Netflix Recs

Bottle Shock
This poster says that Bottle Shock is hugely entertaining. It says that there's magic in it. I don't know about that but I do know that if you just need to chill out for an hour and half then this movie will help with the chilling. I've found myself in a need-to-chill mood twice and this movie's cathartic chilled-out-ness rose to the occasion, twice. It's a story in the spirit of Mighty Ducks. You've seen this movie before. It's a cut and paste come from behind montage. I'm ok with that. The poster would make you think it's of the Sideways genre. It's not really and you don't have to be a cinephile or a wine snob to enjoy it. Favorite elements: Freddy Rodriguez from Six Feet Under crawls out from beneath yet another suppressive role and gets his due--I'd like to get wasted with that dude.

Rumble Fish
Francis Ford Coppola is known for epic movies, having a cool name and his wine that just might be a bit over priced due to it's lavish bottle. Rumble Fish, by my line of sight, is his coolest movie, cooler than his name, even. I'm just going to list the cast and have that be what galvanizes you. Matt Dillon. Micky Rourke. Nicolas Cage. Lawrence Fishburn. Diane Lane. Dennis Hopper (RIP). Vincent Spano. Chris Penn. Glen Withrow. Tom Waits! Dianna Scarwid. William Smith. Queue this bad boy up and do your best to see through a veneer thickened by dry ice and really long shots of a young, pre-mangled face/voice Micky Rourke gazing through Chinese Fighting fish (the only thing in color). The prognosticator in me knows that you'll wish we still had pool halls by the time the credits come around.

Conversations On The Tree of Life

I searched my email for 'Tree of Life' and these are the emails that surfaced (below). They are in no real order and are from more than a handful of thoughtful folks. It's interesting to me that folks want to talk about it so much. Is that the sign of a 'good' movie? Had I a tape recorder with me at all times I could probably triple the number of comments shown here. 

"Im ready to talk about the tree of life. More than ready. My opinion is very very clear:]"

"I am very curious what's your opinion of Tree of Life. Whats your rating from 0 to 10?"

"I don't think I could give a 0 to 10 rating. I loved the movie. It impacted me in a big way. I appreciated the cinematography and the family dynamics as much as I have appreciated cinematography and family dynamics in any movie before it. I think T. Malik could be playing a joke on the audience with the whole evolution montage but I'm ok with whatever he was trying to show. I think it is up to us to decide what to do with all the creation stuff. I often view the world in such grandiose ways so it appealed to me to start with creation and end with prayers and characters walking around on the beach gazing at each other. The world looks and feels like that to me, often. Above anything else, I think it is a brave movie and I am sucker for brave movies. Looking forward to hear your thoughts."

"Not without the reason I named that movie to be in "Kentucky" style;)

We will talk."

"You'll have to explain 'Kentucky' style to me. Can't wait to hear what it means."

"Did you see Tree of Life? i have very mixed feelings about it - sort of loved half of it and hated the other half. I felt like he was messing with the audience."

"I really liked Tree of Life. My mother wrote a cool review/response on it. She is an ordained minister (of the church of England no less) so she has an interesting take on the spiritual side of things. I agree, though, it could all just be a huge joke on the audience. If it is, then I think I like T. Malick even more. Have you watched the Newsweek Oscar Roundtable? Christopher Plummer was on it this year and they asked him about working with Malick. He said he would never do it again. But Christopher Plummer lives in the alternate reality that people who have been movies for more than 10 years live in. Then again, I think Malick doesn't even really exist."

"I loved the family and their story - Brad Pitt was awesome in it, terrifyingly threatening without doing a lot. But I found the 'big picture' stuff frustrating - for me it didn't add anything, didn't provoke me to think about the family's narrative any differently - it was just too on the nose. And the dinosaurs....well, we won't go there. Then again, I would be interested in a different perspective, I'll have a read of your mum's thoughts."

"Having gone to school in the south, with folks that didn't believe in evolution, the evolution/creation montage in Tree of Life was entirely necessary for me. I'm guilty of viewing the world in such grandiose ways so aligning one family's story with that of the dinosaurs was welcomed. And ending a movie with prayers and characters roaming about a beach is a brave thing to do and I'm even more of a sucker for brave movies. I mean, if you can do it then why not? Right? I'm on day five of trying to make it through the russian version of Solaris, talk about brave movies, I mean there is one scene where a dude just drives through road tunnels for like 17 minutes. Love it! I fell asleep two night in a row to the same scene!!"

"I can appreciate how people will have massively different perspectives on Tree of Life. And I am also one for viewing things as EPIC, or grandiose as you put it, but the dinosaur bit felt like a massive slap with a wet fish in the middle of the film for me, it really jarred. I take your point about being brave though, that is defintely a requirement of the cinema for me."

"You're right. I love it. Especially since light was such a monumental element of the movie and the means by which the viewer is affected. Dude, we need to talk soon."

"http://www.deadline.com/2011/05/cannes-awards-polisse-wins-first-of-major-honors/"

"Make sure you check Tree of Life. It's worth the energy."

"I think you'll like this. It's a bit technical, but I find it to be really insightful.

http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/August2011/TheTreeofLife/page1.php"

Screenshot Reviews - Hunger Games & Project X

Melancholia - Anonymous

"exhale. well, after the repeated recommendation of a particular friend of mine, I have finally watched melancholia. i'm actually at 1:22 right now. I fucking hate this moving so fucking much i want that fucking planet to fucking destroy this film bad right now. it is the only thing i want in this movie. humanity here is pointless and need of total deluge. it makes the flood story seem so fucking necessary. i don't see how noah was ever approved to float on that world of water. noah probably is just that part of us that we wish was worth something. this movie is a lie. it is only part of the whole, presenting itself as the whole itself. this film is a piece of shit movie and is as oppressive of one as any i've ever seen. 

i don't have any desire to have any of this published, mostly because i don't approve of all the expletives, but i hope this earth I'm now watching is destroyed. its beauty lacks love, whole human-ness --- i am not enough to fill these scenes with care or why they should exist in the first place --- the pictures and sounds, so beautiful, lack anything of real value -- love, caring, selflessness, true words, vulnerability, openness, friendship.

and 'your scientists'... please...

larz von trier really is a fascist or something, and it shows."

Solaris, Contact and Marilynne Robinson

Contact opens with a sweeping shot from a camera that must be attached to a rocket or satellite or something. There's a similar shot in Solaris (the Russian version) when Kelvin is landing on the planet with the thinking ocean. It's a continuous shot that you most likely have seen before in Carl Sagan's timeless series on the Cosmos. He and his scientific team made the series in the late 70s. Many astronomers, astronauts, thinkers, tinkers and space folk remark on its scope--encompassing and forward thinking and still totally relevant. The idea behind the shot in Contact, Solaris and The Cosmos is entrenched in the premise of science and science fiction--there is a big universe out there, we might should be thinking about it more often. The shot is a retreating one. From the edge of the universe, if there is an edge, down to earth where mortals roam and do the things that mortals do. It takes a minute for the shot to be complete and for your imagination to catch up with this new scope, there is lots of space to cover, way more than you cover on your morning commute. Covering that space makes one think  about what we're up to here on earth and why we are up to what we are up to. It then galvanizes us in a way--are there others up to something somewhere in all that space? And so we have some epic movies about what it would be like to make contact with other life forms that may or may not be up to something, like Contact and Solaris.

Marilynne Robinson explains what these movies are up to at length, "Here is another instance of evolution, to illustrate my point. The universe passed through its unimaginable first moment, first year, first billion years, wresting itself from whatever state of nonexistence, inflating contorting, resolving into space and matter, bursting into light. Matter condenses, stars live out their generations. Then, very late, there is added to the universe of being a shaped stick or stone, a jug, a cuneiform tablet. They appear on a tiny, teetering, lopsided planet, and they demand wholly new vocabularies of description for reality at every scale. What but the energies of the universe could be expressed in the Great Wall of China, the St. Matthew Passion? For our purposes, there is nothing else. Yet language that would have been fully adequate to describe the ages before the appearance of the first artifact would have had to be enlarged by concepts like agency and intention, words like creation, that would query the great universe itself. Might not the human brain, that most complex object known to exist in the universe, have undergone a qualitative change as well? If my metaphor only suggests the possibility that our species is more than an optimized ape, that something terrible and glorious befell us, a change gradualism could not predict--if this is merely another fable, it might at least encourage an imagination of humankind large enough to acknowledge some small fragment of the mystery we are."

Showing the clumsy agency and bulky intention of humans is central for detailing, in a movie, the quirks of searching for and making Contact. After all, to act intentionally on the basis of an "encouraged imagination of humankind that is large enough to acknowledge some small fragment of the mystery we are" is quirky. Maybe that's why it makes for good movies. Solaris and Contact are  manifestations of Marilynne's hopeful fable. They both juggle thoughts about the brain, sentience and metaphysics. They both agree with Marilynne that the brain is the most phenomenal thing known to exist in our universe. What's most phenomenal, and they all three agree again, is that our brain when paired with agency is capable of imagining other brains, other metaphysics, and other physical universes that lie outside the bounds of science--they can't be proved. Marilynne Robinson, Contact and Solaris find the same landing points on the other side of big questions about our life and other life forms--our imagination is where they live, and that makes them no less real. Having such a humble and accommodating imagination is what all three ask of us. More importantly, all three, in their indefatigable pursuit of good science, end up somewhere between feeling apologetically remiss and bashfully unfounded. All three are forced to concede defeat and lean on faith. Not so much faith in God, it's more of a faith in the spirit of all that is unsubstantiated. One could call this God if they felt like it. A pretty cool place to end up, don't ya think? I do. Understand that these two movies are most excellent. And notice how well each movie (and book) modestly encourage this deferential thoughtfulness.

HOM Exclusive Interview: The Driver - James

HOM caught up with star of Drive, the Driver, at the Alabama Theatre premiere of his movie.  Although he did not attend the actual screening, he could be found outside the entrance, idling in a 1973 Chevy Malibu.  A Barons game played on the radio while he nudged a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.  He continued to stare straight ahead as I banged on the passenger window, smiled effusively, and pressed my press pass against the glass.  I was about to call him an a-hole and walk away when the locks clicked open. I quickly shuffled in before he changed his mind.  Nervous at his continued silence,  I told him in a single rush what an honor it was and how I was such a big fan and thought that the movie was genius---that he was a genius and I would love to do an interview with him for our blogosite. 

Silence.

He said that I had 5 minutes.

(00:00)

HOM:  OK, great!  Many critics have compared you to existential heroes like Bullitt in Bullitt, Luke in Cool Hand Luke or Preacher in Pale Rider.  How do you feel about those comparisons? And--follow up question--do you consider yourself a hero unique to this particular time?  Kind of like an existential hero for the digital age or something?

DVR:  (long silence).  I don’t have wheels on my car.

HOM:  (laughing).  OK!

DVR:  It’s one thing you should know about me.

(01:45)

HOM:  That’s interesting because I recently read a New York Times opinion piece about how this generation lacks the mobility of previous Americans.  Teens and twenty somethings seem perfectly content to stay home in economic depression rather than just tear off to another part of the country with more promise.  Is that what you’re speaking to?

DVR:  (longer silence).  Hey, you want a toothpick?

(3:20)

HOM:  No, thanks though, Driver.  Driver, I’m not sure how to broach this subject, but are you aware that you are a character portrayed by Ryan Gosling.  Like Preacher in Pale Rider, you don’t really exist.  I mean you’re a creation of someone’s imagination, born on paper to live a two-hour life in the skin of some overpaid actor.  How do you feel about that?  Driver, I guess what I’m asking is are you capable of love?  Do you dream?

DVR: (longest silence). There's a hundred-thousand streets in this city. You don't need to know the route. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours. No matter what. Anything happens a minute either side of that and you're on your own. Do you understand?

(05:00).