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A system of cells interlinked
But, I don't want every little detail explained. That takes away the room to dream, which is ever so important in Lynch's work. This is why I watch Lynch. The concepts of the film make sense to me, there is just no clear progression in the narrative. This film doesn't need one, though, as it gets all it's concepts and ideas across in a more abstract way. I think this film is absolutely amazing, and, in some ways, more pure and exposed than Mulholland Drive. It is certainly more visceral.

A great quote:

"David Lynch has been making INLAND EMPIRE his whole career. It towers above all of his work as the definitive David Lynch experience. Like 8 1/2 and Vertigo and Raging Bull it is the perfect combination of filmmaker and style and subject matter. It is a perfect film. It is cinema in its purest form."


Its purest form... I tend to agree.

"INLAND EMPIRE feels like a bold new step forward towards a new cinema that uses the stylistic tools of the medium to convey ideas without narrative. After all, every story is an old story. Lynch proves that movies need not be constrained by the bounds of narrative, traditional or otherwise. INLAND EMPIRE is post-intellectual. It is beyond the realms of literary theory. The film is emotional, frightening, funny and redemptive"

Narrative in film isn't necessary, and this is the latest example of this theory. I felt the shackles of my mind attempting to restrain the film into a cohesive, story-like flow, but Lynch's mastery of the language of cinema, which transcends mere stories and reaches into the sub-basement of our minds, shattered those fetters and set me adrift in the dream worlds of Inland Empire.

Inspiring, frightening, disarming, and exhilarating... this film exceeded my expectations.

Mulholland Drive


Inland Empire
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“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



NOT ACTUALLY BANNED
Yes, we're supposed to dream, and that's what our theories are supposed to do. When we dream, and we can't explain it, that's when it becomes a problem, because our own personal theories are supposed to explain things.



Thursday Next's Avatar
I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
The Leather Boys !1964)

Recorded this one off the telly - shown as part of a season of British Film. I must admit that the idea of a 60s kitchen sink drama didn't hugely appeal to me, but this film is apparently quite well-regarded by many people, including Morrissey.

Watching it, I realised that although it is, in part, a domestic drama, following a young couple who marry young but find their expectations of marriage wildly different, and although there are plenty of arguments, it isn't nearly as grim as the phrase kitchen sink drama led me to believe it would be.

Dot, played by Rita Tushingham, who gets married in order to leave home, not have to get a job and be able to get her hair dyed was sadly believable, excited by all the possibilities of being married and grown up, but less keen on the responsibilities - like cooking. (Watching her selfish behaviour is probably the only time I felt even slight sympathy for a husband who complains that he wants his tea ready when he gets home!)

The film seems to shift its focus onto Reggie, the husband, whose irritation with his wife is channelled into his growing interest in motorbikes - where he makes a new friend, Pete, who, inevitably, has a more than friendly interest in Reggie.

There are moments of dark humour - such as Reggie's family's attempts to move his Nan into an old people's home. British viewers may also laugh at Johnny Briggs (Coronation Street's Mike Baldwin) who appears as Dot's beau.

There is nothing extraordinary about this film, but the way it blends moments of tenderness and the characters' youthful hopes with moments of bleakness and the realisation that it is their inability to tolerate each others' flaws that stands in the way of their dreams which makes it compelling.

If you are interested in gay film, as well, this, alongside the more overt Victim (1961) is an interesting example.



A system of cells interlinked
Yes, we're supposed to dream, and that's what our theories are supposed to do. When we dream, and we can't explain it, that's when it becomes a problem, because our own personal theories are supposed to explain things.

Well, the whole issue with that is that it would require the language of cinema to be perfectly translatable into words, which it can never be. Trying to put things into words, that can't possibly be put into words is futile, and only takes away from the whole.

The language of cinema transcends words, sound, and picture, to become something all its own, which, unfortunately, too few film makers seem to remember. Luckily, David Lynch isn't one of them.

Do you even wake up from a dream, and then attempt to figure out what every little detail meant? Useless. This film is a nightmare on film, so I think the analogy applies here...

Meanwhile, a great deal of it seems to have a direct point, which seems pretty clear to me.



Yes, Sedai! Completely agree that INLAND EMPIRE isn't about narrative, i went in thinking it would be like Mulholland Dr and tried to take in all the detail to help decypher the narrative but quickly realised that it was futile and should just allow the images to tell the story and stop trying to follow plot markers, just let it wash over me. After all the false endings it seemed Lynch was trying to say stop watching this as a film.
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NOT ACTUALLY BANNED
Well, while trying to decipher this thing, if I find it's got no real plot, then it's a waste. Movies need a plot, or at that point there not even movies. There just pictures.

I rent/buy/go to movies to see a movie. If I wanted to see pictures, I would go to an art gallery.

I still think there's a narrative there, I just need to dig a little deeper to answer some little questions.



Well, while trying to decipher this thing, if I find it's got no real plot, then it's a waste. Movies need a plot, or at that point there not even movies. There just pictures.

I rent/buy/go to movies to see a movie. If I wanted to see pictures, I would go to an art gallery.

I still think there's a narrative there, I just need to dig a little deeper to answer some little questions.
Well, i keep saying that i think it is ART. Not a movie. But far from a waste of time.



Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie For Theaters - Except for Time Lincoln, I didn't laugh at this and turned it off after a while. Can't recommend it.

C'mon; you honestly didn't laugh at the band of movie snacks, or the bizarre title cards? It mellowed out after that, but the first 5 minutes had me laughing so hard that my face actually hurt.
The film is frickin hillarious dude......Absolute gold!!!



Superbad- 3.5/5
Casino Royale- 3.5/5
The Untouchables- 4/5
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Vice, Virtue. It's best not to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of too much *life*. Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then you're bound to live life fully.
-Ruth Gordon, Harold and Maude



Facing The Giants

A very heart warming heavily Christian themed movie about a losing coach and his football team who was on the verge of getting thrown out, only to take his faith and use it to help him and his group of kids persevere on.



The People's Republic of Clogher
Zodiac (2007, David Fincher)

3/5

Hmmmm, when a DVD's extras are already advertising the '2008 Director's Cut' it makes me sit up slightly straighter than is usual but after watching Zodiac I can see why they did it. Kinda.

It's rare that a 2 1/2 hour film leaves me wishing that more time had been spent but the 3rd act is messy, to say the least, as if I'd spent 10 minutes ambling to the bus stop without a care in the world then suddenly spied the bugger hurtling round a bend when I was 50 yds away from my goal...

Apart from that bugbear (and I'm sure that the DC will include some sort of toilet/shaving/nip down to the shops to buy groceries break) I raised my eyebrows slightly at cast and characterisation. Ok, Mark Ruffalo sounds like Donald Duck, but there's not much a fella can do about that so I'll let him be.

I find Robert Downey Jr a tremendously likeable actor and he's great at playing, what I take for, himself. No change in Zodiac, then..

Now to young Mr Gyllenhaal. It's not really his fault that his character doesn't really move forward in the decade and a half (fortunately it doesn't feel like that in real time, more like a decade) he's given to crack the case. Heck, he doesn't even change his damned coat. The savant-lite nuances of Graysmith made my teeth itch, however - 'Charlie Babbitt solves a murder' might have been a good pitch at one time but here it just gets tired.

He does puzzles, can't look people in the eye and grows stubble like a 14 year old. Whoop de bloody doo.

Anyway, enough of my yakkin' because I actually didn't mind Zodiac as a whole - it's well, if not necessarily inspiringly, shot and gives a satisfying atmosphere of 70s serial killer paranoia. A bit like Summer Of Sam without Mira Sorvino to fall in love with. Again.

My expectations of Fincher as a director weren't at their highest before viewing and sadly he didn't go out of his way to prove me wrong. I'm sure he's got another great film in him but Zodiac sure wasn't it. I wanted to like it an awful lot more.



Easy Rider meets Rain Man meets Silence Of The Lambs? Sadly 8+8+8 doesn't equal 10...
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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan