u/hangonsufi

Those who are born think about dying. We the born know it's coming, few know the time, place or method and even then they don't like it. So we fantasize death to defang it, to defrock it's terrible majesty, to whistle past its witching-hour graveyard.

The earth is a born thing, cobbled together of weird dust and gases, spinning and wobbling in space until...it won't. Until it dies.

We are born things on a born thing. All things must pass.

When? How? Why, Dammit?

These questions are part of the theological inquiry called Eschatology, The End Times.

Me? I'm just gonna write about an old sci-fi movie I watched last night as my way to deal with the eschatological. And be banging my head to tunes played very loud in my alcove work station. Jesus and Mary Chain? That's my eschatology, baby.

The Quiet Earth is about something created for the common good that goes very wrong. It's adapted from a book I haven't read, but I'm thinking of Nikola Tesla's earth energy grid project that his capitalist financial backer quashed because, free energy for everyone? Hell no! But Project Flashlight is such a joint project between the Yanks and the Down-unders.

Film opens with a molten yellow sun rising in an orange sky over a red ocean, sea birds wheeling and crying in the July dawn. Where I live it's called summer, but we're in New Zealand so it's...my January? (Just because I'm confused doesn't mean you have to be.)

And there's a beautiful, well-arranged piece written by John Charles and performed by the NZ Symphony Orchestra.

Zac Hobson, a nicely built guy who sleeps in the buff, wakes for his job at the installation with the big satellite radar dish thingy on top. He's in Project Flashlight. But at 6:12am something blasts light, and there's a shake and a shimmer. And just like that, all the people, animals and bugs are gone.

It's as Zac has feared, a “malfunction with devastating results” from “a project of such phenomenal destructive potential.”

The Last Man On Earth trope runs through the scenarios. I like the one where he goes into a cathedral, still wearing a lady's slip he scored in a posh closet, with a rifle, and is yelling for God to show Himself. “Where are you? If you don't come out I'll shoot the kid!” and he points the rifle at at a plaster Christ on a cross. Blam, blam, blam! Got your eschatology right here!

Then, what plot device happens next? A girl? No! A pretty girl? No! That would be too obvious – YA THINK?

And I'm done spelling eschatology.

So Zac and JoAnn cavort, explore, make the best of, really, not a bad situation once you get over the eerie quiet and the uncertainty. Zac is noticing the sun is oscillating and will soon collapse; “the unit value of an electron has changed, operating between new values” he can't measure. “The fabric of the universe has not only altered but is highly unstable.”

Speaking of unstable...

A third person, a strapping handsome Polynesian (?) bloke, Api, turns up. Turns out the three survivors have something in common – they all technically died at the moment of the Project Flashlight incident: JoAnn was blowdrying her long lush curly red locks and was electrocuted; Api was fighting over a woman and her husband drowned him; Zac took a bunch of meds before bed.

Zac thinks he can interrupt the coming disaster by driving a double truck trailer loaded with explosives into his facility before the final oscillation.

Big badda boom.

What? You want to know how it ends? Don't we all...

I saw this maybe a year ago. The earliest adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, and stars (hand over heart, you know the drill)Vincent Price. Filmed in Italy, mostly Italian cast and crew, released in U.S, by (ta DA!) American International Pictures.

I thought it was a pretty good flick, some nice camera and lighting by Franco Delli Colli. Matheson, already a big name in science fiction, horror, mystery & suspense, helped write the screenplay but released under assumed name Logan Swanson, because he took the check but not the blame, as he saw it.

I finished the book, said I would. Why am I so disappointed? Why did he write this book? Why did Gore Vidal call it “Inspired. A wonderfully comic novel.” (Really? Burr?! Lincoln?! United States of Amnesia!?)

If only you could hear HOW LOUD I'm cranking Arcade Fire right now, face in the speakers, Memorex guy died, bathe me, wash my psyche Win Butler. The sonic cleanse.

Gore, you're dead now, too, but maybe you got asked at whatever gates you ended up at,

“Did you read the book?”

I was devastated when Bob died in SLC Punk (I deplore gratuitous grief - hear that, Andre Aciman?) but Lauren gets pregnant, pretty sure it's Sean's, let's get married, they drive around doing drugs and drinking, getting sallow and skinny. BUT I DIDN'T CARE! Because they didn't care. Is terminating a pregnancy just a throw-away shorthand for, like, insert Momentous Life Event here?

I know so many of you read the book and cherish it, watch and watch the movie and go there - I have those - but my alienation isn't because I wasn't in college during this time, (or in college ever). I did live through the '80s and remember them well. But this narrow slice of the ne'er do well-off? The '80's Gatsby? (god I hate that book.) I know Ellis is our modern Voice of his Generation, and I do urge people to read him over Fitzgerald.

An author - or film maker – should be able to take you from your milieu into their world, whether it's mythic Camden College or Middle Earth. Roger Avary at least gave us a fully realized Rupert in the genius of Clifton Collins, Jr. and the deliciously sloppy Dick of Russell Sams.

I didn't laugh at anything in the book. I didn't feel like underlining anything in this (library) book because I thought it was insightful, a pithy turn of phrase, eternal truth expressed eloquently, brilliant, clever or otherwise light-bulby.

I liked Victor's European Vacation in the book like I liked it in the film, will find the full doc. Glamorama's on my nightstand. I was turned on by a Redditor to the Carrot Top commentary https://www.avclub.com/gji-carrot-top-rules-of-attraction-dvd-commentary

I never found out what the Rules of Attraction are. A secret Mr. Vidal took to his grave?

PS: I would watch Rules of Attraction on an endless loop for a month rather than watch any 15 minutes ever again of Citizen Kane (god I hate that movie). At least I can get some Dick.

Some old bones, a badge, a bauble and a bullet turn up in an abandoned army shooting range in a Texas border town; a town with a history of graft and violence, prejudice and exploitation, and secrets – boy howdy, there are secrets.

Sam Deeds (the most unlikely leading man Chris Cooper) comes back to his hometown of Frontera. The son of legendary local hero, Sheriff Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey), Sam is the new sheriff, “Sheriff Junior,” but he settles in like old wine poured into an old skin. Many of the same people are still there, older but being continuously shuffled like a deck of cards through the small town system. And still in Frontera is Sam's high school love, Pilar Cruz (Elizabeth Pena).

Back in Buddy Deeds' day, the most feared bad guy was Sheriff Charlie Wade (the late Kris Kristofferson). He exacted payoffs and favors from local politicians, business and enterprises (like backroom poker games) at the point of gun, or the heel of his boot.

One night in a busy cantina, Buddy faced off with Wade over his refusal to pick up a collection for him. Buddy didn't budge, and now everybody saw that bad blood just a-boilin' and a-spoilin' for a showdown. “You're a dead man,” Wade tells Deeds.

But it's Wade who goes missing, and whose body was never found.

The discovery of the buried remains in the desert happens on Sam's watch. Now he has an interesting forensics puzzle to solve, and a personal labyrinth to the revelation of his own buried history.

This solid film by John Sayles is constructed from the most fragile human stories of strained and estranged relationships, like between Sam and his legendary father; Sam and his ex-wife Bunny (Frances McDormand); Sam and his teenage love Pilar; bar owner Otis and his son, army Col. Delmore (Joe Morton). It also hangs in the tangled threads of truth and myth, memory and memory holes.

Sayles was nominated for Best Original Screenplay for Lone Star (it went to Christopher McQuarrie for The Usual Suspects). The film moves fast with lots of clues and dead ends like a real crime scene, the characters are sharply drawn and knowable, the dialog has colorful, profound, and illuminating things being said in the language people really speak, the way people really talk.

The crumbling drive-in theater at the end of the film is the site of closure and a new beginning for Sam after a stunning reveal, and no, it's not the one about who killed Charlie Wade.

And here's another film where the credits role to a great gem of a recording: “I Want To Be A Cowboy's Sweetheart” by Patsy Montana. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAYwYscqXJQ

I snubbed this movie, I admit it and repent! I thought, Chick Flick, pass; I mean, that year: L.A. Confidential, Affliction, Lost Highway/Romy and Michele's High School Reunion?

Now, Romy and Michele's is my new Zoolander, my new A Night at the Roxbury, movies that I will always drop in on and laugh like it's the first time (sorry Devil Wears Prada, had to make room, but you have a sequel coming out next week, so boo-hoo not so much).

Here is a great cast deftly making a funny script by Robin Schiff (former Groundling) funnier, sure comedic direction by David Mirkin, whose Simpson episode, Deep Space Homer, plays on a screen in a scene.

High school besties Romy (Mira Sorvino) and Michele (Lisa Kudrow) are not in the A Group of jocks and mean girls, or the B Group of theater and art kids, and not in the C Group of nerds. But they have each other. They are picked on by the As (Romy has a crush on the biggest A, if you get my meaning) and Michele is the throb for a lovelorn C (Alan Cumming).

Michele wears a squeaky medieval back brace through high school – yeah, that's insensitive, but it's such a funny gag! You laugh every time it squeaks! Yeah, yeah, haters gonna hate.

Then there's Janeane Garofolo, a nasty cross between the As (mean and vicious) and Cs (science nerd). I can't repeat much of her profane dialog, but with her delivery it is FUN-NEE! The venom! The vitriol! She's a walking acid bath!

The movie doesn't start in their Tucson high school, it starts with Romy and Michele 10 years hence happy with their lives living in an old walk-up on the Venice Beach, Calif. boardwalk. That's the first joke – Michele is unemployed and Romy is a service counter cashier at an auto dealership, and even in 1997 that apartment was $1,200/month and minimum wage was $5-$5.15/hour. And they go clubbing every night.

Garofolo's Heather comes to Romy's service desk, and mentions the 10-year reunion. Our girls start filling out the questionnaire and find that they've accomplished nada of note in 10 years. So Romy hits on a brilliant idea – tell everyone they are rich businesswomen because they invented Post-its. Michele came up with yellow.

So much funny, clever, well-acted, well-directed stuff goes on, I was laughing my head off and loud. I couldn't find any wasted space, DP Reynaldo Villalobos and editor David Finfer also deserve recognition for the bright palette and crisp pacing.

I don't want to blow the dream sequence, so show of hands - who's seen this film? Everybody but me? Ok, so how about that dream sequence where nerdy Michele-besotted Sandy Frink (Cumming) made a lot of money and got a new face and Michele is necking with him in his limo that just ran her over and she's called to the reunion stage to get a most-improved-life kind of award and she goes up and accepts in in her skirt and brassiere, explaining - “I couldn't find my top.” In lesser hands, this would be cringey, instead I was laughing my head off and loud.

In the end, all the meanies get their dead flowers and not in a dream sequence. Romy tells the head bitch she is “a bad person with an ugly heart.”

And there is a sweeping dance with R, M and Frink to “Time After Time,” again really funny (LMHOAL) and not cringey (the choreographer, Smith Wordes, had another film that year, the Edge). Frink spirits the threesome off in his private helicopter because he really invented something and got really rich, telling Michele there is one thing he still doesn't have - “Your own country?” Michele guesses. No, you adorable dingbat – You!

I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to Have A Romy and Michele Day!

There are *lots* of Reddit reviews of this film, which I noted but declined to read – so far. But I've ordered the book (1987, Bret Easton Ellis ) from my local library system - good thing I live in depraved Commie-pinko-liberal Cali.

Four things stood out for me: Russell Sam's character, Dick, of which one probably shouldn't admit they can't get enough of; Clifton Collins, Jr.'s character Rupert; a sign in a dorm room, “All Else Failed;” and in same room a tv on in the background playing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari on mute – wish I'd thought of that.

Make it five – credits running to Stop! By Erasure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITyXjY5L-_E

I Wiki'd director Roger Avary, and he has an interesting resume, which includes: shared Best Screenplay Oscar with Quentin Tarantino for Pulp Fiction; did time in Ventura County for DUI manslaughter; made a film with Kip Pardue (Rules' Victor), Glitterati, that can't be released for “legal and ethical reasons.”

Ellis writes Gen X, but the Millennial milieu fits, too; soundtrack skews X but porn on your home PC via dial-up? That's so Y2K.

My first peek at the flick was revulsion. Misogynistic, homophobic, lowest common denominator. Curiosity and plain old prurient interest kept me watching.

The recently deceased James Van Der Beek plays college student Sean Bateman, younger brother of Patrick (Christian Bale) Bateman (put your hand over your heart like you did for Randolph Scott!) at Camden College (ahem, U of Redlands, So Cal, a pretty campus in a leafy region of San Berdoo County). Bateman the younger is smitten by coed Lauren, Shannyn Sossamon as a Winona Ryder-ish, Millennial Annie Hall. But technical virgin Lauren loves Victor, who we are encouraged to think of as douche-y, but maybe he's just a young guy having fun literally all over the place.

Sossamon shares the exotic looks department with Ian Somerhalder, who plays Paul, a fellow student yearning for the love of a real jock.

All kinds of party hijinks fill the space, as well as funny forays into Rupert's House of Drugs and Guns and a snooty club lunch with Paul & his mother (Faye Dunaway), Dick & his mom (Swoosie Kurtz), plus a repulsive scene with Lauren and instructor Mr. Lance Lawson (Avary alum Eric Stoltz) for her to make up missing his tutorial on the Post Modern Condition. Blech!

There is one perceived suicide, one attempted suicide (The hook held longer than I thought it would) and one that was...successful.

So would I recommend this film? No, go back to American Psycho.

If it wasn't for all that fun with Dick...