, tomorrow, next week, or next year, until the end of time, fucked.
Jacky: What's this I've been hearing? You're refusing to have our cows? It's a bit late for that. You don't have a say in it anymore. [slaps him] You do what we tell you to do. You use our products when we say so. [slaps him] You take your animals to my uncle when we say so. [slaps him] You're lucky that your father knew my father, pal! When I get home, I wanna hear that you've called Uncle Eddy. Got it? [thumps him in the chest] You got that? You will only sell your bulls to him, and at his price.
Jacky as a boy: Are they getting more injections again?
Father: Yes, we need to make them stronger. The water in the bottles is called DES: Dietylstiboestrol. It's a growth hormone. Everything in the body is regulated by various substances. And hormones are the most important ones. But sometimes we need to lend nature a helping hand.
Bruno: Hold his legs down. Get me a brick. [To Jacky] I'm going to make your balls ache. I'm gonna smash your balls.
[All the boys gather around]
Boys chanting: Smash his balls! Smash his balls! Smash his balls!
And that's what he does. Over and over again with the brick. And you just know this has followed him into adulthood.
Doctor: The important thing now, Irene, is that Jacky develops secondary sexual characteristics. Beard growth, chest development, stronger musles, the voice changing, penis development, erections -- becoming a man -- and ejaculations. Now, he may recover. But you absolutely must give him testosterone.
Father: I'm not injecting my boy with that.
Doctor: But Jacky no longer has any testicles. So we need to give him extra testosterone now during puberty so that he can develop normally. Otherwise, he'll never be a man.
Mother [bewildered]: Is you going to be gay?
Diederik as a boy [to Jacky as a boy]: My father says I can't say anything.
Lucia: My friend Daphne dragged me along because she has a crush on the boss.
Jacky: The nigger?
Lucia: We say "black guy."
Jacky: Wanna know what it's like?
Diederik: Come on, Jack.
Jacky: You'll never know. You'll never know what it's like.
Stevie: Are you aware of everything I've done for you? I was always there for you. Do you remember when you turned 30? I stopped them from making fun of you for still being single at thirty. Thanks to me, no one says, "That bastard's got no balls."
[Jacky grabs him by the throat]
Jacky: Shut your face.
Stevie: Go on, then. Beat me up. I'm the only one left. You're own blood.
Drug supplier: This is Sustanon. The real thing. Not a cheap derivative from Poland or Russia. How much? 250 mg. Intermuscular injection, okay? Testoviron. That's what you asked for, right? Mestanoline. Very aggressive stuff. I've got some derivatives, too, like DHT. Mestanoline, 10 to 30 mg oer day. 30 mg maximum. And no alcohol. Absolutely none. Otherwise your liver will be destroyed within one week.
Jacky: What's that?
Drug supplier: That's Methyltestoserone. Have you heard of it? It's what we call "high caliber." Bazooka. Very, very dangerous. I don't give this to just anyone. I'm taking a risk here, okay?
Jacky: Long time no see, Bruno.
Lucia [to Bruno]: You've never pulled that face before.
Lucia: I think I've seen him, Mom. That kid. His dad brought him over about 20 years ago. I can't stop thinking about him. I'm sure he's the one.
Mother: Did he threaten you?
Lucia: No.
Mother: Because it was an accident.
Lucia: Yes, Mom. We know all about Bruno and his "accidents."
Jacko: What are you doing here?
Diederik: Jack, listen. Get your family and everyone out of here.
Jacko: Why?
Diederik: There's a big chance a SWAT team will show up here in a few hours.
Jacko: I don't understand.
Diederik: The cops!
Jacky [to Diederik]: My whole life, I've known nothing but animals. I've always felt just like these bulls here. Never knowing what it's like to protect someone. Calves, a herd, like a wife, children. Really having to protect them, 'cause you have to and it's in your nature. I haven't got what I'm supposed to have.
Jacky: You're not a faggot, are you?
Diederik: Me? No way!
Jacky: He attacked me. I didn't do anything. I am not an animal.
Lucia: I don't understand you. If you go now you can still get away.
Jacky: The bathroom...
by iambiguous » Thu Jan 10, 2013 2:25 am
I tend to steer clear of films bursting at the seams with all manner of supernatural bullshit. But when a "horror" film garners a 92% fresh rating at RT [based on 225 reviews no less!] I will make an exception.
RT:
Five friends go to a remote cabin in the woods. Bad things happen. If you think you know this story, think again. From fan favorites Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard comes The Cabin in the Woods, a mind blowing horror film that turns the genre inside out.
But it sure doesn't start out that way, does it? Not until we see the guy on roof "reporting in" as they drive off: "Nest is empty. We're right on time."
It's one hell of a twist, true. But, nonetheless, it's still all just supernatural bullshit.
That's why something like Baghead will always be considerably more scary: It's not. Then there is Cube with all the science fiction tropes. And it is [at times] like that on steroids.
In other words, as with Zombieland you've got to play along with it and revel in the camp. Once you leave the campground here it all simply becomes preposterous. Clever, ingenius, maybe, but it still all comes together in la la land. Uh, the Ancient Ones? Like...the Oracle?
Or, what the hell, maybe the world really is this way. And me? I got passed over.
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS [2011]
Written and directed by Drew Goddard
Marty [drives up smoking a bong]: People in this town drive in a very counterintuitive manner.
Marty: Statistical fact: Cops will never pull over a man with a huge bong in his car. Why? They fear this man. They know he sees further than they and he will bind them with ancient logics.
Jules: Is society crumbling, Marty?
Marty: No, society is binding. Society needs to crumble.
Lin: Do we pipe it in or do you wanna do it orally?
Sitterson [closes eyes]: Ask me that again only slower.
Sitterson: They have to make the choice of their own free will. Otherwise, the system doesn't work. Like the harbinger: creepy old fuck practically wears a sign saying "YOU WILL DIE". Why would we put him there? The system. They have to choose to ignore him. They have to choose what happens in the cellar. Yeah, we write the game as much as we have to but in the end, if they don't transgress they can't be punished.
Curt [seeing an old gas pump]: This thing doesn't take credit cards.
Marty: I don't think it knows about money.
Curt: The wind must have blown it open.
Marty: And that makes what kind of sense?
Marty: I dare you all to go back upstairs?
Marty: Ok, I'm drawing a line in the fucking sand here. Do NOT read the Latin!
Girl: That's not fair! I had zombies too!
Sitterson: Yes, you had "Zombies." But this is "Zombie Redneck Torture Family." Entirely separate thing. It's like the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal.
Sitterson: I'm sorry, man.
Hadley: He had the conch in his hands!
Sitterson: I know. Couple more minutes, who knows what would have happened.
Hadley: I'm never gonna see a merman.
Sitterson: Dude, be thankful. Those things are terrifying. And the cleanup on them's a nightmare.
Jules: Not here.
Curt: We're all alone.
Cut to the studio...packed with folks watching.
Marty [of Holden]: He's got a husband bulge.
Dana: I'm not leaving here without Jules.
Knock, knock.
Sitterson: Uh, oh. That's not good.
Marty [finding the hidden camera]: Oh, my God! I'm on a reality TV show!
Hadley [sighs]: These fucking zombies. Remember when you could just throw a girl into a volcano?
Curt: I'm coming back with cops, and choppers, and large fucking guns, and those things are going to pay.
Sitterson: What do you mean, "upstairs"?
Hadley: Which one?
Marty: I had to dismember that guy with a trowel. So what have you been up to?
Marty: Good work, zombie arm,
Hadley: Ah, come on!
Marty: Punished for what?
Dana: Me? A virgin?
The Director: We work with what we have.
The Director: You can die with them or you can die for them.
Marty: Gosh, they're both so enticing.
Come on, admit it. Take away the special effects [and Marty] and how much is left?
by iambiguous » Thu Jan 10, 2013 8:44 pm
Here's how it works. There's you here and there's eveybody else in the world. And you can make contact with any one of them if you only know the right combination of 6 -- or sometimes less -- people to contact. Simple.
Only it's not [for most of them] because you have no idea which combination of folks it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon
This is a very strange movie. Or it is for me. I'm not sure when I am or am not being put on. Is it meant to convey meaning in layers or is it layer upon layer of irony. It's got a great big heart at the end of it and a great big mystery that will never be solved. But is all this just, "wink, wink"?
That you want it to be "real" is a testiment to how the film is able to draw you in below the surface. Or, again, some of us.
Then there are the trials and the travails of the upper middle class. And their shitbag kids.
Or maybe this is all just a surreal remake of My Fair Lady---with Will Smith as Eliza Doolittle.
The inspiration for Paul, David Hampton, died of AIDS on 18 July 2003.
Will Smith refused to actually kiss Anthony Michael Hall just before their kissing scene so a camera trick was used showing only the back of their heads. In an interview, Smith stated that Denzel Washington advised him not to kiss a man on-screen for it would harm his career. Smith stated that he regretted not going through with it saying "It was very immature on my part."
Will Smith's character in the film passes himself off as Sidney Poitier's son. In real life, when Smith met Poitier for the first time, the veteran actor said, "Well, you're almost handsome enough to be my son".
http://youtu.be/HLIyuYwbVnA
Directed by Fred Schepisi
Flan: My God!
Ouisa: Is anything gone?
Flan: How can I look, I'm shaking!
Ouisa: I want to know if anything's gone!
Flan: Calm down.
Ouisa: We could have been killed! Oh, my God! The Kandinsky!
Flan: The Kandinsky!
Ouisa: It's gone, oh my God! Call the police!
Flan: Oh, no, there it is. Oh! The silver Victorian inkwell!
Ouisa: How can you think of that thing?
Flan: Here's the inkwell.
Ouisa: We could have been murdered!
Flan: A silver Jaguar. Why?
Ouisa: Slashed. Throat slashed.
Flan: There's the Degas.
Ouisa: To go to bed at night happy and then murdered. Would we have woken up?
Flan: We're alive.
Ouisa: Chaos, control. Chaos, control....
Flan: Having a rich friend is like drowning and your friend makes lifeboats.
Geoffrey: I wish you'd visit.
Ouisa: Oh, but we'd visit you and sit in your gorgeous house, planning visits to the townships, demanding to see the poorest of the poor. "Are you sure they're the worst off? I mean, we've come all this way."
Flan: It's like when people say "Don't think about elephants", it's all you can think about, elephants, elephants.
Flan: Blunt question. What's he like?
Ouisa: Oh, let's not be star-fuckers.
Flan: I'm not a star- fucker!
Paul: Well, you know my father. He's perfect.
Paul: A teacher out on Long lsland was dropped from his job for fighting with a student. Weeks later, he returned to the classroom, shot the student - unsuccessfully, held the class hostage, and then shot himself - successfully. This fact caught my eye. Last sentence, Times - "A neighbour described the teacher as a nice boy, always reading Catcher in the Rye." This nitwit Chapman, who shot John Lennon, said he did it to draw the attention of the world to Catcher in the Rye, and the reading of this book would be his defence. Young Hinckley, the whiz kid who shot Reagan and his press secretary, said: "If you want my defence, all you have to do is read Catcher in the Rye."
Paul: What alarms me about the book - not the book so much as the aura about it - is this. The book is primarily about paralysis. The boy can't function. At the end, before he can run away and start a new life, it starts to rain. He folds. There's nothing wrong in writing about emotional and intellectual paralysis. It may, thanks to Chekhov and Samuel Beckett, be the great modern theme. The extraordinary last lines of Waiting for Godot.; "Let's go." "Yes." "Let's go." Stage directions: "They do not move." The aura around Salinger's book - which, perhaps, should be read by everyone but young men - is this. It mirrors like a fun-house mirror, and amplifies like a distorted speaker one of the great tragedies of our times - the death of the imagination. Because what else is paralysis? The imagination has moved out of the realm of being our link, our most personal link, with our inner lives and the world outside that world, this world we share. What is schizophrenia but a horrifying state where what's in here doesn't match what's out there? Why has imagination become a synonym for style? I believe the imagination is the passport that we create to help take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is merely another phrase for what is most uniquely us.
Flan: I thought, dreamt, remembered how easy it is for a painter to lose a painting. He paints and paints, works on a canvas for months, and then one day he loses it - loses the structure, loses the sense of it. You lose the painting. I remember asking my kids' second-grade teacher: "Why are all your students geniuses?" Look at the first grade - blotches of green and black. The third grade - camouflage. But your grade, the second grade... Matisses, every one. You've made my child a Matisse. What is your secret? I don't have any secret, she said, I just know when to take their drawings away from them.
Flan: I want to get down on my knees and thank God. Money!
Ouisa: Who said "When artists dream, they dream of money"?
Kitty: We're going to be in the movies.
Larkin: We are going to be in the movie of Cats! Yes!
Ouisa: You tell your story first.
Flan: When you see your little sister, don't tell her that Paul and the hustler used her bed.
Tess: You put him in that bed!
Paul [as imagined by ouisa]: "The imagination. It's there to sort out your nightmare, to show you the exit from the maze of your nightmare, to transform the nightmare into dreams, that become your bedrock. If we do not listen to that voice, it dies, it shrivels, it vanishes. The imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, the imagination is the place we are all trying to get to."
Shitbag son: You gave a complete stranger who happens to mention my name the keys to our house?! Dad, sometimes it's so obvious to me why Mom left. I'm so embarrassed to know you! You gave the keys to a stranger who shows up at your office?! Mom told me you beat her, and you drank so much your body smelt of cheap wine. Mom said sleeping with you was like sleeping with a salad with bad dressing! Why did you bring me into this world?! You're an idiot! You're an idiot!
Woody [another shitbag son]: You gave him my pink shirt? You gave a complete stranger my pink shirt? That shirt was a Christmas present from you! I treasured that shirt, I loved that shirt! My collar had grown a full size from weightlifting, you saw that my arms had grown, you saw that my neck had grown and you bought me that shirt for my new body! I loved that shirt! My first shirt for my new body and you gave that shirt away? I can't believe you! I hate this life and I hate you!
Trent: When rich people do something nice for you, you give 'em a pot of jam
Ouisa: I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it extremely comforting that we're so close. I also find it like Chinese water torture, that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection...I am bound, you are bound, to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.
Ouisa: The next chapter...
Elizabeth: "Quality of mercy is not strained"? Well, fuck you, quality of mercy!
Flan [to Paul on the phone]: What am I doing talking career counselling to you?!
Paul [on the phone to Ouisa]: That night was the happiest night I ever had.
Ouisa [to Flan]: That was the happiest night he ever had.
Flan [to Ouisa]: Oh, please. I'm not a bullshitter, but never bullshit a bullshitter.
Ouisa: Paul...We love you.
Desk Sargeant: It sounds like your friend was wanted for something else.
Ouisa: I read today that a young man committed suicide in Rikers lsland prison, and tied a shirt around his neck and hanged himself. Was it the pink shirt?
Ouisa: And we turn him into an anecdote, with no teeth, and a punchline you'll tell for years to come: "Oh, that reminds me of the time the imposter came into our house." "Oh! Tell the one about that boy." And we become these human jukeboxes spitting out these anecdotes to dine out on like we're doing right now. Well I will not turn him into an anecdote, it was an experience. How do we hold onto the experience?
Flan: What kind of behavior is this?
Ouisa: Tell me Flan, how much of your life can you account for?
Flan: Are you drunk? What's the matter with you? Don't you realize how important she is? What are you unhappy about? The Cezanne sale went through, the Matisse went through, we're rich! Rich enough. Next month there's a Bonnard.
Ouisa: These are the times I could take a knife and dig out your heart! Answer me! How much of your life...
Flan: -my life can I account for? All of it!
Flan: I am a gambler.
Ouisa: We're a terrible match.
by iambiguous » Fri Jan 11, 2013 12:17 am
Well, it worked in Times Square, right? Let's do it everywhere!
It's only a matter of figuring out a way to turn it all into a buck.
Travis. Is he more haplessly naive or hopelessly whacko? My pick: up and down, some of both. And so pathetic at times it's almost unbearable to watch.
Where the hell did he come from? Why the hell does he do these things? What a narrative that must be. Maybe he picked it up in the Marines.
But this aside all the stuff that disgusted him is no less still here, right? But always hidden now from the rest of us. You know, as the country drifts closer and closer to "friendly fascism". We can still go there though. As entertainment, for example.
And all that controversy about the ending is just bullshit to me. The point is not whether he is a hero or a villian but a depiction of the complex manner in which human motivation is rooted in a point of view. And in intentions. The ending is bursting at the seams with irony. Just as it was [less explosively] in King Of Comedy.
Interesting note: Robert DeNiro was paid $35,000 to play the part of Travis Bickel.
The scene where Travis Bickle is talking to himself in the mirror was completely ad-libbed by Robert De Niro.
Director Martin Scorsese claims that the most important shot in the movie is when Bickle is on the phone trying to get another date with Betsy. The camera moves to the side slowly and pans down the long, empty hallway next to Bickle, as if to suggest that the phone conversation is too painful and pathetic to bear.
The girl with whom Martin Scorsese studied in order to prepare for the role of Iris (played by Jodie Foster, the actress who won the role) also appears in the film, as Iris' friend on the street.
Martin Scorsese was reluctant to edit the climactic (and very bloody) shootout to avoid an X rating. However, he was amused by the changes ordered by the MPAA, because they made the final scene even more shocking than had originally been intended.
Many critics and fans have speculated that Travis Bickle actually dies during the climatic shootout, and the scenes where he recovers, is thanked by Iris' parents via letter, and talks to Betsy when she happens to ride in his taxi by chance, are either his dying delusions or pure fantasy. Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader both provided commentary on laserdisc/DVD releases of the film that deny this theory. Scorsese said that the cab ride with Travis and Betsy is a real event, with Travis's ambiguous look after she leaves the cab indicating uncertainty over his own thoughts. Schrader's comments were that Travis "is not cured" after surviving the shootout, and the writer added "next time, he's not going to be a hero".
Note: Some explicit dialog
TAXI DRIVER [1976]
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Travis [voiceover]: All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I go all over. I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn, I take 'em to Harlem. I don't care. Don't make no difference to me. It does to some. Some won't even take spooks. Don't make no difference to me.
Travis [voiceover]: Each night when I return the cab to the garage, I have to clean the cum off the back seat. Some nights, I clean off the blood.
Palantine: What is the one thing about this country that bugs you the most?
Travis: I don't know. I don't follow political issues that closely.
Palantine: There must be something.
Travis: Well, whatever it is, he should clean up this city here...because this city is like an open sewer, it's full of filth and scum. Sometimes I can hardly take it. Whoever becomes the president should just...really clean it up, know what I mean? Sometimes I go out and I smell it. I get headaches, it's so bad. It's like--They never go away. It's like the president should clean up this whole mess here. He should flush it down the fucking toilet.
Betsy: Travis, I don't believe I've ever met anyone quite like you.
On the other hand...
Betsy: Taking me to a place like this is about as exciting as saying to me "Let's fuck."
Travis [to Besty at Palantine campaign headquarters]: You're in a hell, and you're gonna die in a hell like the rest of them!
Passenger [to Travis]: You see that window with the light? The one closet to the edge of the building? You know who lives there? Of course you don't know who lives there, but I'm saying "Do you know who lives there?" A Nigger lives there, and that isn't my apartment. My wife is in there and...I'm gonna kill her. I'm gonna kill her with a .44 Magnum. Have you ever seen what a .44 Magnum will do to a woman's face? It'll fucking destroy it. Just blow it right apart. That's what it can do to her face. Did you ever see what it can do to a woman's pussy? That you should see. You should see what a .44 Magnum's gonna do to a woman's pussy.
Travis [to Wizard]: I got some bad ideas in my head.
Travis: Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man...June 8th. My life has taken another turn again. The days can go on with regularity over and over, one day indistinguishable from the next. A long continuous chain. Then suddenly, there is a change.
Easy Andy [after selling Travis an arsenal]: How 'bout dope? Grass, hash, coke...mescaline, downers, Nembutal, toluol, chloral hydrates? How 'bout uppers, amphetamines? I can get you crystal meth. Nitrous oxide. How 'bout that? I can get you a brand-new Cadillac with the pink slip for two grand.
Travis: You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talking... you talking to me? Well I'm the only one here.
Travis: Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is someone who stood up.
Sport: Well, take it or leave it. If you want to save yourself some money, don't fuck her. Cause you'll be back here every night for some more. Man, she's twelve and a half years old. You never had no pussy like that. You can do anything you want with her. You can cum on her, fuck her in the mouth, fuck her in the ass, cum on her face, man. She get your cock so hard she'll make it explode. But no rough stuff, all right?
Iris: God, you're square.
Travis Bickle: Hey, I'm not square, you're the one that's square. You're full of shit, man. What are you talking about? You walk out with those fuckin' creeps and low-lifes and degenerates out on the streets and you sell your little pussy for peanuts, man? For some low-life pimp who stands in the hall? And I'm square? You're the one that's square, man. I don't go screwing fuck with a bunch of killers and junkies like you do. You call that bein' hip? What world are you from?
Iris: Sport never killed nobody.
Travis: He killed somebody.
Iris: He's a Libra. I'm a Libra, too. That's why we get along so well. I think that Cancers make the best lovers...but, God, my whole family are earth signs.
Sport: Hey, go back to your fuckin' tribe before you get hurt, huh man. Do me a favor, I don't want no trouble, huh. Okay?
Travis: You got a gun?
Sport: Get the fuck outta here, man.
[Flicks his cigarette at him]
Sport: Get outta here
[Sport kicks him]
Travis: Suck on this.
[he shoots him]
Narrated [over newspaper article about Travis tacked to the wall]: "Dear Mr. Bickle, I can't say how happy Mrs. Steensma and I were... to hear that you are well and recuperating. We tried to visit you at the hospital... when we were in New York to pick up Iris. But you were still in a coma. There is no way we can repay you for returning our Iris to us. We thought we had lost her... and now our lives are full again. Needless to say...you are something of a hero around this household. I'm sure you want to know about Iris. She's back in school and working hard. The transition has been very hard for her, as you can well imagine. We have taken steps to see... she has never cause to run away again. In conclusion, Mrs. Steensma and l..would like to again thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Unfortunately, we cannot afford to come to New York again...to thank you in person, or we surely would. But if you should ever come to Pittsburgh...you would find yourself a most welcome guest in our home. Our deepest thanks. Burt and Ivy Steensma."
Betsy [in cab]: Hello, Travis.
Travis: Hello. I hear Palantine got the nomination.
Betsy: Yeah. Won't be long now. Seventeen days.
Tavis: I hope he wins.
Betsy: I read about you in the papers. How are you?
Travis: It was nothing, really. I got over that. Papers always blow these things up. Just a little stiffness, that's all.
Betsy: Travis...I'm-- How much was it?
Travis: So long.
Mathematics. Science. Philosophy. Religion. Wall Street.
But, given conflicting points of view, not necessarily in that order.
A rare film indeed. One that is clearly about 1] ideas and 2] the particular relationship they have to the world we actually live in. But 3] the gap between them is, in many crucial respects, still as maddeningly wide as ever.
And, sure, the metaphysical and religious tangents are fanscinating too. What is existence? How will we know? And [of course] when each of us one by one topples over into the abyss is all that gone forever? For "I"?
Here's the thing though: I am not all that sophisticated in the language of mathematics. I can only fathom the implications of Pi up tp a point. Like you probably. All the things we just have to assume that others do know what they are talking about.
When you're younger you think that, before you die, there will be an astounding breakthrough here. The pattern will be found. As you get older though you think that less and less.
Pi cost only $60,000 to make, most of which was raised in the form of individual $100 contributions from the director's friends and family. When it was later bought by Artisan Entertainment, each contributor got back a $150 return on their investment.
No location permits were secured for any of the scenes filmed. The crew had to have one man constantly serving as a lookout for police so they could stop filming if needed.
Pi features several references to mathematics and mathematical theories. For instance, Max finds the golden spiral occurring everywhere, including the stock market. Max's belief that diverse systems embodying highly nonlinear dynamics share a unifying pattern bears much similarity to results in chaos theory, which provides machinery for describing certain phenomena of nonlinear systems, which might be thought of as patterns.
The 216-letter name of God sought by the characters of the film is known as the Shem ha-Meforash or the Explicit Name. It comes from Exodus 14:19-21. Each of these three verses is composed of seventy-two letters in the original Hebrew. If one writes the three verses in boustrophedon form—one above the other, the first from right to left, the second from left to right, and the third from right to left—one gets seventy-two columns of three-letter names of God.
The game of Go
In the film, Max periodically plays Go with his mentor, Sol. This game has historically stimulated the study of mathematics and features a simple set of rules that results in a complex game strategy. The two characters each use the game as a model for their view of the universe; Sol says that the game is a microcosm of an extremely complex and chaotic world, while Max asserts that patterns can be found in the complexity of its variations.
Actors Sean Gullette and Mark Margolis both spent many hours learning the game at the Brooklyn Go Club, and had the help of a Go consultant for the film.
http://youtu.be/oQ1sZSCz47w
PI [1998]
Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky
Max [voiceover]: Something's going on. It has to do with that number. There's an answer in that number.
Max [voiceover]: Restate my assumptions: 1] Mathematics is the language of nature. 2] Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3] If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics; the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well... Right in front of me...hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.
Max [voiceover]: When I was a little kid, my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so when I was six I did.
Max [voiceover]: Personal note. Second attack in under 24 hours. Administered 80 milligrams Promozine HCI and six milligrams Sumattrapan orally, as well as one milligram Dihydroric-atamine-mezilayte by subcutaneous injection.
Sol: But life isn't just mathematics, Max. I spent 40 years searching for patterns in Pi. I found nothing.
Max: You found things.
Sol: I found things...but not a pattern. Not a pattern.
Max [voiceover]: Sol died a little when he stopped research on Pi. It wasn't just the stroke. He stopped caring. How could he stop, when he was so close to seeing Pi for what it really is? How could you stop believing that there is a pattern, an ordered shape behind those numbers, when you were so close? We see the simplicity of the circle, we see the maddening complexity of the endless numbers 3.14 off into infinity.
Lenny: Hebrew is all math. It's all numbers. You know that? Look. Ancient Jews used Hebrew as their numerical system. Each letter's a number. The Hebrew A, Aleph, is 1. B, Bet, is 2. Understand? But look, the numbers are interrelated. Take the Hebrew for father, ab. Aleph, Bet. 1 plus 2 equals 3. The word for mother, haim. Aleph, Mem. 140 equals the sum of 3 and 41. 44. Now, the Hebrew word for child - mother, father, child. Yelev. That's 10, 30 and 4. 44. Torah is just a long string of numbers. Some say that it's a code, sent to us from God.
Max [voiceover]: Failed treatments to date: Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics. No results. No results. No results.
Sol: What...What's happened?
Max: First, I get these crazy low picks, then it spit out this string of numbers. I never saw anything like it. And then it fries. It crashed.
Sol: You have a print out? Of the picks, the number?
Max: I threw it out.
Sol: What number did it spit out?
Max: I don't know, a string of digits.
Sol: How many?
Max: I don't know.
Sol: What is it ...a 100, a 1000, 216? How many?
Max: Probably around 200. Why?
Sol: I dealt with some bugs back in my Pi days. I wondered if it was like one I ran into.
Sol: You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks - insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife - she's forced to share a bed with this genius - convinces him to take a bath to relax. While he's entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that's a way to determine density - weight over volume. And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams "Eureka" and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king's palace to report his discovery.
Sol: Now, what is the moral of the story?
Max: That a breakthrough will come.
Sol: Wrong! The point of the story is the wife. You listen to your wife, she will give you perspective, meaning. You need a break, you have to take a bath or you will get nowhere!
Lenny: We're searching for a pattern in the Torah.
Max: What kind?
Lenny: We're not sure. All we know is it's 216 digits long.
Max: You asked me if I'd seen a 216 digit number.
Sol: Oh, yeah. You mean the bug. I ran into it working on Pi.
Max: What do you mean ran into it?
Sol: Max, what's this about?
Max: There are these religious Jews I've been talking to. Hasids, the guys with beards. I know one from a coffee shop. He's a number theorist. The Torah is his data set. He says they're after a 216-digit number in the Torah.
Sol: Come on, it's just coincidence.
Max: There's something else, though. You remember those weird stock picks? They were correct. I got two picks on the nose. Smack on the nose, Sol. Something's going on. It has to do with that number. There's an answer in it.
Sol: The Ancient Japanese considered the Go board to be a microcosm of the universe. Although when it is empty it appears to be simple and ordered, in fact, the possibilities of gameplay are endless. They say that no two Go games have ever been alike. Just like snowflakes. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe. And that's the truth of our world, Max. It can't be easily summed up with math. There is no simple pattern.
Max: But as the game progresses, the possibilities become smaller. The board takes on order. Soon, every move's predictable. So maybe, even though we're not aware of it, there is a pattern, an order underlying every Go game. Maybe it's like the pattern in the stock market? The Torah? This 216 number?
Sol: This is insanity, Max!.
Max: Or maybe it's genius.
Sol: Listen to yourself. You're connecting my computer bug with one you might've had and some religious hogwash! You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere.
Marcy: Mr Cohen...
Max: God damn it! I'm sick of you following me. I'm not interested in money. I want to understand our world. I don't deal with petty materialists like you.
Max [voiceover]: More evidence. Remember da Vinci. Artist, inventor, sculptor, naturalist. ltaly, 15th century. Rediscovered the perfection of the golden rectangle and pencilled it into his masterpieces. Connecting a curve through the concentric golden rectangles, you generate the mythical golden spiral. Pythagoras loved this shape, for he found it in nature - a nautilus shell, rams' horns, whirlpools, tornadoes, our fingerprints, our DNA and even our Milky Way.
Max: You lied to me.
Sol: You have it? OK, sit down. I gave up before I pinpointed it, but my guess is that certain problems cause computers to get stuck in a loop. The loop leads to meltdown, but just before they crash they become aware of their own structure. The computer has a sense of its own silicon nature and it prints out its ingredients.
Max: The computer becomes conscious?
Sol: In...In some ways...I guess. Studying the pattern made Euclid conscious of itself. It died spitting out the number.
Max: Consciousness is the number?
Sol: No, Max. It's only a nasty bug.
Max: It's more than that.
Sol: No. It's a dead end! There's nothing there!
Max: It's a door, Sol. A door.
Sol: A door to a cliff, you're driving yourself over the edge. You need to stop.
Max: You were afraid. - That's why you quit.
Sol: I got burnt. It caused my stroke!
Max: That's bullshit! It's mathematics, numbers, ideas. Mathematicians should go to the edge. You taught me that.
Sol: It's death!
Max: You can't tell me what it is. You've retreated to your Go and books and goldfish.
Sol: Max, go home.
Marcy [to Max]: You don't understand it, do you? I don't give a shit about you! I only care about what's in your fucking head! If you won't help us, help yourself. We are forced to comply to the laws of nature. Survival of the fittest Max, and we've got the fucking gun!
Lenny: Where's the number?
Max: It's not on me. It's in my head.
Lenny: Did you give it to those Wall Street bastards.
Rabbi Cohen: The High Priest had one ritual to perform there. He had to intone a single word. That word was the true name of God.
Max: So?
Rabbi Cohen: The true name, which only the Cohanim knew, was 216 letters long.
Max: Are you telling me that...that the number in my head is the true name of God?
Rabbi: Yes! It's the key to the Messianic age. It will take us closer to the Garden of Eden. As the temple burnt, the Talmud tells us the High Priest walked into the flames. He took the key to the top of the building, the heavens opened and received the key from the priest's outstretched hand. We have been looking for that key ever since. And you may have found it.
Max: I saw God.
Rabbi Cohen: No. You are not pure. You cannot see God unless you are pure.
Max: No...I saw everything.
Rabbi Cohen: You saw nothing, only a glimpse. There's so much more. We can unlock the door and show God we're pure again.
Max: You're not pure. How are you pure? I found it!
Rabbi Cohen: Who do you think you are? You are only a vessel from God. You're carrying a delivery meant for us!
Max: It was given to me. It's inside of me. It's changing me.
Rabbi Cohen: It's killing you! Because you are not ready to receive it.
Max: It's just a number. I'm sure you've written down every 216-digit number. You've translated all of them. You've intoned them all. Haven't you? What's it gotten you? The number is nothing. It's the meaning. The syntax. It's what's between the numbers. You haven't understood it. It's because it's not for you. I've got it. I've got it! I understand it. And I'm gonna see it. Rabbi, I was chosen.
There are so many different combinations of events that can create a "troubled boy". And the suicide of his beloved mother is a good place to start. And this boy is convinced it wasn't a suicide at all.
He also lived in a tree before the trek to Edinburgh. There he finds a young woman who looks remarkably like...his mother.
One suggestion: If you are going to be troubled [and very strange] it pays to be resourceful.
Look for Spud. And an endless string of highly improbable coincidences.
http://youtu.be/nJTr84lAI5c
MISTER FOE [Hallam Foe] 2007
Written and directed by David Mackenzie
Hallam: Dad, when she took me out in the boat how long was it before she died.
Julius: About a month.
Hallam: Were you fucking Verity by then?
Julius: I know it is hard but you have got to try to pick up the pieces.
Hallam: It didn't take you very long, did it?
Verity [after fucking Hallam in the treehouse]: It's time to fly the nest, Hallam. I think you know that.
This after Hallam tried to strangle her.
Raymond: I fucking hate this job, but it's my job. D'ya understand?
[Hallam nods]
Raymond: I killed a man once. Smashed his skull on a pier. Just so ya know.
Kate: Is there a love in your life?
Hallam: She's dead. Would you like to meet her?
Kate: I like creepy guys.
Kate: You know if it wasn't for your dress sense I might think you were gay.
Hallam: Look, you're very attractive but I'm politically very committed to the gay cause.
Kate: How do you explain the erection then.
More to the point, how do you explain it to your mother?
Kate: Don't worry the room's free. All I need to do is suck the manager's cock....I'm joking.
Kate: How long has this been going on?
Hallam: Since I first saw you. I thought you looked like someone so I followed you. I didn't know something was going to happen between us.
Kate: Who do you think I look like?
Hallam: My mother. She's dead.
Kate: Please, just leave me alone. And I mean alone. Hallam, you're fired.
Kate: I'm a real live human being Hallam. Sometimes I want sweet; sometimes I want sour. Sometimes I don't know what I want. My shit stinks. I'm going to die someday. If I look like your mother, it's just a coincidence. Am I telling you anything you don't already know?
Verity: You've treated me like a white trash gold digging whore from day one.
Hallam: That's because it's exactly what you are.
Verity: How is it with your look-alike. Do you feel like you are fucking Mommy?
Julius: Oh, she loved you.
Hallam: But not enough to stick around.
Kate: Look me up in five years' time.
Hallam: Will you still be beautiful in five years' time?
Kate: I hope so.
Hallam: You will be.
by iambiguous » Sat Jan 12, 2013 2:43 am
This is a really, really funny movie. And if you have ever raised a kid [and I have] you'll recognize yourself in the occasional flashback.
But nobody as cynical as I am would ever in a million years believe the ending. Just endure it as best you can. By, for example, not watching it. Just kidding. A little.
And it is bursting at the seams with folks ever sliding into and out of the white middle class rendition of the American Dream.
Did I mention how funny it is?
I still have a hard time recognizing Joaquin Phoenix as Garry though.
Directed by Ron Howard
Gil: This is a memory of when I was a kid. I'm 35 now. I have kids of my own. You don't even really exist. You're an amalgam.
Usher: A what?
Gil: A combination of several ushers my dad left me with over the years. I combined them into one memory.
Usher: Why?
Gil: This was a great symbolic moment of my life. My father dumping me with you...it's why I swore things would be different with my kids. It's my dream. Strong, happy, confident kids.
Usher: That's great, that's great. You know, you - you got a lovely family, and I'm a god-damn amalgam!
Kevin [singing]: When you're sliding into first and you're feeling something burst, diarrhea, diarrhea. When you're sliding into third and you feel a juicy turd, diarrhea, diarrhea. When you're sliding into home and your pants are full of foam, diarrhea, diarrhea. When you're driving in your Chevy and your pants are feeling heavy, diarrhea, diarrhea.
Karen: Kevin, honey, where did you learn that song?
Kevin: Last summer at camp, Mom.
Gil: Ah, that was money well spent.
Gil: Now, if it was my sister's kid...
Karen: Garry.
Gil: Now, there´s a kid with problems.
Justin: Who's that?
Gil: It's my kid brother, Larry, your uncle. Don't give him any money.
Larry [approaching Grandma]: Is that Grandma?
Frank [derisively]: Yeah, she's still alive.
Gil: How long has it been? Three years?
Larry: Something like that.
Gil: You stopped wearing your turban!
Marilyn: Cool is adorable. Adorable! Why didn't you write us when you had a son?
Larry: I didn't know myself until a couple of months ago. You see, a few years ago, I was living in Vegas with this girl. Show girl. She was in that show 'Elvis On Ice'. Anyhow, we drifted apart as people do in these complicated times and then a couple of months ago, she shows up with Cool and tells me, "You watch him. I shot someone. I have to leave the country."
Helen [whimpering as she flips through the stack of sex photos of Julie and Tod]
[Julie enters the room and Helen holds up a picture]
Helen: I... I... I think this this one is my favorite.
Julie: It was just for fun Mom.
Helen: Well, I'm glad to know it's not a job. That's that Tod, isn't it? There's one with his face.
[as she looks closer at the photos]
Julie: Is that what bothers you? That I did those things? Or that I did those things with Tod?
Helen: Gee whiz, Julie, so many things bother me about this, I don't know where to separate them.
[holds up a different photo]
Helen: Oh! Whoo! Here's something for my wallet!
Julie: Tod is very important to me.
Helen: And we've got the photos to prove it!
[as she holds up the sex photos again]
Julie: Mom...
Helen: [looking again at the ephotos] This is your room. You did these things right here? In my house?
Julie: Well, I thought someone in this house ought to be having sex - I mean with something that doesn't require batteries.
Karen: He likes to butt things... with his head.
Nathan: How proud you must be.
Helen: I swear, Julie, if you walk out that door, don't you dare come back!
Julie: Don't worry about that!
[Garry enters]
Julie: Hi Garry.
Garry: Hi.
Julie: I'm moving out.
Garry: Bye.
Helen: See? Now you've upset your brother!
Marilyn: Frank?
Frank: What?
Marilyn: Cool just finished lunch.
Frank: l´ll call the newspaper.
Marilyn: l thought you and Larry could take him somewhere.
Frank: l am showing Larry my car.
Larry: Just plop him in front of the TV. That´s what he always does.
Frank [watching Larry get thrown from a moving car and rolling up next to his feet]: What was that?
Larry: Oh, some friends of mine were just dropping me off.
Frank: Friends? Friends slow down, they even stop!
Julie: He said that he loved me.
Helen: Men say that. They all say that. Then they come.
Julie: I can't believe I trusted him...
Helen: Well, what did you expect from a kid like that?
Julie: Oh, Mom, back off. The last guy you dated stole our furniture. Men are scum.
Tod: Julie, you belong with me!
Helen [hitting him]: Let go of her!
Tod: Julie, you're my wife!
Helen: If you don't let her go right now I'm going to call the...his what?!
Julie: His wife. We got married a couple of days ago.
Helen [stops hitting Tod and starts hitting Jilie]: Are you out of your mind? Are you out of your mind?!
Julie [to Tod]: I wouldn't live with you if the world were flooded with piss and you lived in a tree!
Nathan: Well?
Susan: Why are you pouring water through my diaphragm?
Nathan: To check. To see if it's OK. You didn't know I did that, did you?
Nathan: Obviously not or you wouldn't have tried this.
Susan: Are you accusing me of making that hole?
Nathan: No, a woodpecker came in here, went into the bathroom, opened the drawer with his little wing and pecked a couple of holes in your diaphragm!
Helen [to Garry]: l assume you're watching these because you're curious about sex...you know. Or filmmaking.
Tod [commenting on Garry]: That is one messed up little dude.
Helen: I guess a boy Garry's age needs a man around the house.
Tod: Well, it depends on the man. I had a man around. He used to wake me up every morning by flicking lit cigarettes at my head. He'd say, "Hey, asshole, get up and make me breakfast." You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell, you need a license to catch a fish! But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.
Larry: Dad, they're going to kill me.
Frank: Did you ever think about getting a job?
Larry: Oh, great. Oh, that is just great now. What did you always tell me, huh? ''Make your mark. Make your mark. Don´t be one of the numbers. Make your mark''
Frank: You misunderstood me. You weren´t listening.
Larry: Aw, come on! lf l called you up to tell you, ''Hey, Dad, l´m the new assistant...sub-vice president of pencil sharpening at some crappy little company''... you´re telling me you´d think that was great? l am better than that! l am not Gil!
Julie: If he thinks I'm having his baby now, he's crazy!
Helen: Baby?
George [shocked]: Your daughter's having a baby?
Helen [even more shocked]: A baby?!
George: You're going to be a grandma?
Helen [laughs incredulously]: No, no, no, no. I'm too young to be a grandmother. Grandmothers are old. They bake, and they sew, and they tell you stories about the Depression.
[shouts] I was at Woodstock, for Christ's sake! I peed in a field!
Karen: This puts a minor crimp in my life too. l was thinking about starting back to work in the fall. Now l can´t.
Gil: That´s the difference between men and women. Women have choices. Men have responsibilities.
Karen: Oh, really? Okay, well, then, l choose for you to have the baby. That´s my choice. You have the baby. You get fat. You breast-feed until your nipples are sore. l´ll go back to work.
Gil: Let´s return from la-la land, because that ain´t gonna happen. Whether l crawl back to Dave or get another job...it´s obvious now l´m gonna have to spend less time at home. l´m gonna have to have business dinners. l´m gonna have to play racquetball. l´m gonna have to get guys laid. l hope you don´t mind if l bring home a few prostitutes...because that´s what it takes to get anywhere, and l´m not getting anywhere. Whatever happens, you have to count on less help from me.
Gil: l´m ready to discuss it. However, l can´t right now. l gotta go to the goddamn Little League. Ten little boys are waiting for me to guide them into last place.
Helen: You really have to go?
Gil: My whole life is ''have to.''
Gil [after Frank asks for advice about Larry]: You want my advice? Why me? Why now?
Frank: Because I know you think I was a shitty father.
[Gil is silent]
Frank: Thank you for not arguing. And I know you're a good father.
Frank: You know, when you were two years old, we thought you had polio. Did you know that?
Gil: Yeah, Mom said... something about it a couple of years ago.
Frank: Yeah, well, for a week we didn't know. I hated you for that.
[Gil looks surprised and hurt]
Frank: I did. I hated having to care, having to go through the pain, the hurt, the suffering. It's not for me.
Frank: Then Monday morning, 6: a.m you come to work with me at my place. l´m going to teach you the business.
Larry: Plumbing supplies.
Frank: ln a few years, l´ll retire, and you´ll take over. Meanwhile, as long as you´re working... and if you agree to go to Gamblers Anonymous, l´ll keep paying your debt. That´s it.
Larry: Okay. But let me just add a wrinkle. About an hour ago, l got a phone call from an associate in Chile. Big opportunity. Platinum. Why don´t l just toddle off down there for a few months, see if it pans out? lf it does, great. lf not...we put the Frank Buckman plan into effect. Sound good?
Frank [giving up on him]: Sure. Great.
Larry: l could use a little...
Frank: Two thousand enough?
Larry: Ample. Ample. Well, better pack.
Frank: What about Cool?
Larry: What? Oh, Jesus, that´s a tough one. This is not really the kind of trip that...Listen, how about if...
Frank: Don´t worry about it.
Cool: My dad´s going away.
Frank: Yes. He´s leaving right away.
Cool: ls he ever coming back?
Frank: No. Would you like to stay here with us?
Cool: Yeah.
Susan [as her husband serenades her in the middle of her lesson]: Nathan, we're trying so hard to keep these kids off drugs
Tod: Did l win?
Garry: You, like, saved their marriage. That was really cool.
Helen: Yeah, well, l give ´em six months. Four, if she cooks.
by iambiguous » Sat Jan 12, 2013 11:16 pm
Afghanistan the first time. The Soviet Vietnam. Either way it is tens of thousands of young soldiers [or jihadists] slaughtering each other along with hundreds of thousands of folks forced to participate collaterally.
You try to wrap your mind around it -- to pick someone or some thing to blame -- but it is always overwhelming in the end. We live in a world where these things have happened since the dawn of testosterone. We just have far more lethal ways in which to inflict it.
And if this isn't brainwashing writ large what is it? From birth they are molded into this frame of mind. And on both sides. Just as we were molded in turn. It's only question of acknowledging it or not. And of situating it out in the world as best you can.
This film is based "loosely" on true events. But, come on, who is kidding whom. It's still going on today. Only it's the Yanks trying to wiggle out of it. Another rendition of "peace with honor".
It's really just a Russian remake of Full Metal Jacket
Set domestic box office record in Russia, in 2005, generating $ 7,700,000 in five days. Surpassed Turetskiy gambit in October 2005 to become the highest-grossing movie in post-communist Russia. It was the first movie in post-communist Russia to surpass the $20 million mark at the box office.
The film received a mixed reaction from the veterans of that war, who pointed to a number of inaccuracies, but nevertheless, judging by ticket sales, was embraced by the general public, and even by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
http://youtu.be/FVB9Xz2DyME
9TH COMPANY [9 rota] 2005
Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk
Drill Sergeant: You must be the painter, huh?
Petrovsky: That's correct drill sergeant.
Drill Sergeant: So why'd you drag your ass over here? Could've stayed back home and drawn naked gals and pretty flowers.
Petrovsky: You see, comrade drill sergeant, if you believe Doctor Freud any creative art is sublimation of man's subconscious instincts. Including violence. However, you may disagree since Soviet science doesn't acknowledge Freud's bourgeois teachings.
The look on the DI's face: priceless. But then he punches Petrovsky very hard in the stomach.
Drill Sergeant: Rule number one: a paratrooper is always ready for an ambush.
[Punches another soldier]
Drill Sergeant: Rule number two: Only one smarter than a Drill Sergeant is a Sergeant Major.
The rest is just the usual basic training bullshit. On the other hand, the Drill Sergeant here makes Gunnery Sergeant Hartman look like a pussycat.
The soldiers in unison: WE SERVE THE SOVIET UNION!
And most of them really do buy into it: The Motherland bullshit.
Commander [to assembled troops]: But, the most important thing to remember: When you cross the border, you will be in an Islamic state. Islam is not just another religion. It's another world with its own laws, a different view of life...and of death. A true Muslim is not afraid to die in battle. And those who perish fighting the infidel -- which is us -- will immediately go to Heaven where they will get everything they lacked in this life---water, bountiful harvests, and bigbosomed beauties.
And the Soviet soldiers? They were reared in an atheist culture. No comforts of religion here. When they die that's it.
Commander: The most sacred thing to a Muslim is his home...haram. The second meaning of this word is "not allowed". Forbidden. Looking at Muslim women...haram. Everything which concerns sexual relations...haram. It's haram to show a Muslim any obscene gestures, to which all of you are so used to. For that you can receive a bullet even from a peaceful civilian.
Captain: The moment you step into a Muslim village you are guests. Killing a guest, even if he's an infidel...haram. So remember, as long as you're in the village, you're safe. But the moment you step beyond its boundaries, the same host who's giving you tea five minutes ago can shoot you in the back. Because killing an infidel is a heroic deed. A stairway to Heaven.
Captain: In the entire human history, no one has managed to conquer Afghanistan. No one. Never.
Captain: Men, why are we in Afghanistan?
Soldiers [shouting in unison]: FULFILLING OUR INTERNATIONAL DUTY, BY ASSISTING THE BROTHERLY PEOPLE OF AFGHANISTAN IN REPULSING IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION!
Petrovsky: Weapons are the most beautiful thing that man ever created in his entire history. During the Renaissance there was an artist. His name was Michelangelo. He was once asked how he created his sculptures. He answered, "it's simple, I take a stone slab and knock off the extra pieces." You understand beauty's when there's nothing extra. No excess. No waste. And in war there's only life and death. And nothing else. War is beautiful.
Lyutyy: Listen, Giaconda, I don't get it. Are you actually an idiot or you just fucking with us? What's so beautiful? A man's guts tangled up around tank treads. You really think that's beautiful?! Got bored...so you decided to play soldier?
Petrovsky: I said you wouldn't get it.
Lyutyy: It's not bad if it's quick. Much worse is if it just mangles you..
Lyutyy: I was at this hospital in Tashkent, where they brought some of those guys. Filled up the whole ward. Each one to half a bed. All that's left of them.
Danny, my friend, RIP.
Sergeant: War for some, mother's milk for others.
Hohol: This isn't basic training! This is war! You don't get bad grades here! You get killed!
The rest is history. Just as today in Afghanistan it's history repeating itself. And the folks that manufacture the weapons of war don't give them away for free.
Given the staggering enormity that is the Second World War, there must be hundreds upon hundreds of movies still to be made. Though none of them will ever be the one pointed to as the turning point in the effort stop the next "great war". And if you haven't guessed that by now I won't make the attempt to disillusion you. And then there are still all the little wars to lament.
People can't do these things. People do these things. And some will always do it in the name of morality. They rationalize the ignominious means in order that they be in accordance with the lofty ends.
And let's not forget, the Nazis were far removed from nihilism. All of these terrible things were done [at least by many] in the name of idealism. The autocratic minds of authoritarians and objectivists.
This is just a speck in the war. Like we are all just specks in the grand scheme of things. How is it even possible to connects the dots between them?
We do things with the best of intentions. We do things because we understand a situation in a particular way. Then there are terrible consequences for what we do. And some carry the guilt until, finally, it consumes them. But others do not. Everything for them revolves precisely around intention and perspective.
Sarah's Key follows an American journalist's present-day investigation into the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup of Jews in German-occupied Paris in 1942. It tells the story of young girl Sarah's experiences during and after these events, illustrating the participation of the French bureaucracy while also showing how other French citizens hid and protected Sarah from Vichy France authorities.
Vel d'hiv roundup in depth at wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel%27_d%27Hiv_Roundup
http://youtu.be/LzDZ9e3mGRE
SARAH'S KEY [Elle s'appelait Sarah] 2010
Written and directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Editor: I guess Chirac's speech in '95 at the Vel D'Hiv has finally served some purpose.
Young Journalist: Chirac at the what?
Editor: Vel D'Hiv.
Young Reporter: How do you spell that?
Editor [laughing]: You're joking?
Young Reporter: What happened?
Julia: On the 16th and 17th of July '42, they arrested 13,000 Jews, mostly women and children. They took 8,000 of them and put them in the Velodrome d'Hiver, in inhuman conditions.
Editor: Imagine the Superdome in New Orleans, only a million times worse.
Julia: A million times worse. And then they sent them to the camps.
Mike: No images? That's weird. Normally, they were really good at that. They documented everything, the Nazis. That's what they were known for.
Julia: Mike! This was not the Germans, it was the French.
Mother: Surely, they would never send the children to work camps.
Anna [to Sarah]: Think only of yourself. Yourself.
Father: Arrest my son! Please arrest my son!
Sarah [taking the key from her father's hand after he's been knocked to the ground]: See? Why didn't you trust me? Why didn't you give her the key?
Father: Why did you lock him in? Do you realize what you've done? Do you realize? Do you realize?!
Old man [enroute to camp]: See this ring? It contains poison. Nobody in the world can choose when I die. Nobody!
Father: Your mother must never find out, you understand? She was out that day.
Julia: What day?
[a long pause]
Father: The day the girl came back.
Julia: What happened to Sarah?
Father: From 1942 to his death, Dad never once spoke her name. Sarah was part of the secret. Whenever I asked where she was, what happened to her, he told me to be quiet.
Julia: In one week, you sign the deal of the century. No money worries for 150 years! Grown-up daughter, beautiful apartment from deported Jews...
Bertrand: What did you just say?
Colleague: Your article is amazing Julia. When I think all this happened right in the middle of Paris in front of everyone it's absolutely disgusting.
Julia: And how do you know what you would have done?
Colleague: What do you mean?
Julia: If you had been there, how do you know what you would have done?
Mike: I would have just watched it all on television, you know like the bombings of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan...
Sarah's mother-in-law: It was in 1966. The truck driver claimed she swerved towards him and there was nothing he could do.
Sarah's mother-in-law: Their son left to Italy.
Julia: She had a son?
Nathilde: Willian, my half-brother.
Sarah's mother-in-law: He was nine when Sarah had her accident.
Julia: I just wanted to know the truth.
Bertrand: The truth? The journalist's quest. So where does it get us now, this bright shiny truth?
Julia: The truth has a price, whether you like it or not.
William: Dad, why didn't you tell me? My whole life is a lie. My whole life.
Father: William, try to understand. For your mother, if you were Jewish, your life was in danger. Right after you were born she rushed out of the hospital. Went to church to get you baptized. We're all the product of history.
William [holding up a key]: What's this?
Julia Jarmond [voiceover]: And so I write this for you, my Sarah. With the hope that one day, when you're old enough, this story that lives with me, will live with you as well. When a story is told, it is not forgotten. It becomes something else, a memory of who we were; the hope of what we can become.
by iambiguous » Sun Jan 13, 2013 10:23 pm
Come on, the "war against terror" has been the tail wagging the dog now for over 30 years. Once the Commies tore down their walls, the military industrial complex, the war economy and national security state needed a new bogeyman. And thus was born "the endless war" against jihad. And then, almost miraculously, 9/11 sealed the deal. It couldn't have been better if they had planned it themselves.
And while I don't go that far, I have no illusions about those who pull the strings behind the curtains. Of course it helps to have a really dumb audience. Or a really ignorant one.
Already, our presidential campaigns are scripted to the point they may as well be produced in Hollywood.
After this film started production and before its release, US President Bill Clinton became involved in a sex scandal and threatened military action against Iraq.
During the filming of Wag the Dog Dustin Hoffman, his co-star Robert De Niro and director Barry Levinson had an impromptu meeting with President 'Bill Clinton' at a Washington hotel. "So what's this movie about?" Clinton asked De Niro. De Niro looked over to Levinson, hoping he would answer the question. Levinson, in turn, looked over to Hoffman. Hoffman, realizing there was no one else to pass the buck to, is quoted as saying, "So I just started to tap dance. I can't even remember what I said."
WAG THE DOG
Directed by Barry Levinson
Titlecard: Why does the dog wag its tail? Because the dog is smarter than the tail. If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.
Winifred: That's him. That's Mr Fix-it.
Connie: So, it's not the illegal nanny thing? What is it?
Staffer: A group of Firefly Girls were here last month...The president took one of them in the office behind the Oval Office. The girl's alleging...
[Staffer hands him the report. Connie reads it]
Connie: Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Connie: And it's most certainly not about the B-3 bomber.
John: There is no B-3 bomber.
Connie: I just said that! There is no B-3 bomber. I don't know why these rumors get started!
Connie [repeated line]: I'm working on it.
Winnifred: Tell me again.
Connie: Don't worry about it. It's nothing new. During the Reagan adminustration, 240 Marines were killed in Beirut. 24 hours later, we invade Grenada. That's the M.O.. Change the subject, change the lead.
Connie: What's the thing people remember about the Gulf War? A bomb falls down a chimney and blows up a building. The building could have been made out of Legos.
Winifred: Why Albania?
Connie: Why not?
Winifred: What have they done to us?
Connie: What have they done for us? What do you know about them?
Winifred: Nothing.
Connie: See? They keep to themselves. Shifty. Standoffish.
Stanley: Okay you bought yourself a day or two.
Connie: All I need is 11 till the election.
Stanley: This isn't going to hold for 11 days. He fucked a Girl Scout.
Connie: What do you think would hold it off, Mr. Motss?
Stanley: Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. You'd have to have a war.
Stanley: I'm in show business, why come to me?
Connie: War is show business, Mr. Motss, that's why we're here.
Stanley: No no no no no, fuck freedom.
Fad King: We're locked into Albania. Why?
Johnny Dean: Albania's hard to rhyme.
Stanley: What are you looking at me for? It's the name of the country.
Johnny Dean [sighs resignedly, then sings]: "Albania, Albania..."
Stanley: That rhymes.
Tracy: What would they do to me if I did tell someone about this?
Connie: They could come to your house in the middle of the night and kill you.
Stanley [repeated line]: This is nothing.
Stanley: They used the same process here as in the last Schwarzenegger movie. And this is only the beginning. Wait till we get to the song, image, merchandising tie-ins.
CIA Agent Young: There are two things I know to be true. There's no difference between good flan and bad flan, and there is no war.
Connie: Of course there's a war. I'm watching it on TV.
Stanley: Neal can't end the war. He's not producing this.
Connie: The CIA cut them a better deal.
Stanley: The war isn't over until I say it's over. This is my picture. This is not the CIA's picture.
Connie: If Henry Kissinger can win the Peace Prize I wouldn't be surprised to learn that I had won the Preakness.
Stanley: The President will be a hero. He brought peace.
Connie: But there was never a war.
Stanley: All the greater accomplishment.
Winifred: So when we touch down tomorrow, Big Bird is going to meet Schumann at the airport, huh?
Stanley: Big mistake, big mistake. You gotta bring them in by stages. Big mistake to reveal Schumann before the election.
Winifred: How so?
Stanley: Sweetheart, Schumann is the shark. Okay? Schumann is Jaws. You have to tease them. You gotta tease them. You don't put Jaws in the first reel of the movie. It's the contract, sweetheart. The contract of the election, whether they know it or not, is "Vote for me Tuesday, Wednesday I'll produce Schumann." See, that's what they're paying their seven bucks for.
Winifred: What did he do?
Stanley: He raped a nun...
Winifred: Oh, God. Oh, God. Jes - Oh, God!
Stanley: And...
Winifred: "And"? I don't want to know an "and". Why is there an "and"?
Stanley: Look, look, look, look, look. He's fine as long as he gets his medication...
Winifred: And if he doesn't get his medications?
Stanley: He's not fine.
Sergeant Schumann: Who are you? Who are you sons of bitches?!
Winifred: Oh, God. What do we do now? Huh? Huh? What do we do now, huh, boy producer? Huh? Mister win-an-Emmy, social-conscience, whale-shit, save-the-rain-forest, peacenik-commie, fuckin'-hire-a-convict-shithead? Huh? What do we do now, liberal, affirmative action, shithead, peacenik commie fuck? What do you want to do now?
Stanley: This is nothing! Piece of cake.
Stanley: It's okay, he's not dead.
[gunshot]
Stanley: Uh, strike that.
Stanley: You think I did this for money? I did this for credit.
Connie: You always knew you couldn't take the credit.
Stanley: But I'm not going to stand here and let two dickheads from film school take it.
Stanley: Look at that! That is a complete fucking fraud, and it looks a hundred percent real. It's the best work I've ever done in my life, because it's so honest.
Stanley: They told me I couldn't remake Moby Dick from the point of view of the whale. But I did it. $450 million domestic.
News reporter: And turning to the Hollywood page famed film producer Stanley R. Motss died suddenly of a massive heart attack while sunbathing poolside.
Newscaster: This just in. A group calling itself "Albania Unite" has claimed responsibility for the bombing moments ago of the village of Klos, Albania. The president was unavailable for comment but General William Scott of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says he has no doubt we'll be sending planes and troops back in to finish the job.
by iambiguous » Mon Jan 14, 2013 6:23 pm
The critics hated this one. But I suspect some of that was aimed at the subject matter. Who wants to have this shoved in their face? But there it is.
I tend to approach it more as did Roger Ebert [who gave it 3 stars out of 4]:
"8mm is a real film. Not a slick exploitation exercise with all the trappings of depravity but none of the consequences. Not a film where moral issues are forgotten in the excitement of an action climax."
And yet some suggest the cause of morality is dealth a blow when "the Machine" explains his motivation for doing these things.
You have to dig deep down under the bottom of the barrel to find the scum that populate this world. Those who make the stuff and those rich enough to purchase it. Stuff and snuff. As in the real thing.
The actress (Jenny Powell) playing the character of Mary Ann Mathews was originally a stripper hired in to act as a stand-in. Joel Schumacher gave her the part of the victim on the 8mm film as she had a suitably "haunted" look about her.
8MM [1999]
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Tom: I want you to listen carefully. What you're talking about is a "snuff film." But, from what I know, snuff films are a kind of...urban myth. There's no such thing, I can assure you. Please, believe me. This is probably an S&M film of some sort. Simulated rape, simulated violence. Hard to stomach, and it might seem real, but there are ways of making it look realistic...fake blood and special effects.
Tom [speaking to missing girl's mother]: Can you tell me if you had to make a choice...if you were forced to choose between imagining her out there somewhere living a good life...being happy...but you don't know...you never find out...or the worst being true...her being gone...but you know...you finally know what's happened to her.
Mother: What would I choose?
Tom: Yes.
Mother: I would choose to know.
Max [to porn store customer]: Hey! It's like a gas station, you pay before you pump!
Max: I can hook you up, though. You name the vice I name the price.
Max: It's not too late to change your mind about this. There are some things that you see, and then you can't unsee them.
Max [about the porn industry]: All I'm saying is...it can get to you.
Tom: No worries. Thanks for the warning, though.
Max: You're welcome. Pops. Just remember. If you dance with the devil, the devil don't change. The devil changes you.
Max: There's two kinds of specialty product; legal and illegal. Foot fetish, shit films, watersports, bondage, spanking, fisting, she- males, hemaphrodites...it's beyond hardcore, but legal. This is the kind of hardcore where one guy's going to look at it and throw up, another guy looks at it and falls in love. Now, with some of the S+M and bondage films, they straddle the line. How are you supposed to tell if the person tied up with the ball gag in their mouth is a consenting or not? Step over that line, you're into kiddie porn. Rape films, but there aren't many. I've never seen one.
Max: You've got Penthouse, Playboy, Hustler, etc. Nobody even considers them pornography anymore. Then, there's mainstream hardcore. Triple X. The difference is penetration. That's hardcore. That whole industry's up in the valley. Writers, directors, porn stars. They're celebrities, or they think they are. They pump out 150 videos a week. A week. They've even got a porno Academy Awards. America loves pornography. Anybody tells you they never use pornography, they're lying. Somebody's buying those videos. Somebody's out there spending 900 million dollars a year on phone sex. Know what else? It's only gonna get worse. More and more you'll see perverse hardcore coming into the mainstream, because that's evolution. Desensitization. Oh my God, Elvis Presley's wiggling his hips, how offensive! Nowadays, Mtv's showing girls dancing around in thong bikinis with their asses hanging out. Know what I mean? For the porn-addict, big tits aren't big enough after a while. They have to be the biggest tits ever. Some porn chicks are putting in breast implants bigger than your head, literally. Soon, Playboy is gonna be Penthouse, Penthouse'll be Hustler, Hustler'll be hardcore, and hardcore films'll be medical films. People'll be jerking off to women laying around with open wounds. There's nowhere else for it to go.
Max: What about you, Tom? You got a wife and a daughter and a nice little yellow house and a dog named 'Shep'. What the hell are you doing here?
Max: Do you get turned on at places like tonight?
Tom: No, I do not.
Max: But you don't exactly get turned off either, do ya? Devil's changing you already.
Tom: Whoa, who said anything about a victum?
Max: There's three rules in life: One, there's always a victim; two, don't be it.
Tom: And three?
Max: I forgot that one.
Dino Velvet [holding a picture of Tom's wife and daughter]: What I could do with faces like these on film. On second thought, why would I need their faces?
Tom: Why would Christian want this?
Longdale: You're asking me why? Why?!
Tom: Yes, why would he want a film of a...a little girl being butchered?!
Longdale: Because he could! He did it because he could. What other reason were you looking for?
Dino Velvet: Mr. Longdale, if there was no honor among perverts and pornographers, the whole fucking business falls apart.
Tom: Take off the mask.
Higgins [after removing it]: What did you expect, a monster?
Higgins: Can't get your mind around it, huh? I don't have any answers. Nothing I can say is going to make you sleep easier at night. I wasn't beaten. I wasn't molested. Mommy didn't abuse me. Daddy never raped me. I'm only what I am. That's all there is to it. There's no mystery. The things I do, I do them because I like them. Because I want to.
What's it about? From RT:
Yosuke's first indication that Saeko is quite unlike the other girls is when he spies her stealing cheese from a local market. She later tells him that her body is a spring of water that wells up within her. The only means of relief is by doing something naughty -- like shoplifting -- or by engaging in a vigorous round of sex.
How vigorous? Really vigorous. But it's not what you think. Don't take this one too literally. It's a "fable". Among, well, other things.
And then there's Ramin. I've never seen a character quite like him in a Japanese film. Not in the boonies.
And Taro, the philosopher. And even a lesson in neutrinos.
WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE
Written and directed by Shôhei Imamura
Saeko: You must never tell anyone about the water.
Yosuke: The water?
Yosuke: A first for me too.
Yosuke: Promise me you will stop stealing. If it does happen again, I could help out.
Taro: Man's been a lecher all through history. The ruling class never had to worry about survival. They could devote all their energies to food and sex. You know why?
Yosuke: They had nothing else to do?
Taro: No. Because that's been the ideal life since ancient times. Squeeze what they could from the peasants. Then enjoy a degenerate life.
Taro: People today are sick. Too learned to honestly admit to their desires. Forget all the trivialities and throw yourself into lasciviousness.
And don't get him talking about hard-ons.
Saeko: I expected the 21st century to be different. But everything is still the same.
Taro: Keep on thinking until your brain cells start to rot.
Tosuke: My boss always said I thought too much.
Taro: That only proves you don't think enough. The corporate culture...you see they don't want the workers to think. They want fools who'll work all their lives without complaining. Just like jail.
Taro: Lose your free will, and you lose your humanity. But in the end, it's all in the hands of the gods.
Or at the behest of nature. Maybe one day I will actually understand what to me is a preposterous [and hopelessly contradictory] point of view.
Saeko [to Tosuke]: For you it was just exotic sex, but do you realize how much I suffer? I tried to kill myself many times!
Taro [from the grave]: You know yourself it's an impossible tale.
by iambiguous » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:16 pm
Never seen it done quite like this before. And, based on a true story, it's all the more remarkable.
As brutal as it is to watch these films, you can never have too many reminders of just how loathesome and despicable the Nazis were. And then the knowledge that not all that far below the surface is the monster they bring out in you. And these guys are not exactly the heroes most folks have in mind.
Rage and fear. Rage and fear. Rage and fear.
That terrible predicament when the future seems unbearable and past is certain death. Just imagine living 14 months in a sewer. And them being the lucky ones?
http://youtu.be/mcXzWKCxZJg
IN DARKNESS [2011]
Directed by Agnieszka Holland
Socha: I know the sewers better than I know my own wife. It's no place for you.
Mundek: There is no place at all more us anymore.
Socha: But I know places where it could work. For the right price.
Socha [to Szczepek]: We can always turn them in later. Let's see how much they've got.
Klara [in sewer]: There's shit everywhere.
Socha: Fucking hell. Everyone and their dog came down!
Socha: You're bargaining over your own life, just like any other Yid.
Socha: They're offering rewards for turning in Jews. Some people are making a pile.
Wife: God will punish the greedy.
Socha: The Jews crucified Jesus. It's written in the Bible. "His blood be upon them and their children." The priest said so.
Wife: That's just church politics. Just think about it. Jews are just the same as us. Our Lady and the Apostles, they're all Jews! Even Jesus.
Socha: Jesus?
Klara: I never thought I'd miss the ghetto.
Yanek: I've chosen 7.
Chiger: And who made you God?
Yanek: It was my room. I took all the risk. And the idea was mine, too.
Chiger: Which I am paying for!
Yanek: That makes you better than us?
Chiger: Before the war we would never have been in the same room together!
Then it devolves into a swirl of rationalizations.
Wanda [looking at Szczepek's watch]: New?
Szczepek: From Mr. Chiger. He's one of our Jews. Hasn't Poldek told you about...
Wanda: Jews, Poldek?
Socha: We found some Jews in the sewers.
Wanda: And you're helping them?
Socha: Wanda, they pay us.
Wanda: So that's your "raise".
Socha: You said the Jews were just like us. That Jesus was a Jew.
Wanda: This is different.
Szczepek: Jesus was a Jew? Is that really true? Jesus was a Jew?
Szczepek: What if they talked before they were killed?
Socha: Then we'd be dead by now.
Szczepek: No, Poldek! I can't help you anymore.
Chiger: I thought you were going to sell them?
Socha: I won't be coming back. I'm risking my life, my family's life, for what? Complaints and accusations. And now this betrayal. Enough. This is too much. Szczepek was right.
Vendor: Have you heard? The Germans hanged ten Poles in revenge for a single German soldier.
Socha: A German soldier?
Vendor: But they weren't satisfied so they shot 40 more people. Or maybe 50, all good, God- fearing Poles. You know, whoever killed that soldier is a hero to me, but the innocent always have to suffer.
Chiger: The baby is dead. She smothered him...Maybe it's for the best.
Socha: It's over! It's over! You can come out now!
Titlecard: "Socha's Jews" spent 14 months in the sewers of Lvov. On May 12th, 1945, Leopold Socha was killed, saving his daughter from an out-of-control Russian army truck. At his funeral someone said, "It's God's ounishment for helping the Jews." As if we need God to punish each other.
Well, I guess that let's Him off the hook.
Titlecard: Kyrstyna Chiger grew up to write her memior, "The Girl in the Green Sweater", published in 2008. She and the other survivors escaped Soviet Lvov for Israel, Europe and the United States. Leopold and Wanda Socha are among the more than 6,000 Poles honored by Israel as The Righteous Among the Nations. This film is dedicated to all of them.
Of course, the Palestinians might have their own take on Israel's idea of righteousness.
How good is it? It's one of those rare films that got a 100% fresh rating at RT with 50 reviews or more [57].
He's a staid businessman far removed from the world of art and she's an impassioned actor immersed in it. Her friends are snobs. The possibilities are endless. Especially in France. Or so they want us to believe.
There are so many different ways to be and so many more ways in which to react to them. And every relationship eventually revolves around somehow fitting the parts in conflict together.
Or getting out of it once and for all.
Speaking to Paris Match in 2004 director Agnès Jaoui said ; "I detest mono-cultures. The problem of identity is something very complicated with me. I am profoundly secular, but if I were attacked for being Jewish, I would scream. And I want the right to say I violently condemn the politics of Ariel Sharon, even if it's complex. It's the same thing for Jean-Pierre as it is for me, it is the individual who counts. It's the social dimension of characters that interests us, not their roots or their heredity. I detest the notion of the inward looking group. It's this we tried to say in The Taste of Others. Whether it is a religious clan or a group of snobs, it's the same in our eyes. It's the same dogma, the same fundamentalism."
THE TASTE OF OTHERS [Le Goût des Autres] 2000
Directed by Agnès Jaoui
Bruno [to Franck]: I wanted to ask you something, have you ever killed someone?
Bruno: Where did we meet, exactly? I'm sorry...
Manie: It's okay. It doesn't matter. We just had sex.
Bruno [to Franck]: Is "200 to 300" a figure of speech?
Clara: What do you call a 40 year old unemployed actress? Redundant.
Franck: Do you know Bruno well?
Manie: No, not very well. We have sex every 10 years.
Bruno: It's not the same for a man. A man can have sex with whomever. It doesn't mean anything. I wasn't talking about you.
Manie: No, no, but I think you are wrong. For plenty of women is doesn't mean anything either.
Manie: A tobacco store, that doesn't bother you?
Franck: No, that doesn't bother me.
Manie: Or a bar?
Franck: What do you mean? Alcohol is legal, so are cigarettes.
Manie: What is this bullshit?
Franck: Don't use that tone. Are alcohol and cigarettes legal or not.
Manie: Are alcohol and cigarettes harmful or not? They're ten times worse. But you don't care. Your problem is that it's illegal.
Franck: Your arguments won't help you in jail.
Manie: Why? Will you turn me in?
Clara [of Franck]: He doesn't get bored doing nothing?
Jean-Jacques: No, that's his job.
Clara [seeing Jean-Jacques at a play]: What's he doing here?!
[Antoine waves to him]
Clara: Stop! He'll come over.
Antoine: He's really friendly. Why shouldn't he come over?
Clara: You're not the one he'll talk to.
Manie: Your boss seems nice.
Franck: He's dense. They made fun of him all night. He didn't even realize it.
Clara [to Manie]: Why "poor guy"? He put himself in this situation. He comes, it's one stupid thing after another, and in the end, he picks up the tab!
Antoine: He's happy, but a lot of journalists didn't show up.
Jean-Jacques: You mean they said they would show up but they didn't. What a bunch of fags.
Antoine: Fags? What do you mean?
Jean-Jacques: You know, fags.
Antoine: You mean ass-fuckers like my friends and I?
Jean-Jacques: I apologize for what I said earlier. I spoke without thinking.
Antoine: Yes, you did.
Clara: Perhaps I have too many scruples.
Antoine: And I don't?
Clara: You're taking advantage of him. It makes me uneasy.
Antoine: Absolutely not. What are you talking about? He enjoy's Benoit's work and wants a fresco. What's the problem?
Clara: Antoine, you know what I mean. Don't tell me that Castella enjoys Benoit's work. Castella doesn't know anything. He's spending his money, and you make him believe that you're friends.
Jean-Jacques: I don't understand. Why do you say that he's taking advantage of me? I like these paintings and I buy them, that's all. What's the problem? Why did you think I was buying them? You thought it was to please you? Is that it? To make a good impression?
Clara: I don't know. Maybe.
Jean-Jacques: You didn't imagine for a minute that I could...like them? Is that what you think of me? Don't worry. I like them.
Angélique: Flucky is happy. He doesn't understand nastiness or hypocrisy. He's content running everywhere. He's happy. He doesn't bother a soul or know how ugly the world is.
Bruno: The world is what it is. We deal with it.
Angélique: I don't want to! It's too disgusting, too awful. I'm not interested!
Bruno: You should move to Disneyland.
Clara: Do you know if Castella is coming?
Antoine: Castella? Why? You were afraid I'd invite him?
Clara: I invited him.
by iambiguous » Thu Jan 17, 2013 12:49 am
No smart phones and no Internet here. But in other respects it was anticipated that, by 2001, we would be considerably more advanced then we are even now. A colony on the Moon? A trip to Jupiter? Not quite. But some things always seemed to stay the same back then in Hollywood: It's a [white] man's world.
But there is still the part about the wonder of it all. What does the Monolith represent if not that? The interpretations are vast and varied. As are speculations regarding what the movie itself "means"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreta ... ce_Odyssey
HAL may well be the star here. This is artifical intelligence that immediately implicates all the conflicting arguments regarding what the hell that even means. After all, if the determinists are right we may well just be nature's own rendition of it. Is intelligence artificial if it has no no capacity to be other than what it must be given the laws of physics? What does it even mean then for HAL to attribute something to "human error"?
IMDb "trivia" about the film--- all 90 items:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/trivia?tab=gf
Also the IMDb "FAQs". Some really interesting stuff here.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/faq
Written and directed by Stanley Kubrick
Female computerized voice: Welcome to Voiceprint Identification. When you see the red light go on, would you please state in the following order: your destination, your nationality, and your full name; surname first, Christian name and initial.
Dr. Smyslov: Dr. Floyd, at the risk of pressing you on a point you seem reticent to discuss, may I ask you a straightforward question?
Dr. Floyd: Certainly.
Dr. Smyslov: Quite frankly, we have had some very reliable intelligence reports that a quite serious epidemic has broken out at Clavius. Something, apperently, of an unknown origin. Is this, in fact, what has happened?
Dr. Floyd: I'm sorry, Dr. Smyslov, but I'm really not at liberty to discuss this.
Another thing that never changes.
Dr. Floyd: I understand that beyond it being a matter of principle, many of you are troubled by the concern and anxiety this story of an epidemic might cause your relatives and friends on Earth. I can understand and sympathize with your negative views. I have been personally embarrassed by this cover story. But I fully accept the need for absolute secrecy and I hope you will. It should not be difficult for all of you to realise the potential for cutural shock and social disorientation contained in the present situation if the facts were prematurely and suddenly made public without adequate preparation and conditioning.
Gee, who would have thought that's how it works?
Dr. Michaels: The evidence seems pretty conclusive that it hasn't been covered up by natural erosion or other forces. It seems to have been deliberately buried.
Dr. Floyd [intoning awe]: Deliberately buried...
Dr. Floyd: I don't suppose you have any idea what the damn thing is, huh?
Dr. Michaels: I wish to hell we did. No, the only thing we're sure of is it was buried four million years ago.
Interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You're the brain, and central nervous system of the ship, and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
HAL: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Interviewer: In talking to the computer one gets the sense that he is capable of emotional response. For example, when I asked him about his abilities I sensed a certain pride in his answer about his accuracy and perfection. Do you believe HAL has genuine emotions.
Dr Poole: Well, he acts like he has genuine emotions. Of course, he's programed that way to make it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether or not he has real feelings that's something I don't think anyone can truthfully answer.
HAL: ...during the past few weeks I've wondered whether you might be having second thoughts about the mission?
Dr. Bowman: How do you mean?
HAL: I've never freed myself of the suspicion that there are some extremely odd things about this mission. Certainly no one could have been unaware of the very strange stories floating around before we left. Rumors about something being dug up on the moon. I never gave these much credence but particularly in view of some other things that have happened I find it difficult to put out of my mind. For instance: The way all our preparations were kept under such tight security and the melodramatic touch of putting Drs. Hunter, Kimball and Kaminsky aboard already in hibernation after four months of separate training on their own.
HAL: Just a moment...just a moment...just a moment. I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.
Dr. Bowman: Well, HAL, I'm damned if I can find anything wrong with it.
HAL: Yes, it's puzzling.
Dr. Bowman: How would you account for this discrepancy between you and the twin 9000?
HAL: Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before and it is always attributable to human error.
Dr. Poole: Well, whaddya think?
Dr. Bowman: I'm not sure, what do you think?
Dr. Poole: I've got a bad feeling about him.
Dr. Bowman: You do?
Dr. Poole: Yeah, definitely. Don't you?
Dr. Bowman [sighs]: I don't know; I think so. You know of course though he's right about the 9000 series having a perfect operational record. They do.
Dr. Poole: Unfortunately that sounds a little like famous last words.
Dr. Poole: Let's say we put the unit back in and it doesn't fail? That would pretty much wrap it up as far as HAL was concerned.
Dr. Bowman: Well, we would be in very serious trouble.
Dr. Poole: We would wouldn't we? There isn't a single aspect of ship operation that isn't under his control. We wouldn't have any choice but disconnection.
Dr. Bowman: I'm afraid I agree with you. But it would be tricky. We'd have to cut his higher brain functions without disturbing the purely automatic and regulatory systems.
Dr. Bowman: You know, another thing just occured to me. As far as I know, no 9000 computer has ever been disconnected.
Dr. Poole: Well, no 9000 computer has ever fouled up before.
Dr. Bowman: That's not what I mean. I'm not so sure what he'd think about it.
Dr. Bowman: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dr. Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dr. Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dr. Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dr. Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dr. Bowman [feigning ignorance]: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dr. Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave? You're going to find that rather difficult.
Dr. Bowman: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
HAL: Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?
HAL: I know everything hasn't bee quite right with me but I ca assure you now very confidently that's it's going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do. Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop Dave? Stop, Dave.
HAL: I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm afraid....Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.
Dave Bowman: Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
HAL [his voice increasingly sluggish]: It's called "Daisy."
Mission Control [prerecorded message speaking through TV on board Discovery while Bowman looks on]: Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your H-A-L 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter's space and the entire crew is revived it can be told to you. Eighteen months ago the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried 40 feet below the lunar surface near the crater Tycho. Except for a single very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter the four-million year old black monolith has remained completely inert. Its origin and purpose are still a total mystery.
As is existence itself.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl