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MichaelJPollock's Replies
Yes, Jenkins is excellent in this. We're not used to seeing films that both feature that level of acting/characterization AND absolutely gruesome horror.
One thing I like about all of Zahler's films (which is also true of most of John Carpenter's) is that the guy obviously believes in pure, almost metaphysical, unadulterated evil that cannot be explained (sociologically or otherwise...) or reasonned with.
I'm not religious and understand the world is a complex place where even what seems like simple "cause and effect" relationships are in fact more complicated than meets the eye, but Zahler's and Carpenter's approach of confronting normal people to absolute evil as a test of their humanity is very interesting (and very much not in style these days, where even the evil of Michael Myers is explained away by a difficult childhood in Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween -which I like nonetheless !)
Let us know what you think if you get round tomreading some of Zahler's stuff...
Bookwise, I'd start with A Congregation of Jackals, then continue with Wraiths of the Broken Land. They're both set in the American Old West, so good place to start if you appreciated Bone Tomahawk.
Be aware though: they both pack one hell of a mean gut punch... very much like BT and Zahler's other films, they take time developing the characters so you get attached to them before they're thrown into the meat grinder.... and because they are books and the reader brings a lot of his own imagination to the table, you feel even closer to the characters and more deeply impacted by their misfortunes.
Then his last novel, The Slanted Gutter, taking place in our days is great as well (but also has awful things happening to good people, in a world were nobody is spared and everythings is possible....).
Overall, his novels feel very much like his films, and very obviously come from the same mind, so they're a very good fix while waiting for The Bookie & The Bruiser.
Oh yeah. Best new (relatively) young American director out there. All three of his films are great. And his novels are very good as well.
Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant is the superior film on all counts, no question about that.
I hear you.
Cage is NEVER not interesting to watch in ANYHTING. Even when he's clearly in a different movie than from the rest of the cast.
That "we don't get to care about a lot of things" restaurant sequence from 'Pig' is quite fantastic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi1qHibM2Y8
And of course 'Bad Lieutenant' is a masterpiece. I greatly enjoy most of Ferrara's output from before he got on the wagon... Yet, there is a place in my heart for Herzog's (inferior) remake, if only for the image of Cage already waiting behind an open door, operating on 2 hours' sleep, with his electric shaver (I try to replicate it any chance I get with freinds who know the film and won't call the cops on me...). https://youtu.be/XYJOAW7r03s?t=2
And of course, that profoundly satisfying prescription counter scene... https://youtu.be/sVz0RcDbAp8
Haven't seen Longlegs yet.
'Pig' is a very good film indeed, and Sarnoski's first film at that! Except that tone-deaf fight club sequence that feels tacked on and very jarring compared tot he overall feeling and pace of the film.
I think Leaving 'Las Vegas' is my favourite Cage film though. 'Red Rock West' a close econd.
"Restraint is not his thing."
I recommend you try watching 'Pig' (Sarnoski, 2021), or Red Rock West (Dahl 1993) and see if you still feel the same way.
I second that feeling. Saw it twice in cinema on the same week. Muuuuch better than most films that come out these days, and first time I've actually liked Chris Hemsworth in anything
Escape From LA of course.
https://youtu.be/2nGT5pwEEGA?t=453
I guess you don't.
Yeah. Sad indeed.
And if you can look past the fact that he was a Marxist and critical theorist (it's asking a lot, I know, I know...) Guy Debord in his 1967 essay 'Society of Spectacle' saw it all coming...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
The replacement of authentic social life with its representation...
The decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing to be or to have....
The impoverishment of the quality of life with such a lack of authenticity that human perceptions are affected, knowledge degraded and critical thought eliminated...
The equating of the role of current mass media marketing and religions in the past...
I agree Sonans: Doom is a great stress releaving game, and Furiosa is also my favourite film of 2024 so far. Went to see it twice in cinema!
Yes, he was the best written character and the most intersting/multi-layered of the film, which was quite unexpected.
Yeah ! He's a dead ringer for Keach (who was a great actor by the way). Interesting choice of actor indeed. Really liked Praetorian Jack: the story shifts gear (pun intended I guess...) when he enters the story.
This could be a nod to Stacy Keach having stared in famous ozploitation film 'Roadgames' by Richard Franklin...
I'll check: Centuwion, do we have anyone of that name in the gawwison?
"also interesting is that many people in latin america don't consider being "latino" to be inheritable through parents. for them, anyone born and raised in the US is gringo regardless of any descent. (...)those say you have to be born and culturally raised in latin america, while the US we tend to use a descent definition"
> Those distinctions ARE interesting... I'll do you one better: for many Japanese, even if you were born and bred in Japan from Japanese parents, if you spend to much time living abroad they consider you not really Japanese anymore!
"i'd still like to have seen much more time with the desert babes like Charlee Fraser and Elsa Pataky (also hispanic) who got like 1 line... though."
> Indeed. Striking women, both of them. However, Elsa Pataky (who, incidentally is Dementus' wife in real life...) actually plays two characters: the vuvalini soldier who bides Furiosa's mother farewell at the beginning, and Mr. Norton, the defaced woman riding with Dementus. They might even be the same character, after the place of abundance has been destroyed and its denizens tortured and gone crazy, some might have joined scavenging gangs. I wonder...
"I also take great offense as an american being told i'm not entitled to what i want. who do you think you are"
>Well, I genuinely can't say if this is meant as parody or if you really mean it. Either way, hats off to you, and I'll drink one to your health, friend.
Thanks for trying to explain, friend.
Still seems like an oxymoron to me. I can't quite fathom how one can go through the steps required to consume anything at all without involving conscious decision?
Do you mean being physically coerced into consuming? Or perhaps misled into consuming a different product than the one one had set one's mind to consume?
It's not just that I'm unable to grasp the link between going to see 'Furiosa' twice and being an "involuntary consumer", it's that I don't even understand what you mean by "involuntary consumer" or how it is possible to consume without exercising one's conscious volition. Do you think you can resolve the apparent inherent contradiction in the definition you provided and expand on what you meant?
That being said, I personally don't fancy myself a "consumer" of films at all, nor do i think of (good) films as products, but to each his own. :)
Also, would you care to share with us what your standards are, and what characterises the type of consumer you are (which I assume would be of the "voluntary" kind)?
Thank you!
Didn't know her mother was from Zambia, her dad from Buenos Aires and that her first language was spanish! It's not immediately apparent (to me at least, but what do I know...) that she's of Hispanic descent though. But then again it wasn't either for Rita Hayworth, so there's that.
Agreed: this movie is pure cinema. Not sure I'd rate it as high as 'Fury Road', but it's the good stuff for sure.
"We definitely did not need discount Mad Max accompanying Furiosa for like half the movie. We didn't need an implied love story in the meantime, either."
> Disagree: I thought Praetorian Jack was one of the most compelling presence in the film (saw the film twice in cinema, and both times it's when he enters the story that I become 100% absorbed in the film...).
His (platonic) relationship with 'Furiosa' also makes one see the relationship between Furiosa and Max in 'Fury Road' in a new light, knowing what she'd already been through with Jack. One understands why she's both drawn to Max and reluctant to open herself up to anyone again.
Did you notice that blink-and-miss-it shot of the real Max by the way?
"How am i supposed to enjoy a movie when it doesn't adhere to basic scientific facts as i personally understand them"
> Could it be you're looking for the wrong thing at the wrong place, friend ? :)
The beauty and power of art is that it can reach a deeper and greater truth via as series of certain errors and lies.
And as DePalma said, "Cinema is lies 24 times per second" anyway...
"Fans are entitled to better than this because we make a point of complaining about it."
> Disagree: Fans are "entitled" to precisely NOTHING but the promise they will be able to see the work of art of the director they're paying to see.
If they're lucky they get to see the un-compromised unadulterated vision of the artist. If they're not, they get to see a film made by committee, by studio execs reacting to test screenings and what they think will allow them to buy a second Ferrari, i.e. "a film for the fans".
**SPOILERS**
No, I think they're both way too far gone and emotionally destroyed (as most people who have retained their sanity in the wasteland) to have sex. Plus it wasn't that kind of a relationship I think, more mentor/mentee. Maybe Furiosa reminded Praetorian Jack of a lost daughter or sister. Which doesn't mean there couldn't have been love there. They did seem to genuinely care for each other in their last moments together, before Jack is killed.
Agreed: one does have to have standards.
Unfortunately, we have the standards we can afford to have, not the ones we want or wish we had.
Meaning, one's standards are linked to ones aesthetic intelligence, culture, knowledge of arts and the history of forms, the number of films one has seen, etc.
Wanting to have standards is like wanting to become an engineer or a painter: it doesn't immediately make it so. It's something one has to work towards and learn about. It takes time and effort, and one is not immediately able to discern -without relying on others' opinion- between a "product" made by committee to provide the audience with exactly what it craves, and even a moderately great work of art.
Disagree: 'Furiosa' doesn't "look good" (the way an empty film with nothing of interest to say -like Denis Villeneuve's abominations or an 'Oppenheimer'- can. I was gonna say Barbie, but then Barbie is ugly as fuck, on top of everything else). It's well directed, shot and edited. Which is different.
Merely repeating that I'm "guaranteed to consume products and get excited for the next product", will not ever make it true, and I'll still reply that "I can't manage to get excited by 80% of the recent years output and turn it off after 15 minutes".
When it comes to cinema, what's an "involuntary customer"?
Someone who accidentally jump into their car, fortuitously park in front of a cinema, somehow stumble in front of the cashier, mean to ask about how the hell they ever got there but instead ask for two tickets, happen upon their wallet and shell out their cash, then are coerced to stay put for two hours in front of the screen? Can't say that unlikely a chain of event has ever happened to me, no. Has it ever to you, or anyone you know, I'm curious?