Patrick R

Sure, but the problem there seems to be their social skills, not their palate. Unless it's "Sorry, I'm vegan/gluten-free/whatever" I can't eat there", you should just go with the flow and work it out when you get there. That's just social etiquette.

I think judging people on the food they eat is weird? I seem to be alone on this, generally. It's just really weird and gross to me, like judging people for how they dress.

I only eat fish sticks and cookies.

If you are interested in articles, Joan Didion wrote about a hundred great ones. Pretty much everything in Slouching Towards Bethlehem is golden. As for films directed by women, there's Daisies - Crazy experimental (but funny & charming!) Czech feminist film about two free-spirited young women fucking shit up in high society. Harlan County U.S.A. - Incredibly powerful documentary covering the Brookside strike Cleo From 5 to 7 - Moving and heartbreaking film about a woman wandering Paris awaiting scary test results Fast Times At Ridgemont High - Generation defining teen sex comedy that also has a remarkably heavy subplot involving abortion Near Dark - One of the all-time great vampire movies Salaam Bombay - Slumdog Millionaire before Slumdog Millionaire, only much better Clueless - Great teen comedy Strange Days - Paranoia cyber-punk thriller responding to the Rodney King trial Beau Travail - Intensely physical and gorgeous movie based on Melville's Billy Budd. Greatest ending in film history. Boys Don't Cry - The story of Brandon Teena. Devastating. The Headless Woman - I saw someone once describe this as "a story about ghosts who are so good at their job they don't even have to show up". Great film. Wendy & Lucy - Sparse but moving film about a homeless woman and her dog. White Material - Incredibly tense thriller about colonialism and denial Winter's Bone - Jennifer Lawrence's break-out role as an Appalachian teenager out to find out what happened to her missing father. Meek's Cutoff - Great deconstructionist western about westbound settlers dying of dehydration.

The entire series just went on sale on Amazon.

Again, it's a grand body of work over the course of 33 years that affected the world of comedy, not any one bit. It's his whole attitude. Television was a safe formulaic place for comedy and then Letterman came along and injected an unprecedented level of weirdness and irreverence. He mocked the concept of talk shows. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but show me anyone else in the 80's who was doing stuff like this on network television. He mellowed out the past 10 years, certainly, but he still had his moments of inspired madness. You probably haven't heard it before this week because A) it's old news and people have been saving their big think-pieces for this week. But major comedy writers have been citing Dave as a primary influence on their work for decades now.

He is not a saint. He did permanently change the face of comedy. Catching a couple random episodes of the Late Show does not do his career justice. He is definitely, without a doubt, the funniest late night talk show host of all time. The thing is, the late night talk show is not exactly a form that lends itself to a high ratio of outstanding content. A career like that is cumulative and, especially in the case of David Letterman, requires a viewer to put time into getting on it's wavelength. It is unfortunate that his career never really did suffer from his history of sexual harassment. It likely would have if he were Leno and not a comedy god. But he is a comedy god. Hence the praise and forgiveness. He may not be for you. But he was most likely a huge inspiration for everyone who made comedy you do like in the past 20 years.

Gay porn (by which I mean male on male, since most lesbian porn still tends to be produced with straight male audiences in mind) tends to have way more interesting titles and themes than straight porn and I wonder why that is and when that started.

Commentary tracks are my favorite things.

I mean undercranked. Hence "Common action technique for car stunts that are too dangerous to perform at high speeds." You perform them at lower speeds and undercrank the camera so it looks faster. See James Cameron's Terminator car chases for a lot of this. It's also how they did the near miss . A lot of the stunts were practical but also a lot of the shots were achieved by compositing several different practical things into a single shot, or were touched up with CG explosions or debris. Again, I'm just very old fashioned, but it's very obvious to me and once I can tell it takes me out of it a bit. As opposed to something like Avengers, where it's so cartoonish it never even tries to ground you in reality. Not that the action in Avengers can touch this. But I went in expecting "Greatest action scenes ever! All practical!" and found them vastly inferior to the scenes and stunts that were done back in the 80's. Crazier but not more exciting.

The Road Warrior definitely has some undercranked shots. Common action technique for car stunts that are too dangerous to perform at high speeds. But it's not nearly as pervasive as Fury Road, and it's not digital. It's the importance of the latter aspect to me that makes me hopelessly old-fashioned. But I think the way Miller shoots The Road Warrior is so beautiful looking as well as exciting, and the fact that it's shot on film with naturalistic color is a huge part of that. And it really does make a world of difference for me to know that all the stunts actually had to happen in front of the camera. Fury Road goes so far over the top that the action loses most of the tension. But it's definitely better staged and conceived than most modern Hollywood films, certainly.

Nevermind. I don't want to argue terminology.

That's what I mean. It's overcranked and then it goes into slow motion and then it's regular speed and then it's overcranked. It looks like Domino or Running Scared or a Saw movie. Or a video game. EDIT: And to clarify, I just think the action isn't as good as the action in The Road Warrior.

This is the official line in the sand where I pass from "classic film enthusiast who is skeptical about the current state of Hollywood" to "hopelessly old fashioned fool", because I don't think Fury Road holds a candle to The Road Warrior. It's got some of the ugliest digital photography I've seen in a while, for one. What's the point of loading a movie with practical stunts (though, let's be honest, it's a LOT of CGI) if you're going to do all that speed-ramping garbage and make everything look fake and unreal anyway? Whatever, I'm clearly a lost cause. I'm glad everyone likes it, because it feels like a step in the right direction. It's just a much much smaller step than I was expecting.

Leviathan (the 2014 Russian film, not the 2013 documentary*) is really amazing. Gorgeous and brutal movie about corruption in Russian government and religion. *The 2013 documentary is also amazing, but much more experimental and difficult.

I watched Alien two months ago, which is the perfect amount of time for me to not want to rewatch it and to not feel I have anything to add to the conversation, so I was gonna sit this particular film out. BUT, one of the reasons I've bought two copies of the Alien Anthology (DVD & blu-ray) despite thinking that Alien is the only really good film in the series is that the making-of documentaries are really great. So I figured I could watch the making of documentary for Alien and bullet-point some relevant facts here as they happen, since the question of Ripley's history as a character keeps coming up. The script originated from Dan O'Bannon's desire to do a horror version of Dark Star, a John Carpenter directed sci-fi/comedy that he wrote and starred in. The first treatment was just the first act leading to landing on the planet, and that remained largely unchanged in the final shooting script. While O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett were working on the script for Alien, O'Bannon went to France for a while to work on Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune project. That's where he met H.R. Giger and Chris Foss, who would be concept artists for the film. The idea of the alien impregnating one of the passengers came out of the need to get the alien onboard the ship in a way that would surprise people. It was Ronald Shusett's idea. It was originally envisioned as a very low-budget Roger Corman movie. It was only days before they were to sign the contract with Corman that Walter Hill, director/producer of tough-guy movies like Hard Times, The Driver and The Warriors, saw the script and decided to buy it. He didn't think it was a good script but he thought the chest-burster scene was enough to sell it to Fox, which he did. Thinking it was a bad script, Hill and his partner David Giler completely rewrote it several times. The character of Ash was invented by them, as well as the "truck drivers in space" feel of the characters. After the success of Star Wars, Fox was eager to get another sci-fi movie out there so they green-lit Alien, despite the script not being finished. Walter Hill was originally going to direct it before realizing he didn't have the patience for extensive special effects. Other directors it was shopped to were Robert Aldrich (Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? & The Dirty Dozen), Peter Yates (The Friends of Eddie Coyle & The Deep), and Jack Clayton (The Innocents & The Great Gatsby) before the producers saw The Duelists at Cannes and decided to go with Ridley Scott, who accepted the job immediately after reading the script. Ridley Scott spent three weeks personally story-boarding the film and when he came back with the storyboards the producers were so excited they doubled the budget. He was inspired primarily by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dan O'Bannon showed Giger's art to Ridley Scott and they all agreed the creature in the painting "Necronomicon" was the way to go, even though Fox thought it was far too gruesome and terrible. Scott was particularly inspired by the sexual connotations of Giger's work. Giger designed the Alien and everything to do with the Alien world, while another team of artists designed the Nostromo. In O'Bannon and Shusset's original script all the characters were men but, in an effort to make the film as marketable as possible, their screenplay had an asterisk that noted "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women". It was Hill and Giler's later drafts that made Ripley a woman, in an effort to win over Fox who were making a lot of "women's pictures" at that time, like Julia and The Turning Point. Giler admits now it was a very cynical business reason. They also felt that Ripley was kind of a boring character, and that it could make Ripley more interesting. Sigourney Weaver showed up to the audition wearing (in her words) "big hooker boots" and impressed everyone with her height and intelligence (commented on in that order by two different people interviewed). When Veronica Cartwright was cast she thought she was Ripley. It wasn't until she was being fitted for wardrobe that she learned she was Lambert. She wanted to pull out because she thought Lambert was too weak and weepy. The producers convinced her she represented the audience's fears and anxieties and she decided to stay on. Ridley cast the film with actors who he knew wouldn't need much direction, so he could focus on the technical aspects of the shoot. As a result it was a grueling shoot for all the actors, both physically (very hot suits, grimey fog and glycerine sweat effects) and mentally (they didn't know what he thought of their performances, he would occasionally snap and scream at his actors). So the experience ended up creating a tension and nervousness that mirrored the film's plot. Sigourney Weaver felt especially singled out and alone during production. It was her first film and lot of the other actors thought she wasn't doing a good job, particularly Yaphet Kotto. In the scenes where Ripley and Parker butt heads he would improvise nasty, demeaning remarks about her character, including one time calling her a bitch. Ridley Scott encouraged Veronica Cartwright to really hit Weaver in the scene where she confonts Ripley for not wanting to break quarantine. Veronica really hit her quite hard, which made Weaver burst into tears, which made her even more upset because she didn't think Ripley would cry. Ridley Scott thought that Ash attacking Ripley would be more interesting if there was a sexual undercurrent because it raised the question of whether androids have sexual urges. He says in the documentary "What would be nice is that this is the closest he ever gets to a sexual relationship.". (His expression indicates a grim humor, not that he actually thought that attack was at all "nice".) I love the making-of docs on the Alien Anthology because enough time has passed for people to not be polite and complain about each other. I think Alien is a great argument against the concept of auteur theory because, like so many Hollywood films, it had so many different people contributing different things with different ideas about how the final film should be. I wonder what you folks think of the ending with Ripley stripping down to get in her suit. That's always the one part of the film that felt very strongly of male gaze to me. But maybe the idea is more to ratchet up the tension by emphasizing vulnerability at that moment? I just found this article that goes into it that's rather interesting. It appears Sigourney certainly thought it wasn't the least bit exploitative, and even thought there was going to be much more nudity in the film. But it does sound like it's was Ridley Scott's request that her underwear be sexy and not strictly utilitarian, which was Weaver's idea.

Spaffy loves taffy.

Season of the Witch (AKA Hungry Wives) is a really good feminist horror film about a woman with a horrible husband who learns to take control of her life via magic. It ends with a life-affirming shotgun blast to his head.

I love this.

About once a year I watch a Godard movie because I feel like I should Godard, and about once a year I reconfirm how much I hate Godard. It always makes me feel silly and alone, but I swear I have an allergy to his films.

My boss gave me a 25 cent raise yesterday. Not 25% but 25 cents. I don't think he knows the minimum wage in Chicago goes up to $10 an hour in July.

I absolutely have too much going on to do this. (but I kinda wanna play this again as well)

Is there any chiptune equivalent that emulates that Genesis hard rock sound? Most chiptune I've heard seems to be strictly NES inspired, but those Genesis games that tried to do heavy metal sound so amazing and distinctive.

Carnival of Souls one of my all-time favorite movies, so maybe it's hard for me to be objective about it. I do think it is one of those rare low-budget films where the cheapness only adds to it. Everything is supposed to feel distancing and disconnected and slightly dreamy, and the cheap sound and stilted performances actually add to it, I think. Perhaps those who aren't into classic horror wouldn't be able to get into it the same way I do. It's no Cat People in terms of polish and production values. But almost every scene in Carnival of Souls is a man of some kind chastising the lead character because she doesn't fit into the societal role they need her to, whether it's the priest or the psychiatrist or the creepy neighbor. Herk Harvey intended Candace Hilligoss's character to be distant, cold, and disconnected from the world around her because she doesn't belong (purposefully being vague to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen it) but from a modern eye she comes across as a self-assured woman, and it's everything else around her that's wrong. That's what makes it an interesting classic horror film to look at through a feminist lens. I recently guested on a podcast where we discussed this very thing. You are right that there are better films to watch, though. I think especially if this is to be a regular thing, we should try to watch more films that are actually directed by women. Even just sticking to the horror genre (which it seems people are keen on), Jennifer's Body and The Babadook are two really good recent examples. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night I wasn't really a fan of, but it's worth seeing and is certainly a feminist take on traditional vampire lore.

Duke of Burgundy is still the best movie of the year!