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I feel like I asked this somewhere else, but have you seen WoT Ep. 3?
I have not. I think I saw it available on Vimeo, which I will probably rent in a couple of days once I've had enough time to absorb the second one.
Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom
I have not. I think I saw it available on Vimeo, which I will probably rent in a couple of days once I've had enough time to absorb the second one.
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I remember how there would be old people at carnivals when I was a kid. I don’t know what they were doing there. Wheeled out into the sun and left to dehydrate in the summer heat. Staring unhappily at corndogs. Weary from the sound of the young being urged to scream louder if they wanted to go faster. Shaking their heads as if to say ‘no, please, much slower, much quieter’.
Looking back, it was clear they had been brought here to die. Lured by the free admission. Out of place even when tangled in balloon strings, hung from them by grandchildren who now had better things to do. No one ever came to see the old people. They were the worst of all that day's attractions. Not unlike the butter sculptures melting over in the agricultural building, no one could be bothered to care even as they began to droop beneath the sunlight. Lingering at the periphery of the Tilt-O-Whirl, these humpbacked shapes had no business becoming a part of these childhood memories of mine. A singularly sad sight to think back upon.
It also is material that should have been ripe for the hands of someone like George Romero to turn into a vision of horror. Possessing a keen eye for the kind of mundanity which exists alongside even the most fantastical of terrors, Romero’s cinematic vision had already presented all manner of re-animated corpses, vampires and witches as being entirely logical symptoms of the world we are already living in. His clumsy, on-the-fly editing style and penchant for hiring non-professional actors always pushing away the pretense of movie making in lieu embracing something closer to cinema-verité documentation. And so the image of an old man stumbling pointlessly through an Odyssey of greasepainted children, ghost sirens and knots of rollercoaster track seems almost too perfect a subject matter for him. Haunting and otherworldly, even when we can tell it's just Pittsburgh.
All of which makes The Amusement Park such a frustrating lost opportunity. Romero seems not to trust the simplicity of his films concept. Doesn't seem to understand the horror that lives inside the sight of a man slowly deteriorating amidst a cacophony of such cruel joy. That he does not need any of his metaphorical massaging for it to fit into his audiences understanding of reality. It can be understood instinctively. Many of those watching are likely even complicit in similar crimes of neglect. Possibly as recently as today. When on their way to see this very movie. It’s possible there had been some fumbler of coins in the lineup for that evening’s popcorn. Or some shrunken steering-wheel gnome slowing down traffic on the way to the theater. Some old nuisances they have already imagined dusty diseases upon. And all Romero needed to do was make his accusations stick. Make us recoil in recognition. That is where the horror is.
Instead, he chooses to diffuse the blame with playful site gags where senior citizens are accosted by traffic cops while riding the bumper cars. Or nonsensical injustices where snooty maitre-dis' treat the elderly as appetite spoilers in parking lot carnival bistros. This only creates one buffer after another between the audience and what they are seeing on screen. It stops being reality as these fantastical scenarios begin to become surrogate villains we can’t possibly see ourselves in. The buck has been passed. And by doing so, the movie can’t help but fail.
That said, it is an interesting curiosity, with a few legitimately disturbing moments. But what will be disturbing about these brief moments of true terror will be that he just lets them exist in all their sadness. And they become just familiar enough to wonder if we too once saw Lincoln Maazel shrivelled in a tear-heaving ball in the gutters of the carnival. And if we too walked on past him wondering what he was doing here, and why didn’t he have some better place to be.
Looking back, it was clear they had been brought here to die. Lured by the free admission. Out of place even when tangled in balloon strings, hung from them by grandchildren who now had better things to do. No one ever came to see the old people. They were the worst of all that day's attractions. Not unlike the butter sculptures melting over in the agricultural building, no one could be bothered to care even as they began to droop beneath the sunlight. Lingering at the periphery of the Tilt-O-Whirl, these humpbacked shapes had no business becoming a part of these childhood memories of mine. A singularly sad sight to think back upon.
It also is material that should have been ripe for the hands of someone like George Romero to turn into a vision of horror. Possessing a keen eye for the kind of mundanity which exists alongside even the most fantastical of terrors, Romero’s cinematic vision had already presented all manner of re-animated corpses, vampires and witches as being entirely logical symptoms of the world we are already living in. His clumsy, on-the-fly editing style and penchant for hiring non-professional actors always pushing away the pretense of movie making in lieu embracing something closer to cinema-verité documentation. And so the image of an old man stumbling pointlessly through an Odyssey of greasepainted children, ghost sirens and knots of rollercoaster track seems almost too perfect a subject matter for him. Haunting and otherworldly, even when we can tell it's just Pittsburgh.
All of which makes The Amusement Park such a frustrating lost opportunity. Romero seems not to trust the simplicity of his films concept. Doesn't seem to understand the horror that lives inside the sight of a man slowly deteriorating amidst a cacophony of such cruel joy. That he does not need any of his metaphorical massaging for it to fit into his audiences understanding of reality. It can be understood instinctively. Many of those watching are likely even complicit in similar crimes of neglect. Possibly as recently as today. When on their way to see this very movie. It’s possible there had been some fumbler of coins in the lineup for that evening’s popcorn. Or some shrunken steering-wheel gnome slowing down traffic on the way to the theater. Some old nuisances they have already imagined dusty diseases upon. And all Romero needed to do was make his accusations stick. Make us recoil in recognition. That is where the horror is.
Instead, he chooses to diffuse the blame with playful site gags where senior citizens are accosted by traffic cops while riding the bumper cars. Or nonsensical injustices where snooty maitre-dis' treat the elderly as appetite spoilers in parking lot carnival bistros. This only creates one buffer after another between the audience and what they are seeing on screen. It stops being reality as these fantastical scenarios begin to become surrogate villains we can’t possibly see ourselves in. The buck has been passed. And by doing so, the movie can’t help but fail.
That said, it is an interesting curiosity, with a few legitimately disturbing moments. But what will be disturbing about these brief moments of true terror will be that he just lets them exist in all their sadness. And they become just familiar enough to wonder if we too once saw Lincoln Maazel shrivelled in a tear-heaving ball in the gutters of the carnival. And if we too walked on past him wondering what he was doing here, and why didn’t he have some better place to be.
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This novel of Once Upon a Time in America is hot trash. I wouldn't mind taking a can of dog food to Quentin's coke dealer.
I've acclimated to admiring films from shi**y people, but as a long-form writer, Tarantino has to be one of the worst pseudointellectuals of his generation. He's like Naomi Wolf with a bigger face.
I've acclimated to admiring films from shi**y people, but as a long-form writer, Tarantino has to be one of the worst pseudointellectuals of his generation. He's like Naomi Wolf with a bigger face.
This novel of Once Upon a Time in America is hot trash. I wouldn't mind taking a can of dog food to Quentin's coke dealer.
I've acclimated to admiring films from shi**y people, but as a long-form writer, Tarantino has to be one of the worst pseudointellectuals of his generation. He's like Naomi Wolf with a bigger face.
I've acclimated to admiring films from shi**y people, but as a long-form writer, Tarantino has to be one of the worst pseudointellectuals of his generation. He's like Naomi Wolf with a bigger face.
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Worse then Baumbach? Worse then Joe Rogan?!
Cuts its degeneracy with just the right amount of boredom, so that it never entirely offends or actually becomes some dull chore to get through. It is actually so non-chalant over exactly how jam packed with weirdness it is, that you might at times think nothing is happening. But you are wrong! It is action packed and you are being entertained! Do not under estimate that blank, doe-eyed expression of Stephen White (as Bobby Douglas). He is having one hell of a day. And it deserves at least a few scratches of your head, and maybe even a couple of laughs. Because lol Satanists.
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This novel of Once Upon a Time in America is hot trash. I wouldn't mind taking a can of dog food to Quentin's coke dealer.
I've acclimated to admiring films from shi**y people, but as a long-form writer, Tarantino has to be one of the worst pseudointellectuals of his generation. He's like Naomi Wolf with a bigger face.
I've acclimated to admiring films from shi**y people, but as a long-form writer, Tarantino has to be one of the worst pseudointellectuals of his generation. He's like Naomi Wolf with a bigger face.
I pretty much assumed it was terrible. And probably not even in a way that would be funny to laugh at him. Just aggravating.
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Amateur.
Coonskin is probably the only full movie of his I'm a straight up fan of. The rest is appreciated in those small doses I talked about. In general, I'm more interested in his independent spirit, than the actual quality of his animation, which sometimes seems to vary wildly from scene to scene. I don't know though, maybe that's part of the charm.
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In general, I'm more interested in his independent spirit, than the actual quality of his animation, which sometimes seems to vary wildly from scene to scene. I don't know though, maybe that's part of the charm.
"Quality" is a hard term to nail down. Or like Pete Townshend said, "If you steer clear of quality, you're alright." Would anyone consider The Who as low-quality? I think the word means different things to people, but I see Bakshi as being of a similar defiant, contrarian attitude towards what would be assumed as quality in animation. He's crude, but deliberately so in a ghetto-Disney kind of way. Some of his other experiments that seem cheap today, like his use of live-action mattes or rotoscoping, is also deliberately defiant, and has a similar punk energy to them, something which was totally misapplied in his LotR. These techniques work far better in his gutter-form cartoons, of which Coonskin and Heavy Traffic are both exemplar documents. Once Bakshi moved on from cough syrup to cocaine (American Pop, Cool World), he got a lot less interesting. Sometimes, the lo-fi grime is a feature, while his later more "quality" animation turns into indulgent eye-goo.
I've only seen Heavy Traffic when I was borderline black out drunk twenty five years ago, in a hotel, so it didn't make any tangible impression. The animation in Coonskin though is pretty uniformly great.
I find a lot of sections of Fritz the Cat and Wizards though look pretty terrible, in a bad way. I still have fond memories of both of those, for different reasons, but revisiting them was only a partially rewarding experience.
I saw his Lord of the Rings as a kid, and believe I watched it a couple of times, but I don't remember a thing about it other than bringing it home from the video store.
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I've only seen Heavy Traffic when I was borderline black out drunk twenty five years ago, in a hotel, so it didn't make any tangible impression. The animation in Coonskin though is pretty uniformly great.
I find a lot of sections of Fritz the Cat and Wizards though look pretty terrible, in a bad way. I still have fond memories of both of those, for different reasons, but revisiting them was only a partially rewarding experience.
I find a lot of sections of Fritz the Cat and Wizards though look pretty terrible, in a bad way. I still have fond memories of both of those, for different reasons, but revisiting them was only a partially rewarding experience.
Wizards is indeed crude without the aid of certain enhancements. I thought that it may have been an interesting complement for the (also pretty crude) Heavy Metal segments, adding some stylistic diversity. Instead, Bakshi did Fire & Ice, which I still like more than I should, but is a lot more formal, and much less Bakshi-esque, than I prefer.
Until I recently gave up social media, I used to follow Bakshi on Facebook, which was actually fun. He still posts art at least once a week, sometimes new paintings he's done, sometimes frames from his films, including Cool World, which he seems to like more than anybody else did. But that dislike could be a product of the fact that all of his films are very off-kilter and CW just came out at the wrong time. Regardless, he's an interesting character.
So I finally managed to watch What's Eating Gilbert Grape all the way through (after starting it and giving up about a hundred times in highschool). And it's pretty much okay. I'm almost surprised people haven't come after Leonardo DiCaprio's performance in this, even though regardless some of its tired and stereotypical reflexes, is probably one of the better performances of someone with an intellectual disability that I've seen. Definitely better than Chip from Kate and Alley's cringey portrayal of the same in The Evil Within.
#cancelChip
#cancelChip
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An example of the kind of mean spirited nastiness my movie writings became while I was living in a bed bug ridden flop house next to some pajama wearing, malnourished creep who was more beard than man. This meant to resolve itself in some kind of point beyond all of the name calling, but I never got there because at this point in my life, clearly name calling was the point.
AN UNFINISHED EXAMINATION OF JOE SPINELL BEFORE FORCED TO LOOK AWAY
The horror of Joe Spinell’s face is that it serves the function of making those who pay witness to it feel bad in two contrary ways, simultaneously. Like the shock of seeing any great movie monster, it is primarily something that one feels compelled to look away from due to the queasy sense of unease it induces. It possesses an uncomfortable level of ugliness, beginning with his receding hairline, that is likely 70 percent hair dye stain and 30 percent uncombed tufts, all the way to his nub of a chin that functions as a withered and fleshy buoy in a sea of neck wrinkles. All positioned around the central fulcrum of his rape moustache, that seems more likely to have become stuck to his upper lip than grown there, his face is a competing litany of disproportions and acne pits and greasy sweats that lovers of symmetry or cleanliness could not help but revile.
But it will be in his eyes that we get a glimpse of the second kick of horror that his appearance draws out of us. In those eyes, that never seem to blink, that are ever watching, that are much too large for the strange cadaveresque shape of his face and have the hurt-animal look of a dog just whacked with a newspaper for something it didn’t do, we sense he has noticed every look that has quickly turned away from him over the course of his life. They are like the eyes of Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster, windows the allow us to look past the surface ugliness to the entirely different kind of horror going on in the minds of these villains. There is an astute self awareness that he is not welcome, and there is a hurt there that almost makes us want to reach out to him. Almost, but not quite. Spinell’s appearance will unfortunately condemn him to a purgatory of being the consummate outcast, the unloved shape in the rain, someone who very well might not even be dangerous, but if found crying by himself in a bus shelter because of how lonely he is, will never be consoled because, you know, that face. It is terrible. And so are we.
William Lustig’s “Maniac” was the first film that really capitalized on the dynamic that Spinell’s appearance instinctively brings out of the audience. Filmed mostly in the seedy streets of downtown New York circa 1980, and inside of the lonesome apartment of his Frank Zito character, Spinell seems nearly type cast as the sort of loner who exists in such an awful universe, all by himself, doing bad things. As it turns out, he will prove himself to be just as bad as the sweat slick craters of his face would make one prejudicially assume, and so this will at least let the audience off the hook if they find themselves whispering to themselves ‘barf’ whenever he appears on screen. But the droopy weight of hurt in those eyes of his will once again somehow invite an uneasy sympathy towards him as the movie continues. These are as much crimes of loneliness as they are as crimes of perversion, and so are we the audience, and society in general, somewhat complicit in creating the conditions that make such a man? What brings a man to the point where his idea of company is a room full of mannequins adorned with the scalps of murdered women? Could a few pats upon his presumably hairy back have averted all of this? One can only hope, even though one might not want to be the one enlisted for such a sticky task.
In the Last Horror Film Spinell once again takes up the noble mantel of playing a man who will displease us before we are even properly introduced. In the opening scene, we will find him in a crowded movie theatre, seemingly glistening from a wank that the violent death of a nude woman on screen seems to have instigated in him. A couple hiss audibly behind him that he is a creep and he is left sitting in the theatre looking sheepish as he reaches down towards his crotch and begins zipping something up. As it turns out, it will not be his little Joe that he is resheathing, and it will only be his jacket that is being zipped. It seems possible we have wrongly presumed that his intense and sweaty viewing of the film, and the cutting back and forth of his lecherous eyes and drippy forehead with images of a large titted woman being electrocuted, may have simply been the rapture of watching film, and not the symptoms of a public jacking. Such low expectations we have of Joe.
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