i watched terry zwigoff's "crumb" documentary. it was a very good film. robert crumb is a constantly grinning shuffling marionette person who ends up seeming both more and less balanced than his brothers who hole up in apartments trying to minimise their own psychoses and contact with the outside world. i love his art a lot. i only knew of his elder brother charles from reading the "r crumb handbook" put out a few years ago so it was kind of interesting to see the family side of things filled in more. it also offered a helpful reminder that intelligent and articulate people can still end up destroying themselves. the whole thing mainly avoids trying to take any decisive judgements about the nature of art or trauma or whatever which is probably for the best especially considering the source material. it was a good movie and i liked it.

edit: also I loved The Sting.

We all love Sting Dada but I don't think wrestling belongs in the movie thread -.-

The manga Gantz is better

Hachi: A Dog's Tale came on last night. As an Akita owner (well, half... she's a mix), and someone who was familiar with the Hachiko story, I figured I had to watch it. Seeing Richard Geere and Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa in the credits, I figured that the story was going to be the white guy moving to Japan, seeing the statue and then researching the story, and that Cary Tagawa would be playing Hidesaburo Ueno in flashbacks or something.

Then I saw a white kid talking about his grandfather's dog, followed in short order by Geere's character finding a Shiba Inu puppy at a train station. I was concerned that the movie was taking a total WTF approach to the original story.

Of course, they started using a real Akita once Hachi had aged enough in the story. They took a lot of liberties with the story, most of which are just for framing purposes, but I actually enjoyed the movie a lot. So many scenes with the young Hachi reminded me of episodes with my own dog. Knowing the actual story also helped, but wasn't enough to keep me from hitting the border of tearing up.

Which was when my dog, possibly sensing something was up with me, came over and rested her head on my leg and looked up at me. Cue me bawling like a little baby through the end of the movie. I haven't had a film dehydrate me like that since the ending of Life is Beautiful.

Of course, today I asked my dog to wait for me while I went to another room to find my cell phone (asked, as in I didn't use her actual 'Do not move from this spot' command). I came back out and saw she'd meandered into the kitchen and was considering a walk by licking of the chopping board I'd used at lunch. "Did you not get the point of the movie? This isn't where I left you." She replied "woooooooooooo" and then fell into an automatic heel command to follow me around the house.

i stopped watching it after 10 minutes.

i like how one of the first things it tells us is that the main character is 20, so it's all alright even though actually she's meant to be younger but not even zack snyder could get away with a costume fetish movie with underage girls, even though he did because those characters are clearly not meant to be 20 or over.

I watched In a Better World (Haevnen) last night, and compared to Incendies (which I really loved!) this movie sucked! I found it extremely predictable and the use of random imagery to depict symbolism was shoved down your throat so much that it annoyed me. I can't believe it won the Oscar over Incendies...

had the pleasure of watching paddy chayevsky's the hospital

usually when i attribute a film to one person, it's going to be the director. orson welles' the trial, john huston's the asphalt jungle, etc. i don't ever do this for screenwriters because, despite being a writer, i actually don't really think screenplays are particularly important in the process of creating worthwhile film. auteur screenwriters invariably suck(tarantino, smith) unless they've got some major theatrical chops like neil simon, and guys like that are pretty rare, if they even transition well. even faulker was a pretty mediocre screenwriter. the whole screenwriting process in film(talking about you hollywood) is more or less fucked since so much of it are just idiots like myself peddling screenplays(although i don't do this) in the hopes some flavor of the month motherfucker picks it up and dumps tom cruise or some equally empty cunt into it. not the way to make a film. for a screenplay to really work with a film you need the filmmaker's input on it during the writing phase, to really ensure that the story is going to work with the visual/structural/thematic concepts the filmmaker wants to run with. isolating the two during the early development of the concept is likely to render most of the screenplay invalid later if the director believes sufficiently in their vision or is just going to water down the end result if you have someone who is effectively running with someone else's dream.

then there's paddy chayefsky. i don't really think i'm aware of a better screenwriter in the history of film. he's not really some legendary as far as drama goes, and he doesn't exactly have a phenomenally long filmography to sift through, but the keenness of insight he had in network kinda naturally leads a lot of people to compare him to george orwell. probably orwell with better jokes i guess, but that's being facetious. regardless, not being particularly fond of screenplays dominating a film, the fact that i would call network one of the most significant films of the last 40 years is probably saying something, since there really isn't a whole lot of basic substance to the film beyond chayefsky's script and finch shaking in front of the camera for a few minutes.

fuck me this is such a lousy cunt-blogger post but i guess i wanted to rant about this. the hospital is a great fucking movie. it's not as purely significant as network, and not as absurdly out there as his film altered states, but it's truly in the same vein as both in how he acutely rips something to shreds, disintegrating its function almost entirely, to gain some greater understanding about it. the movie is a comedy, first and foremost, but chayefsky is one of the very few writers out there who knows how to handle a comedy in a way that you can take it both as a piece of serious, relevant drama and something exceedingly funny.

fuck and i had wanted to say more about the movie but i think i've exhausted my ability to talk pretentiously about film for one evening. george c. scott or something, i dunno. words.

i know you are dealing with some kind of chronic fatigue-depression stuff but you know ya fucker, for the past few days/week i have been nervously clicking this and the games topic in hopes of seeing somebody say about something eg you about some movie or a game so thanks for this.
i kind of believe that the reason we become to despise some of our idk analytical/IMPORTANCE posts/blogposts-style is legitimate but you kind of have to draw a line between what you love or are enthuastic about or makes you feel happy and what makes you write for an audience exlusively. there's been times i wanted to make bigger posts but stopped as i felt kinda emcumbered and hopeless with the mass of WORDS and connections and personal canons and everything... but... uh i think the line is that okay, here's my energy. i love music i can't help it and i am really absorbed/fixated/almost obsessive-compulsory on doing this kind of personal preference/personal view or personal canon SUBCIOUSLY (i mean regardless of drawing conscious parallels and try to explain the world through some kinda cheap smoke-glass THRU A BOTTLE OF FORTIFIED WINE). things that degrade me and succumbs me pretty much into self-loathing and destruction is... kind of hindering and despising myself of my natural tendencies/feelings about stuff...

idk i'm losing the thread pretty fast as always nowdays with longer posts but i guess i'm putting a lot more time into self-reflectioning and uh trying to figure out how to keep functioning as a living person and NOT lose my sanity and i guess i'm coming into the concept of...stances? attitudes? PRINCIPLES. you are a huge fucking kaleidoscope of contradicting thoughts where honesty and real desires are something of a luxury in between the massive desires and drives and EMOTIONS the fucking tv and internet and real life society puts you into (REACTING TO A FURIOUSLY IDIOTIC PEOPLE for example). you know, social media stuff. seeing awful news and stuff that makes your thoughts race every time and you feel like you are just something that is thrown into a washing machine of racing thoughts and at the end of the day you are just tired and self-loathing as ever and wondering if you will ever figure out what is the productivity that is going to make you happy or not.

so figuring out some kind of basic emotion-level principles should protect your mind and get you out of the constant process of destroying your hope faith energy in every turn. idk this isnt complete in any way/a mindplay but when was the last time you were really happy or what made you happy? what made you REALLY ANGRY of losing something important? feeling like the moment is over you realize that just now you lost something important and you arent going to get it back?

there is a difference between THIS and... oh i fucked up this job interview, i failed this i failed that i wasnt opportunistic enough idk etc etc DRIVES. you react on your basic principle - (social) shame, not feeling worth, feeling like you arent manly enough, not reliable, etc etc... c o n f u s i o n . . .

and feeling that I KNOW I WOULD BE HAPPY WITH THIS THING... man i cant conjure an example right now but i read somewhere that people are incredibly bad at estimating what would REALLY make them happy/content in the future with their lives and suprisingly enough, what made them happy IN THE PAST. sure is true enough with me. i have been a social outcast and isolated for so long (for different, genuively distressing reasons though) that i have kind of forgot everything that made me happy in the past or CONTENT WITH MYSELF. when was the last time i was HAPPY, CONTENT, proud perhaps of myself? when was the last time i thought "whoa life is really neat" or i'm glad being alive? just WHEN did i end up into this kind of grind?
what would get me these feelings back to me in the future? and so forth.
 
im talking about this not out of YOU MAY HAVE ALREAD WON: HERES THE DEAL but as a uh letting in about what i'm trying to figure out at the moment? actual idleness and forcing yourself into creativy process of looking into aspects of life is hella good and the poison to progress is the kind of constant irritation of owing some kind of debt to everything and feeling that only the financial security and succes in the work life is the only ticket out from that nihilistic, tension-hell you are in.

i think i'm getting somewhere though. though ahhahha obviously not with the rest of this post, this is garbage and i lost the thought fairly quickly.

That post should have been on the what's on your mind topic.

It's not exactly a "hey I just watched a movie" type post, and reading it made me think It was responding to thoughts in general. (although if you have recently watched a movie that made you think of that post, then by all means I want it to appear in this topic) I wasn't even past reading the first paragraph and I was already intrigued enough by your post to engross myself in it and completely forget I was reading any topic other than the "what's on your mind" topic.

finally got round to watching Drive and hell, what a good movie. i don't know if it was simply because i was completely and utterly in the mood for a movie like this or if it was just a great movie anyway but it hooked me. pretty shocking in places too, a lot of the death scenes made me feel pretty uncomfortable but i'm generally pretty squeamish. night time driving to warbling 80's sounding chillwave combined with CRIME storyline and a silent love interest. i dunno, i really liked it.