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- July 31, 2007
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Yeah, David Lynch is awesome. I love his movies and Twin Peaks. Last one I've seen was Lost Highway which is great. Really weird and hard to understand but awesome.
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2007
- Messages
- 6,583
Haven't watched this yet but read an interesting review over at EI which seems to have some similarity of critique.Just saw Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman. It's about his and his comrades-in-arms' experiences and memories of the 1982 Lebanon invasion and the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Banned in Lebanon, not surprisingly -- it's not at all kind on the Phalangists, who are very much a player there.
I can't say I enjoyed it much. Films by Israelis about how Israelis feel terribly bad about killing all those Arabs (or, in this case, how terrible they feel about Arabs killing other Arabs while they're watching), with some second-degree Holocaust trauma mixed in, just start to feel really terribly old after a while. As with most of the ones I've seen, this one had the same sense of emotional distance -- as if everything's seen through the observation slit of a Merkava tank, or a TV; with an unbridgeable distance between them and the Arab "other."
The director clearly had good intentions, but the film still made me want to slap him one. As if he's trolling for sympathy for feeling so bad about shooting those light rockets over the camps as the Phalangists were doing Arik's dirty work. Give me Lemon Tree or Divine Intervention any day of the week.
In the final analysis, this is what Waltz with Bashir is about: the evasion of responsibility. It is not that the self-reflection offered by the film is only partial, and that we would simply be nay-sayers to be dissatisfied with it. Because there is no sense of what the Israeli role in Lebanon was, because it is about ethically and morally redeeming the filmmaker and his contemporaries -- and by extension the Israeli self, military and nation, the Israeli collective in other words -- because of all this, the film is an act not of limited self-reflection but self-justification. It is a striving towards working through qualms to restabilize the self as it is currently constituted; it does not ask challenging questions that would destabilize that self. And we are reminded of the psychologist's comment near the start of the film: "We don't go to places we don't want to. Memory takes us where we want to go."
I didn't want so see it at first because I was afraid I might be grossed out, but my (foster) sonny convinced me to watch it, anyway... so I saw it last night.Smokin' Aces:
The first 75 minutes were great, the solution unconvincing. It´s an ensemble movie with lots of high profile actors. Feels a bit like an unconnected Ocean's 11 with hard & fast action scenes. Still better than average.
What!!! Titus Pullo???The Punisher: Warzone
The latest Punisher, starring that guy from Rome
me and my girl watched Flash Gordon "savior of the universe edition" last night - awesome!
What a fun old 80's movie.
Max von Sydow as "Ming the Merciless" was great! I dont care what anyone says, the costumes in this movie were pretty freakin cool. Queen's music thru it rocked. Laugh-inducing dialogue. Cheesy effects. Yet all in all, it really wasnt all that bad. Then again, i have an unusually high tolerance...
Loved the intro where Ming's wreaking havoc on earth, using buttons labeled "Earth Quake", "Typhoon", etx. I knew I was in for a real treat at that point...