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Rampop II wrote:
crumbsroom wrote:
Pink Flamingos is a legitimate legend of a film but I hope Rock braces himself for his great weakness...shrillness.
As amazing as they are all, Divine and Mink Stole and Edith Massey can all be superhumanly irritating people...part of the films charm to be sure but an acquired tasteThat's Edith Massey, alright, but I tend to think of shrill as sounding painfully high–pitched and loud (or oppressively vociferous with uncompromising political opinions) whereas I think of Mink and Divine as more in the low tenor/high baritone range, so I'm guessing the acting has something to do with the shrillness in this case? They can definitely dominate their scenes in a way I can see as feeling oppressive.
Yes, I agree, bracing one's self for Pink Flamingos is definitely good advice. I have a shrillness threshold as well. If anybody wants to torture me into false confessions, just play me some Spongebob and I'll confess to every merciless act of of wanton cruelty and injustice throughout human history. One episode should do. Possibly as little as five minutes of one episode. Crabby Patty indeed.
I agree Edith is an acquired taste, if such a thing can be acquired. I wouldn't know because I do have to brace myself for her. She's lovable, but how tolerable is another matter. I'm glad she's there, though. She's one of those human anomalies perfectly suitable for a John Waters production.
Divine is just one of those presences that will not be denied, and really does prove to be worthy of the lead role again and again. The core joke, to paraphrase Milstead (Divine), is the idea of a diva/starlet–type lead character being played by a fat bald man in drag.
What was roughest for me the first time I saw Pink Flamingos was something I don't think I've seen in any other Waters movie, at least not to this degree. Whereas all their scripts can be described as gloriously over–the–top, in Flamingos there are scenes in which the characters straight up soliloquize. Line after line of choice garbage poetry, equal parts imaginative and lousy, delivered in gushing melodramatic fashion, well–memorized or not, in one static wide shot, with one mic somewhere in the room. Those scenes felt unnecessarily long the first time I saw them, but I've come around.
My favorite John Waters movie, at least for the time being, is actually Multiple Maniacs, and I'm not just trying to be contrary or contending for World's Most Esoteric Hipster by naming one of the Dreamlanders' earliest and grungiest b&w efforts. It's just so... it earns its title. The prayer beads, the lobster, the Holst!
Anyway, yes, crumbsroom is right; bracing yourself for Pink Flamingos would be wise. One thing we can guarantee, though, you will not be bored.
Oh wait, my bad; I got Mink Stole mixed up with someone else. She's no baritone lol
Definitely in the higher register, and with some gravel to match.
She's intense but I love her.
Who the hell am I thinking of? Maybe Mary Vivian Pearce.
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In other John Waters news, he released his best movies of 2022 list, and I've heard of none of them, but need to see all of them.
Waters always gets it. The gay uncle I always wished I had.
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Re: shrillness, while that certainly is my kryptonite, I did manage to enjoy Dashcam despite the main character being an insane Covid-denialist who is incapable of shutting the fuck up for even a minute and spends the whole movie trying to trigger people. So perhaps I am getting soft in my old age.
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Rampop II wrote:
crumbsroom wrote:
Pink Flamingos is a legitimate legend of a film but I hope Rock braces himself for his great weakness...shrillness.
As amazing as they are all, Divine and Mink Stole and Edith Massey can all be superhumanly irritating people...part of the films charm to be sure but an acquired tasteThat's Edith Massey, alright, but I tend to think of shrill as sounding painfully high–pitched and loud (or oppressively vociferous with uncompromising political opinions) whereas I think of Mink and Divine as more in the low tenor/high baritone range, so I'm guessing the acting has something to do with the shrillness in this case? They can definitely dominate their scenes in a way I can see as feeling oppressive.
Yes, I agree, bracing one's self for Pink Flamingos is definitely good advice. I have a shrillness threshold as well. If anybody wants to torture me into false confessions, just play me some Spongebob and I'll confess to every merciless act of of wanton cruelty and injustice throughout human history. One episode should do. Possibly as little as five minutes of one episode. Crabby Patty indeed.
I agree Edith is an acquired taste, if such a thing can be acquired. I wouldn't know because I do have to brace myself for her. She's lovable, but how tolerable is another matter. I'm glad she's there, though. She's one of those human anomalies perfectly suitable for a John Waters production.
Divine is just one of those presences that will not be denied, and really does prove to be worthy of the lead role again and again. The core joke, to paraphrase Milstead (Divine), is the idea of a diva/starlet–type lead character being played by a fat bald man in drag.
What was roughest for me the first time I saw Pink Flamingos was something I don't think I've seen in any other Waters movie, at least not to this degree. Whereas all their scripts can be described as gloriously over–the–top, in Flamingos there are scenes in which the characters straight up soliloquize. Line after line of choice garbage poetry, equal parts imaginative and lousy, delivered in gushing melodramatic fashion, well–memorized or not, in one static wide shot, with one mic somewhere in the room. Those scenes felt unnecessarily long the first time I saw them, but I've come around.
My favorite John Waters movie, at least for the time being, is actually Multiple Maniacs, and I'm not just trying to be contrary or contending for World's Most Esoteric Hipster by naming one of the Dreamlanders' earliest and grungiest b&w efforts. It's just so... it earns its title. The prayer beads, the lobster, the Holst!
Anyway, yes, crumbsroom is right; bracing yourself for Pink Flamingos would be wise. One thing we can guarantee, though, you will not be bored.
Multiple Maniacs would be a candidate for my favourite. But it's probably Female Trouble.
Pink Flamingos may be a film is have to list in my top 10 most influential movie going experiences though. I've had a troubled history with it. Got it for Christmas and knew it only by its reputation for being awful and nothing else. Had never even seen a frame from it before. And I watched it with my father. And I hated it. But I also had never seen anything like it, and kept thinking about it. Not so much the vile things, but it's standards of filmmaking. I'd seen films that looked like ass before but never one that seemed to be embracing it. And while I dont think I caught on to this element consciously on my first viewing, there is almost this undeniable joy in how the movie and it's actors push buttons. They want me to hate it. They want me to discount it as pointless trash. And so I immediately watched it with my girlfriend at the time, and quickly has another terrible experience with it.
It was only after years that my fondness became well established. But it definitely needed those initial uncomfortable, headache inducing, relationship testing troubles. Because what I've come to realize is that it is the movies that test me as a person, challenge my beliefs, reset my idea of what a movie can be, that are the most essential to me.
Pink Flamingos did all of that.
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crumbsroom wrote:
In other John Waters news, he released his best movies of 2022 list, and I've heard of none of them, but need to see all of them.
No Scorpio Rising? He once called this his "very favorite film of all time". Such sassy hyperbole.
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Jinnistan wrote:
crumbsroom wrote:
In other John Waters news, he released his best movies of 2022 list, and I've heard of none of them, but need to see all of them.
No Scorpio Rising? He once called this his "very favorite film of all time". Such sassy hyperbole.
Not sight and sound, just what came out in 2022
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Don't mind me, I'll just goog then.
I have heard of a couple of these. I posted a link to EO in the Coming Soon thread. That's a Skolimowski (The Shout, Moonlighting) film that looks a lot like a reboot of Au Hasard Balthazar. I knew Quentin Dupieux had a new one but I didn't know its name yet. And I have heard, and seen some reviews, for Bones and All, but I'm not too fond of Guadagnino.
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Always nice to be reminded of how hard Police Story goes in the mall climax. And the opening shantytown scene. And pretty much every scene in between. Even the part where Jackie moonwalks to get doodoo off his shoe.
10/10
Last edited by Rock (12/24/2022 10:30 pm)
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On the subject of John Waters, Merry Chrismas, y'all.
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Rock wrote:
I would go with the theatrical version except that, as far as I know, it hasn't been given a proper restoration and most of the more recent editions have been more focused on the director's cut. Along with the issues of the CGI in the additional scenes is that what the film did not need was additional scenes. It was already criticized for being too long and exposition-heavy. But as to that, I didn't mind at all. I like the original's pace and "intellectual tack", solid and mature science fiction with what, I think, is one of the great classic Star Trek concepts - a Freudian/Abrahamic take on man, consciousness and creator. (Don't even get me started on a comparison to the truly wretched and inspid attempt at the same theme in Star Trek 5.) The sometimes long, placid stretches of exposition are balanced well with punctuations of crisis (the wormhole, the teleporter accident, V'ger's "probe"). But one thing that you said that is completely spot-on is the value of seeing the film on a big screen, because the real star of the show is the FX of the V'ger cloud. I saw the film in its initial run (I was about 5) and I thought the sequence of Spock entering the cloud was one of the most thrilling and electric visions of cinema imagination in the whole ILM era, and it can only really be appreciated in full widescreen to absorb its dynamics and detail. Khan is fabulous escapist adventure, and will always be more fondly remembered, but the first one deserves a lot of credit for its depth, especially in the context of the much more thematically anemic Avatar.
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Here's another one of those films where you can watch and enjoy (and I did), and then spend about an hour scanning over the reviews (58% on RT) for a good overview of why their are way too many film critics getting paid for writing absolute drivel. But in such cases, as with films like this that involve a character who is also a writer (as well as journalist, filmmaker and frustrated artist), we can see what must amount to the kind of resentment that some critics have towards genuinely creative people. In addition to the standard pejoratives against artists like "self-indulgent" and "pretentious", most of the bad reviews for this film have recurring terms like "narcissistic", self-absorbed" and "massive ego". Is this a James Cameron film? Tarantino? Any of the dozens of other massive egos in the film industry? Instead, these kinds of terms seem to only get trotted out when the filmmaker in question is actually interested enough to interrogate his own ego, which, by definiton, is the opposite of narcissism. It's interesting, but a little deflating, that narcissism has become synonymous with an artist making a deeply personal and even introspective film. Anyone who bothers to watch the film can realize within a few minutes that the protagonist, and the filmmaker that the protagonist represents, happens to be riddled with self-doubt and frustrations. Saying that an artist who chooses to express these doubts and frustrations in their art is "narcissistic" or "egotistical" is no longer a matter of subjective opinion and taste. They seem to be objectively either wrong or grossly attempting to radically redefine the terms. This issue deserves to be called out for the critical ineptitude it represents. You can say the film is too long, too ponderous, too jumbled. But the proliferation of these terms suggests something more nefarious, which is to fundamentally criticize the right of the artist to engage in personal expression at all. Such hostility against "self" and "ego", or even "navel-gazing" tends to only be employed when the protagonists are artists, and these critics have a particular aversion to their particular turmoils. A lot of filmmakers make personal, quasi-autobiographical films. Some people's navels are more interesting than others, I guess, but this shouldn't suffice as an adequate basis of criticism.
But perhaps like Birdman, another personal film about an artist's self-doubts and frustrations, these critics are distracted by the portion of the film where this more hostile relationship between artist and critic is explicated. Many of that film's critics seemed to be under the impression that the film was about critic-bashing (probably because they're actual narcissists). And I wonder how many of Bardo's critics are reacting more to the film's views on Silverio's nemesis, Luis, a glib television talk show host enamored more (like many critics) with social media relevance than artistic integrity. Luis' hostile takedown of Silverio's life work sounds an awful lot like most of this film's negative reviews, and it wouldn't surprise me if Silverio's evisceration of Luis' flash in a pan trend-chasing didn't cut some of these critics as raw as Birdman's depiction of critical resentments.
But all of that aside, how about the film itself? The Birdman allusion is appropriate in many ways - the mid-life crisis, the vapidity of show business, the flights of magical realism, artistic frustration and domestic failures. After all, it is a personal film. Unlike Birdman, Bardo (Inarritu's first Mexican-shot film since Amores Perros) has a fascinating concern for the ethnic ambiguities of Latin America. Silverio, the documentarian of underclass indigenous Mexicans, is weighing his success against the persistent oppression of his subjects. This appears to reflect Inarritu's own sense of troubled obligation to his native country. Silverio struggles with his whiteness, his affluence, his education. He's accused as an equivalent of an Uncle Tom to the gringos. This tension of Silverio's (and Inarritu's) sense of displacement and ethnic obligation is something that has been absent in Inarritu's recent award-winning films, and it's presented here far more provocatively than in Cuaron's similar dynamic in Roma. And as welcome and refreshing as this dynamic is here, it never overwhelms the more personal tensions and obligations of Silverio as a father, husband, son and a writer torn between his compulsions as a journalist (to show what is) and as an artist (to say what he feels). Some may say that the film's wedding of the political and the personal is messy or incoherent. I disagree, but even so, I find the attempt to be more exciting than most other films of recent years.
Finally, I have to point out a flavor of Malick that I get from this. Malick is another filmmaker that some critics slather with the epithets of a singular artist concerned with personal expression. Some critics may be similarly dismissive of the more spiritual aspects of their respective visions. From the hip-high wide-screen steady-cam tracking, the deserts, the sea, the dream space where loved ones either exist or evaporate, I feel as if Inarritu is invigorated exploring similar aspects of this cinema vocabulary. I loved every pretentious second of it.
9/10
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Although I was slightly disappointed in this one, it's nowhere near as bad as its critical and commercial reception would suggest. I would say that it may be a film where writer/director David O. Russell gets a bit over-tangled in his period detail and sprawling ensemble, two virtues in his American Hustle, but feels less comfortable and confident here. The film's historical basis is almost incidental - the 1933 plot to install Gen. Smedley Butler in the White House - and I'm not going to hold it against this film for not taking a more direct depiction of that fascinating story in American history. What's left here, involving the principle characters, I honestly have no idea what's fictionalized from what's not. I'm prepared to accept and enjoy the film on its own merits, which are charming if a little scraggly. The film is a better comedy than it is a mystery or a love story or whatever other things it flirts at trying to be. And, unlike Hustle, it never settles on what that thing is, although Christian Bale's veteran doctor anchors its comedic pulse most satisfactorily. The film would have been better to have served this particular nerve - a pre-noir farce - and structured it a bit differently. I was most disappointed that Zoe Saldana's nurse is relegated to the sidelines when she's not only terrific but her character would have made a perfect parallel to Margot Robbie. As overstuffed as the film seems, there's a number of possibilities like this that make me second guess how it coheres. The production is polished but the structure is not.
7.5/10
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I've been trying to wrap up a Top Ten for Letterboxd. Something like...
Bardo
Blonde
Bigbug
Memoria (despite being 2021, officially)
RRR
Benedetta (also 2021)
The Northman
Crimes of the Future
Amsterdam
Flux Gourmet
This is still without seeing Triangle of Sadness, White Noise, Decision To Leave, Tar and several others.
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Jinnistan wrote:
I've been trying to wrap up a Top Ten for Letterboxd. Something like...
Bardo
Blonde
Bigbug
Memoria (despite being 2021, officially)
RRR
Benedetta (also 2021)
The Northman
Crimes of the Future
Amsterdam
Flux Gourmet
This is still without seeing Triangle of Sadness, White Noise, Decision To Leave, Tar and several others.
I've only seen Flux Gourmet and Crimes of the Future.
Liked both a lot.
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You have Netflix, right? Take my word, Bardo, Blonde, Bigbug and RRR are a better way to spend 2 and 1/2 hours than Glass Onion.
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Man, Crumb hasn't seen RRR? Unbelievable.
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I should move Benedetta to the bottom, I think. Very sexy, Virginie Efira was radiant, but it was still ultimately a midgrade melodrama.