Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

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Best autofellatio LP cover ever.


But, truth be told, the 1972 eponymous Paul Simon record beats anything Diamond ever did. "There's nothing to it, nothing to it, you can cry. You can lie. For all the good it'll do you, you can die."


As Dylan croaks, "I'll suffer in silence, I'll not make a sound. Maybe I'll take the high moral ground."


And Leonard Cohen somewhere softly sighs.



I think that in due time, when it's finally released, that Peter Jackson's new Let It Be film will have me apologizing for liking the original 1970 cut. It's definitely dour, but I don't buy the recent narrative that it wasn't a fundamentally accurate portrait of the sore feelings of the time. It's just so condensed in sourness that it's easy to point to exceptions during the sessions where things weren't quite so bad. The narrative is already changing to one of director Michaeel Lindsey-Hogg deliberately choosing ugly and dispirited moments out of some kind of spite. I think the counter narrative will be at least as misleading. The fact remains that, within months, the band was kaput and on the verge of a bitter decade-long legal dissolution. That didn't come out of nowhere. And the fact remains that Harrison quit the band, on camera, in the middle of sessions, or that Lennon on multiple occasions, including in front of visiting TV interviewers, puked on camera from heroin. There is a spiritual truth in Lindsey-Hogg's cut, and obviously he had uglier scenes to include if he wanted to but chose not to.


Most fans have booted copies of the original verssion, but it isn't likely to ever see a legal release anytime soon. In a way, it's like the book, The Love You Make, the first and most accurate tell-all, but a book that McCartney hated and has long been out of print, replaced by more sanctified renditions.

The original cut of Let It Be has definitely coloured the way we view the dissolution of the Beatles--petty, acrimonious, heartbreaking, inevitable. Hogg's depiction should have always have been thought of as at least somewhat biased towards the negative, but I think this notion that some now have (Paul) that this new version can course correct to something entirely rosy is obviously just as simplistic. It was obviously a complicated mess, with emotions that probably ran hot towards both extremes, often at once. Regardless, like most, I'm waiting for the release of these more eagerly than most things I can think of recently.


Also, back to Help!, it's a great film, even if it seems to get overlooked or considered underwhelming compared to YS or HDN. It does fizzle a bit near the end, but not even really that much.







You can wait for it as long as you like, but the sun will never set in Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. When it commits its crimes, it will be in broad daylight. No shadows are necessary to contemplate the bad things it is about to do. And when the darkness does not come as some of us might hope, and the results of its terrible decisions can clearly be seen splashed all across the rocks, and tangled in the grass, and underneath the fingernails of those standing in clear view of our judgement, somehow it is still not quite bright enough for shame or regret to touch its heart.

What this tells us is there is not enough light in the world for this film to ever look down and truly consider what is currently slumped and in pieces at the feet. It can see it, is staring right at it, and it isn’t blinking. It knows it is irredeemable and we know it cannot be taught to be better. And while it may occasionally pretend there is something for us to learn here, or deceive itself into believing we have become woozy enough to accept some blame for this violence it has committed, what makes Cannibal Holocaust such a terrifying watch is that we can tell it doesn’t matter one way or another if we are listening to its excuses. We have known from the beginning it doesn’t care if we believe it, or understand it, or revile it, or ignore it. As it continues into the jungle beneath this ever-raging sun, it will kill again.

Unlike other horror films, nighttime would be a welcome solace in Cannibal Holocaust. In the night, we can at least leave what we’ve done the previous day behind us. We can stop seeing. We can dream. And, in the case of such a pitiful specimen as this film, the night could even offer a good place for it to hide. To wake up in a different mood, one less inclined towards dismemberment.

But as Deodato’s never-ending sun continues to blaze down upon us, warming the scattered innards that glisten beneath it, the stink and temperature of this film can only continue to rise. As it will turn out, the nighttime is for cowards. Darkness, after all, is the place where those who cover their eyes scurry to when the world begins to burn too brightly. But mere fingers alone will never blot out such an intrusive light as Cannibal Holocaust. It is the inferno that disrupts a civilizations worth of sleep. That illuminates how little hope there is to be found when we can see much too clearly how all the exits have been blocked. No matter how exhausted it makes us, or how little we want to continue trudging with it into the jungle, our eyes see everything. After all, what hope will we ever have of escaping it, if it won’t even give the sun that stares down at it from the heavens, a chance to look away.








AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY:





I feel I need to write something about this, before its images fade, and it becomes indistinguishable from my own memories. What I’ve just seen is an entire lifetime. At first, I did not know whose life it was, as these images came towards me at a high velocity. Blurred. Jangled. Sun damaged. The faces of strangers. The shapes of rooms I have never been in. All of them, like stars or insects, either too big or too small to comprehend before they spattered against the windshield of my television screen. Vanishing upon impact. Turning into a translucent residue that accumulates somewhere inside of me as I kept watching. Five hours of home-movie assault gunking up my memory gears like so much bug splash. Five hours that somehow contains a universe. And yet if I was able to hold everything it had shown me in the cup of my hand, it would seem nearly weightless. It is something I have already been carrying around with me without ever knowing it.








In the deep recesses of my computer, apparently I once wrote a review of Things. I have no memory of doing this. But it couldn't have appeared more miraculously, saving me from rewatching it yet again, in hopes of trying to write something about it (which I have been putting off for weeks, because after about twenty viewings, the film becomes almost physically painful to get through). What I have below, kind of gets it as exactly right as I ever could. Maybe I will never have to watch it again. Which means, I probably should watch it again tonight. Just to be sure it's done with me.




A couple of guys hang out in a kitchen. They drink beer and put their jackets in the freezer. Sometimes they wander into other rooms and look at lamps. Sometimes they turn the lamps on. There are also monsters somewhere in this house, seemingly made out of paper mache but also presumably dangerous. But these two only occasionally seem to worry about this. They seem to have more than enough to distract themselves with in the kitchen. Beers to drink. Television to watch. Spiders to put in peoples sandwiches. If this were any other movie, we might expect them to be curious, investigate a little, act as if they are in peril and try and do something about it. As it turns out though, it often seems that the makers of this low budget anti-delight have maybe only been given permission to shoot their film in one neglected corner of their parents house, and that the only horror to be found in the adjoining rooms is an irritated mother just biding her time until that days filming is over.

Things is a film that seems to catatonically seal its characters off either at the kitchen table or the living room sofa in a house of horrors. Like a low budget version of The Exterminating Angel, no matter what terrors they seem to suspect to be happening in others parts of their home, their explorations don’t get very far before they return to the comfort of that couch, or the solace of this fridge filled with beer. They can never leave, and with a new brewsky to suck on, they will quickly forget that maybe they should just leave the house all together, or maybe call the cops, even though they assume it’s much too late at night to do so.

There is a paralyzing inertness to Things. Even when one of the two guests at this house suddenly dies, even this hardly changes the dreary, dull minute to minute reality of this film. The death will happen off screen, during one of many news flashes that interrupt the film periodically to inform the audience of such things as local car accidents, Cher’s husband being seen with Tracy Lords and other things we don’t need to know about. When we return one of the men is now gone, apparently having exploded, or sucked into a mousehole, or some other misfortune that caused his bodily fluids to be lightly drizzled on his friends blue sweatshirt. Of course, we’ll probably never know, because immediately arriving on scene to restore balance to the evening is the owner of the home, who has seemingly been in one of the other rooms all this time, and now with a drinking partner restored to the evening, oblivious kitchen sitting can now continue.

Things, it seems, could remain in neutral for all eternity. Like a group of people soggy and lethargic with a night of binge drinking, it is in no hurry to go anywhere, at least not until the grisly climax. With the directors family now seemingly having gone to sleep, they can now branch out from the kitchen table and lay claim to the others rooms in the house by defiling the carpets with green goop and syrupy blood in their battle against the Things. It will be a war waged that seems so hurried and muddled (mother might wake up after all and shut everything down) that the cast can’t even keep a straight face as they wander back in forth whacking things with hammers and chainsaws and electric drills. One could hardly blame them considering how drunk and half asleep everyone on camera seems. It will almost all be worth the rage of mother tomorrow morning, when she wonders what happened to here home, and if her son is ever going to get himself a real job.



Victim of The Night
In the deep recesses of my computer, apparently I once wrote a review of Things. I have no memory of doing this. But it couldn't have appeared more miraculously, saving me from rewatching it yet again, in hopes of trying to write something about it (which I have been putting off for weeks, because after about twenty viewings, the film becomes almost physically painful to get through). What I have below, kind of gets it as exactly right as I ever could. Maybe I will never have to watch it again. Which means, I probably should watch it again tonight. Just to be sure it's done with me.




It's funny that after reading just the first paragraph I knew you would give this 5/5 popcorns.



It's funny that after reading just the first paragraph I knew you would give this 5/5 popcorns.

When a movie knows how to scratch my itch, I reward it with all the popcorns it wants.


And, in deference to Things, it is the film that first made me realize how itchy I was.



ANDY WARHOL'S HORSE






The poor horse. And here it thought it was going to get itself a real Western, just like all those legendary horses he idolized as a youth. Horses whose sturdy backs had supported the likes of John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Not to mention all of those brave stunt men who had fearlessly rode them right down into the dust as trip wires were raised and their delicate legs crumpled into the Arizonian desert.

It would be dangerous, to be sure. Like any horse, he was an avid fan of the movies, and he had seen enough to know the score. Over the years he had seen horses exploded by dynamite, barricaded inside of burning buildings, even ridden right off of the edge of cliffs. But who could possibly resist the allure of being a movie star. How exciting! Not even the spectre of death could dilute this particular romance. Mighty Byrd, may have been a simple horse of humble beginnings, but things were about to change. Hold onto your socks Mr. DeMille because this horse was so ready for his close up, he hardly could contain his whinnying.

But clearly something had gone wrong. As he was ushered onto the grimy elevator, it was hard to imagine that the fifth floor they were rumbling up towards would open to reveal the panoramic vista of a burgeoning America he had always dreamed of racing through, nostrils flaring as he’s rhythmically whipped towards the sunset by Barbara Stanwyck.

Pulled by his reigns across the cement floor, there were no saloons. No black or white hats. The clop of his hooves did not unsettle the unsullied sand of a magnificent desert, but only unearthed the crackle of amphetamines that had been dropped the night before and now crushed beneath the weight of his mighty horseness.

Where was this? What was happening? He watched as his cast mates slowly lurched towards him. They were so pale. So lethargic. So bored with America.

"Ohhhhhh, I get it", the horse thought to himself . "Very clever. Very clever"







In the deep recesses of my computer, apparently I once wrote a review of Things. I have no memory of doing this. But it couldn't have appeared more miraculously, saving me from rewatching it yet again, in hopes of trying to write something about it (which I have been putting off for weeks, because after about twenty viewings, the film becomes almost physically painful to get through). What I have below, kind of gets it as exactly right as I ever could. Maybe I will never have to watch it again. Which means, I probably should watch it again tonight. Just to be sure it's done with me.




A couple of guys hang out in a kitchen. They drink beer and put their jackets in the freezer. Sometimes they wander into other rooms and look at lamps. Sometimes they turn the lamps on. There are also monsters somewhere in this house, seemingly made out of paper mache but also presumably dangerous. But these two only occasionally seem to worry about this. They seem to have more than enough to distract themselves with in the kitchen. Beers to drink. Television to watch. Spiders to put in peoples sandwiches. If this were any other movie, we might expect them to be curious, investigate a little, act as if they are in peril and try and do something about it. As it turns out though, it often seems that the makers of this low budget anti-delight have maybe only been given permission to shoot their film in one neglected corner of their parents house, and that the only horror to be found in the adjoining rooms is an irritated mother just biding her time until that days filming is over.

Things is a film that seems to catatonically seal its characters off either at the kitchen table or the living room sofa in a house of horrors. Like a low budget version of The Exterminating Angel, no matter what terrors they seem to suspect to be happening in others parts of their home, their explorations don’t get very far before they return to the comfort of that couch, or the solace of this fridge filled with beer. They can never leave, and with a new brewsky to suck on, they will quickly forget that maybe they should just leave the house all together, or maybe call the cops, even though they assume it’s much too late at night to do so.

There is a paralyzing inertness to Things. Even when one of the two guests at this house suddenly dies, even this hardly changes the dreary, dull minute to minute reality of this film. The death will happen off screen, during one of many news flashes that interrupt the film periodically to inform the audience of such things as local car accidents, Cher’s husband being seen with Tracy Lords and other things we don’t need to know about. When we return one of the men is now gone, apparently having exploded, or sucked into a mousehole, or some other misfortune that caused his bodily fluids to be lightly drizzled on his friends blue sweatshirt. Of course, we’ll probably never know, because immediately arriving on scene to restore balance to the evening is the owner of the home, who has seemingly been in one of the other rooms all this time, and now with a drinking partner restored to the evening, oblivious kitchen sitting can now continue.

Things, it seems, could remain in neutral for all eternity. Like a group of people soggy and lethargic with a night of binge drinking, it is in no hurry to go anywhere, at least not until the grisly climax. With the directors family now seemingly having gone to sleep, they can now branch out from the kitchen table and lay claim to the others rooms in the house by defiling the carpets with green goop and syrupy blood in their battle against the Things. It will be a war waged that seems so hurried and muddled (mother might wake up after all and shut everything down) that the cast can’t even keep a straight face as they wander back in forth whacking things with hammers and chainsaws and electric drills. One could hardly blame them considering how drunk and half asleep everyone on camera seems. It will almost all be worth the rage of mother tomorrow morning, when she wonders what happened to here home, and if her son is ever going to get himself a real job.
Funny timing on this post, since a couple of posters over on Match Cut have actually been talking a lot about it lately...



Funny timing on this post, since a couple of posters over on Match Cut have actually been talking a lot about it lately...

If you can get through it, and not actively hate everything that has just happened to you, it's a very special movie.



If you can get through it, and not actively hate everything that has just happened to you, it's a very special movie.
Cool. By the way, would you mind if I reposted your write-up over there for their enjoyment?



Post that **** on Letterboxd, son. The real Barry J. Gillis might see it. You both gave it the same rating.