Just due to Dominick having made those two spectacular Nick Cave documentaries, I can't not see Blonde.
And even having not seen it, or knowing what my reaction will be to its approach, I can't help but instictively feel that much of these criticisms that are being levelled at the film are probably reactionary in the worst way. They have that kind of stink where, because you are not showing me what I assume to be the story of Monroe (ie. the mostly bullshit we've been fed for half a century) it is defaming her image.
As if preserving an image is anything to be proud of. As if losing sight of the human that exists in the crosshairs of public attention and iconography is anything but the grosser of two evils.
I'm struggling to think of an example, so I have to grab at the only one that comes to mind. Those who disparage Sid and Nancy for seeing its glib almost mocking portrayal of the punk scene as being sacrilege. Even though much of its dispiriting attitude is exactly what the iconography of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen requires (of course, with this example, there is also the counter-stupid with those who romanticize the film and think it is a blueprint for living life the honest way, which is admittedly much worse, even though it is the group I probably was a member of when I first saw it at 16...because I was fucking stupid....and 16)
Basically there are never any winners when art is offered up to the masses for interpretation. Or the critics. Or basically anyone but me and the handful of people whose opinions I don't disdain.
 

Last edited by crumbsroom (10/01/2022 1:42 pm)

Rock wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

I just want to say that I don't know if I've ever seen that Scanners gif in that clear a resolution, or if it is slightly slower than normal, or my brain is working at a different speed, but there is a reason that moment is a kind of perfection. In that split second, so many wonderful details. The blood splooge coming out of his eye sockets. His glasses shattering in half and being tossed into the ether. The right side and left side of his balding hair ring slapping together with a big meaty thwack. How his shoulders shudder as if feeling what must be the terrible pain of that fragment in time. His jaw contorting as if telegraphing the same pain felt by his shoulders. And a single eyeball, staring out at us through the mess as the whole bloody scene comes to its conclusion.

I think each of these things, if not seen directly, are felt subliminally when we see that scene in real time. It's why no one shakes the image once seen. It's why gif's were created.
 

Louis Del Grande in this high a resolution should not be safe for consumption by non-Canadians.

Non-Canucks don't deserve LdG

What the hell am I looking at?

Hey, Rampop, maybe you can start littering the movie forums with Louie Del Grande gifs.
Just claim youre a True Believer and I'm sure you can get away with anything there. As long as there isn't any cussing. Or talk of Christ boners. Or slut shaming Jordan Peterson.
 

Jinnistan wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

Looks similar to our Weekly World News, which tended to be sold at grocery store check-outs.  I bought them a lot in the 90s, and anyone who bothered to read them could easily see that they were satirical, but most times I got a copy, the check-out person would look at me as if I were one of those people.  They didn't understand.  Once you accustom yourself to the dire writings of Carlton Tragus (an absolutely totally believable real person), you have little use for normies who prefer, what?, the National Enquirer?  People?  Us Weekly?  Please.  I'm hopping on that intergalactic shit.

(Also, what's the name of that hot "crown attorney"?)

I think that is what the brilliant Seeing Things was satirizing. Tabloid journalism. Run by a true blue psychic. Mind blowing canuckian stuff!

*cue Scanners gif*

I too would by the real deal though. Usually when I was going up to the cottage for the summer and me and my father would ration out stories throughout the week. My favorites always had to do with people digging into the earth so deep they found Hell. Not so much believable, as it was simply something for me to hope for.

Janet Laine-Grey is the crown attorney.
?
 

crumbsroom wrote:

And even having not seen it, or knowing what my reaction will be to its approach, I can't help but instictively feel that much of these criticisms that are being levelled at the film are probably reactionary in the worst way. They have that kind of stink where, because you are not showing me what I assume to be the story of Monroe (ie. the mostly bullshit we've been fed for half a century) it is defaming her image.

I really don't like the reviews which don't seem able to appreciate how the film isn't defaming.  So many who say the film ignores her intelligence.  I don't see that.  I see a film that shows an intelligent woman who's learned the value, as a sexy woman, to be very careful on exactly when to show her intelligence.  This calculation of creating an artificial persona as a buffer between herself and what she actutely experiences as a hostile world is actually a mark of pretty high intelligence.  One of my favorite scenes in the film is the surprise of Arther Miller, who had assumed she was ditz, when he realizes that Monroe had actually read Chekov's 3 Sisters.  It isn't hard to find such examples.  Instead, critics act like her "daddy issues" are a sign of stupidity, which is an arrogantly uninformed understanding of childhood trauma.

crumbsroom wrote:

I too would by the real deal though.

But what I mean is that Weekly World News was not the "real deal" either.  I'm not sure what percentage of its readers believed it was, but most of those readers that I knew, and myself, could easily see the satire.

I think this portion of the Wiki is indicative:

"A Scientist" is typically shown and quoted. He was known as "A Scientist" to distinguish him from A Baffled Scientist.

It's pretty Python-level stuff.