Patrick R

The Killing of Sister George is an utterly bizarre movie. It's about this complete terror of a older butch lesbian actress who discovers the character she plays on a daytime soap opera is going to be killed off. It tries to be farce, character study, earnest melodrama and scintillating exploitation all at once. It's never dull because it's too transgressive and strange, but it never really manages to be about anything. Worth seeing for the scenes shot in a real life 1968 London lesbian bar (where the camera leeringly lingers on women slow dancing together as if it's the most shocking thing anyone could imagine) and because Beryl Reid dials every scene to 11, chewing scenery and screeching at every character she runs into while still maintaining a real center. It was directed by Robert Aldrich, who used his success with The Dirty Dozen to start his own production company and do this film, which promptly lost him a shedload of money when it's leering graphic lesbian sex scene and coarse language got it an X rating and he couldn't get theaters to screen it. All the lesbians are damaged women or predators except for the extras at the gay bar, who seem to be genuine regulars who somehow got roped into being in the movie. Shrieking stereotypes abound.

Is Teleglitch one of those impossibly hard games? I'm kind of enjoying my time with it but I feel utterly useless at combat and always eat it in Level 2. I wonder if it's worth it to try to beat it instead of just playing it until I've had my fill.

Watched Tangerine again at work. It's now out on blu-ray and DVD and I can't stress enough how entertaining and funny it is. The conversation around it seemed to be all about it's identity politics (which are awesome and totally admirable) and the fact that it was shot on iPhones, but mostly it's just a fucking incredible and funny Christmas screwball comedy. SEE IT.

After Stonewall isn't as fascinating as Before Stonewall, because stories of hidden worlds, cladestine meetings and coded messages are just always going to be more interesting than the meat and potatoes work of activism, as vital as it is. Still, if you haven't seen either they're a good crash course on the history of homosexuality in America in the 20th century. Really great balance of personal stories and broader history of the movement.

Uncle Boonme Recalls His Past Lives. Very relaxing movie. I can't do meditation, but watching this movie is the closest I ever got. It's just creepy enough to keep you interested, but ultimately too affable and pleasant to ever actually be scary.

Tangerine is the best! My partner enjoyed Concussion, and wrote this piece on it and Nymphomaniac. I rented Weekend, but the next one I watch should be Killing of Sister George.

Sure! PREHISTORY: The Runaways - The Runaways Patti Smith - Horses Blondie - Blondie X-Ray Spex - Germfree Adolescents Bags - All Bagged Up: The Collected Works FOUNDATIONAL: Bikini Kill - The CD Version of the First Two Records Bikini Kill - Pussy Whipped Sleater Kinney - Sleater Kinney Sleater Kinney - Call the Doctor Heavens to Betsy - Calculated Slant 6 - Soda Pop-Rip Off Autoclave - Autoclave Team Dresch - Personal Best ADVANCED: Le Tigre - Le Tigre Le Tigre - Feminist Sweepstakes Sleater Kinney - The Woods Chicks on Speed - Chicks on Speed Will Save Us All Gossip - Music For Men Lizzo - Lizzobangers If you are only going with one of each category, I'd listen to The Runaways, The C.D. Version of the First Two Records and the Le Tigre self-titled to get a good arc.

Stranger By The Lake is everything I want to see in gay movies. It's not just a queer flavored genre film but a well-crafted thriller in which homosexuality is down deep in it's bones. Languid long takes in a bucolic setting punctuated by graphic sex (and by graphic I mean multiple unsimulated sex acts, so be warned going in) that perfectly capture the stop start momentum of it's sex addict main character's (my diagnosis, not the film's) days and the ways he braids violence and danger into his sex life. Mostly a character study but also a couple of incredibly tense and scary scenes. Totally rad movie. It's on Netflix Instant and if you think you can deal with explicit sex you should definitely watch it. Actually, even if you're not sure you should probably watch it. Sometimes I think it'd do the world some good if images of male on male sex were as common-place in the culture as male on female or female on female. Even if it isn't your thing, becoming acclimated to images of gay sex can only serve to make it seem less scary and strange, right?

It always depends on situation. Knife and fork is the best unless you're first getting it in world 3. For pure ease of clearing the screen, I like to get gunpowder blocks and the boom shoes as early as I can. I often get the membership card, if only because a shop at the start of every level means I can guaranteed buy upgrades at least every other level.

YOU TAKE THAT BACK SANDRA BERNHARD IS A TREASURE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhaotrCTgqo Hudson Hawk is basically the unappreciated Fifth Element. It even has a musical number!

Any roguelikelike with a good loop does the job for me. I will often just zone out playing Spelunky, Binding of Isaac or Downwell. Rogue Legacy was that game for me a couple years ago.

Imitation Game is standard Oscar fluff, with Turing's sexual preferences so besides the point that the ending is almost insulting. Wasn't expecting much, didn't get much.

It's like a musical number. Classic is a strong word, but the Fifth Element is fucking special.

Victim is definitely a product of it's time in some ways, treating homosexuality more as an affliction than a valid lifestyle, and focusing on a saintly barely-gay man (who is redeemed because he has never acted on his impulses and still also loves his wife) as the protagonist. But what I find really amazing about it is that, in couching it's plea for the legalization of homosexuality in a crime/mystery plot, it manages to avoid most problems I tend to have with victim narratives and their lack of forward movement. It basically has all the thrills of a crime film set in a seedy underworld while simultaneously making the argument that the underworld is not seedy and only exists to escape persecution. The gay culture depicted is way more rich and nuanced than you'd ever expect, and the gay men are distinct, from a wide variety of backgrounds, and neither all sinners nor saints. Definitely not a perfect movie, but fascinatingly ahead of it's time. EDIT: Also in the plus column: the villain is NOT a self-loathing gay man. As someone who's sat through my share of queer killer movies from the 70's I kept waiting for that shoe to drop, and was pleased that it never did. I think I'm going to watch Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007) next. EDIT #2: Itty Bitty Titty Committee is pretty lame. Like a Disney Channel version of radical feminism. Which was basically the vibe I got from But I'm A Cheerleader too, so maybe I just don't like Jamie Babbit. Good soundtrack though. Wall to wall riot grrl. At one point my favorite Slant 6 song faded into my favorite Bikini Kill song and I realized I couldn't totally hate it.

He'd incompetent except when he's not. He's the ultimate confident badass going into the ruin in the opening scene, but when he takes the statue he ends up triggering every trap in the place. He fluidly bounces between being a superman and an everyman and that's his appeal and why the film works so well. It allows these huge crazy action sequences to work because he gets his ass handed to him enough for there to still be stakes even as he is doing insane shit hanging on that truck that no real person could ever actually do. He's definitely a jerk though, in the way that most Bogart characters were jerks. I can see that being a turn off if you don't find Harrison Ford to be so unbelievably charming that you forgive him. I wonder how you feel about John McClane in the first Die Hard film, because that superman/everyman balance is also one of the things that movie got really right.

I like this post because it also brings into the conversation the different levels and realms of "classic". Deliverance is a "classic" because it's ubiquitous and a constant cultural touchstone, but it's not the kind of movie that would ever end up on a greatest films of all time list (not even the IMDB 250). I could be wrong but I don't think anyone thinks Bad Boys is any kind of classic. It's Bad Boys 2 that has the crazy cult following for being so mind-blowingly excessive.

You can only wall-jump once, so you can't get to the top. I have gotten that third torch once though. It had a gem in it. EDIT: Also falling slower means it is easier for enemies to hit you from the side or top.

Realized that I was getting to World 4 more often when I was a style other than levitating, so I basically retaught myself how to play as arm-spinning and beat the game for the first time. I actually think levitating isn't an easy mode, but more of a "training" mode. I find that with levitating style, I over-extend myself to keep combos going at the expense of safety. Once you acclimate to the faster falling speed, the other styles actually seem a little better suited for the end game.

I think I disagree with you on how good a guess we can make, unless you aren't talking about looking that far into the future. Deus Ex already seems to be losing it's classic status among a lot of people and I think Far Cry 2 is too divisive to be called a classic right now, the way Vertigo got a pretty dicey reaction when it came out only to be considered Hitchcock's greatest work years and years later. All of this is totally fine. I will just say that, given your interpretation of the ending as a happy one, you probably took in the movie in a very different way than most people who consider it a classic. Everyone is free to their own interpretations, but most people view that ending (and the film in general) as being critical of violence's place in culture, not condoning it.

I feel like the term "classic" is thrown around a lot, but in relatively new mediums like video games and film, I don't know how much it can mean. One of the interesting things about the Sight and Sound poll only occurring every 10 years is it really makes clear how "canon" is a nebulous concept that's constantly subtly changing. I think maybe film has reached a point where things are beginning to solidify and films like The Rules of the Game or Citizen Kane will never lose their classic status. But video games are much younger. Super Mario Bros. is only 32 years old and people even younger than that grew up in houses with an NES where it was played. Wait another 30 years, and who knows how relevant it will remain, other than as a historically foundational work.

I am broke and in debt and make minimum wage and I have to fly to San Francisco and take 5 days off work in April to go to my sister's wedding. Marriage is a thing I am fine with, even if I don't exactly believe in it. But weddings and particularly the culture around them are fucking gross. I don't begrudge anyone who has the money to spend it how they wish. But it can often turn into this collapsed star of cost, sucking so many people into it. Part of the reason I'm in debt in the first place is because I drove to Houston for a friend's wedding four years ago. I don't go to any weddings anymore (and considering that my mom is one of 9 and I have about 45 cousins in their mid 20's to late 30's, that means declining invitations about once a month), but I can't not go to my sister's. My parents are paying for the plane tickets, saying I can pay them back but they're one of the people I'm in debt to in the first place.

The fact that Facebook still has no idea what will interest me is kind of a comforting thought. Every once and a while I'll get an ad for some ironic American flag parachute pants or whatever, and I think "the future of big data is a horrible dystopian nightmare, but today is clearly not that day."

I always found Miyazaki to be a genius world-builder and a rather graceless storyteller. Sometimes he creates characters and worlds so rich that it really doesn't matter (I certainly feel that way about Spirited Away) but your feelings about Howl's are what I feel about most of his work.

Also, I will say this about the "Citizen Kane is dull" crowd: I would guess you probably haven't seen too many films from the 40's. Which isn't to say Citizen Kane is only good compared to other films of the time, but to say that if you don't have a fluency in a certain era's (or region's or sometimes genre's*) films, it takes a lot of work to watch them. It's the same with video games (and probably exacerbated): I got a couple hours into Empire: Total War and was totally overwhelmed and flustered. I don't have a fluency with strategy games and so trying to get anything done always felt like a monumental task, totally unintuitive and backwards, and even when I did figure out the UI I kept getting my ass handed to me. There may be a good game inside Empire: Total War, but it would take too much work for me to perceive it. But once you've seen about a hundred or so films from the 40's something just clicks in your brain and it takes no effort to snap into 1940's viewing mode and see the film for what it is. The first time I saw King Kong I was 13 and I thought it was boring, the sound was terrible, the effects were terrible. I watched it again ten years later after having seen a lot of films from the early 30's and was blown away by how exciting it was, how great the effects were and...well the sound is still terrible. There's no getting around that early talkie recording technology. It takes a lot of will and effort to become fluent in something like 40's film, so if it's not really important to you that's fine, you probably will never find Citizen Kane hilarious and sad and fast-paced and entertaining. But that doesn't mean it isn't. *And often all three, as any fan of giallo will surely tell you.

We all have things that just inexplicably leave us cold. I think calling Citizen Kane dull is crazy but I also think Vertigo is dull, and Vertigo is literally the new Citizen Kane, according to the latest Sight and Sound poll. I think it can be interesting to really dig in and explore why certain certified classics don't connect with us*, but I think taking the approach of "I didn't like this movie, it's overrated, prove to me it isn't" is backwards. *Often in my case my lack of formal education, particularly in philosophy, psychology and poetry, makes more high-minded or metatextual or semiotically subversive art films fly over my head. If something is playing with Jungian or Freudian archetypes, I will probably miss it. Also, there is a brand of art cinema that mostly existed from the mid 60's to the late 70's where the straight male id is on full display (sometimes critical of it but rarely critical enough for my taste) and it is just gross and off-putting and totally unrelatable to me. I feel like a lot of my hatred of Godard's films comes from that place.