Paprika

I love cartoons. A director I really loved was a guy named Satoshi Kon. He died in 2010 at the age of 46.

He's got a weird visual sense in the way he ties scenes and themes together. In his movies cuts can happen real fast, and stuff comes at you so rapidly that it takes days or years to figure out what exactly happened.

I can't make a direct connection between Satoshi Kon and Chuck Jones, but when I watch Paprika I often get the same delightful wtf feeling that I get watching the old Looney Toons classics. Kon is not afraid to go down the rabbit hole. Paprika involves breaking and entering other people's dreams, and dreams within dreams, and dreams within dreams within dreams.

Here's a minute and a half of the famous parade scene near the end of the flick:



And here's Kon's last film which is a minute long. At first I was thinking of picking *it* since it was short and would be much easier getting people to watch it. I have a lot of mornings like this. Part of me gets up, but part of me is reluctant to **** with it.



Kon is widely recognized as a master, but I meet few people who actually sit down and watch his stuff. Check out Paprika. Clearly the best film of the millennium.

Paprika sounds fabulous, Phat.

I do understand.

filthyvermin might snipe you, he drafts a lot like you.

He once picked Taylor Swift as the best World Cup football player.

Kill Bill The apotheosis of Tarantino. Kill Bill is violent, twisted, creative, cartoonish, clever, and relentlessly entertaining. The main character, played by Uma Thurman, wakes up in a long-term care facility while being raped by one of the attendants who thinks she's in a coma. That sets her on a trail of revenge that takes her across the world. The film is in some ways a homage to the cheesy martial-arts and spaghettti western films of the seventies, but it is in a class far above those.

As a historical note, the dickhead Harvey Weinstein insisted that the film be split into two volumes. As much as I revile Weinstein, many of the movies he was involved with were excellent. As another historical note, star David Carradine died while apparently engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation. It's a weird-ass world we live in, and Tarantino has an odd ability to connect to that weirdness while making it somehow palatable.


Memento Another Christopher Nolan film, but entirely different from broad-scope epics like The Dark Knight. Memento has a tremendously interesting and innovative structure, consisting of two intertwined narratives: one moving forward in time and the other moving backwards in time. One is shot in color and the other in black-and-white; both involve the attempt of a man with retrograde ammnesia to solve a murder mystery. Clues permit the watcher to put together this otherwise weirdly-structured narrative into a coherent whole. Phenomenally interesting and creative movie, and Guy Pearce does an outstanding job in the lead role. An exceptionally memorable film noir, and one of my long-time favorites.

One of my daughters claims that Memento is dated. Perhaps so, and I should probably rewatch it to assess this fact.

Howard, are you choosing both Kill Bill films as one? I'm fine with that, by the way.

I'm picking mine just a sec....

oh wait, Kioshk still has time, yes?

Kioshk is on the clock!

Paprika looks interesting....that short films was, well, short.

Yes, please. I believe that’s within the rules, and they’re really one film split into two volumes.

yeah, I'm fine with sequels being lumped together as one, as long as it really is a continuation of story and/or theme. If they are meant to be watched together, great. If it's a cash grab with the same characters but a different story, I will probably rule against it.

Please no one choose a bunch of - I don't want to have to rule on that quagmire lol.

I mean, I guess that means I get Before Midnight, too, but I didn't choose it in my original pick, so I rule against myself! That movie is still available.

Dammit, I'm so unfair.

I'm taking The Grand Budapest Hotel, it's one of those wacky eccentric Wes Anderson films, the very best one in fact! I'll write more about this later, busy busy busy that's me.

Nice pick, kioshk. That was my very next pick, and I was already drafting a summary in my head.

Now I just need to fade Dom for my trifecta.

Kioshk sniped me

LOL: slow pony, dom.

Dom's Round 3 pick:

Punch Drunk Love, Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002



PTA's attempt at making a film that clocks in at less than two hours. And man, does he succeed. This is an anti-Adam Sandler Adam Sandler movie. How crazy do you have to be to pair Sandler with British film queen Emily Watson - AND turn them into one of the great film couples of the decade?

I can't think of a film that has a lead character be so, well, disturbed...yet still be romantic and funny. PTA tapped into a rage and sadness inside Sandler that works perfectly for the role. When he falls for Watson's character and has "the power of love by my side," you believe him.

Not only do you get a man who buys hundreds and hundreds of pudding so he can take advantage of a loop hole in a frequent flyer miles program, you get one of the most romantic, twisted scenes ever recorded in film history:



Plus, anyone who can use a Shelly Duval song from Popeye during the film's big romantic come-together has to be a genius, right?



*******************

Dom's List:

Mulholland Drive
Before Sunset
Punch Drunk Love

John Cole on the clock! Hope I sniped you.

That was my round 4 pick, Dom, so, yeah, you got me. Bastard.

Since Dom took the Emily Watson/Adam Sandler pairing, I'm going with the Bill Murray/ScarJo one. For round three, I select Lost In Translation. Writeup to follow.

lol and you sniped me right back

I don't think I'm getting sniped in this thing again.

Absurd. Everybody knows it's Karen Mok.

Pick 3

Dancer in the Dark



I'm not a big Lars von Trier fan and I don't particularly care for Bjork's either but I love this movie.

It's one of those movies that you stumble upon when you're channel surfing during the commercials. It's just starting and you think you'll only watch it for a minute but you watch the whole thing even though it means staying up way later than you planned. You just quietly take it all in and at the end you continue to sit there quietly as you slowly realise that you watched something special.

It's slow when it needs to be and creates drama and tension well. It breaks out into song and the most wonderfully inappropriate times. I get that it's a love it or hate it sort of movie. I'm not bothered in trying to convince you to give it another chance if you hated it, but I personally love it.

check it out if you haven't already.

Side Note: My next favourite von Trier movie is [UNDRAFTED] but it's way way behind this one and I haven't liked any of the others I've seen.

Owning Mahowney
The Royal Tennenbaums
Dancer in the Dark

Zeno has been PMd

If I were to list some of my favorite films of all time, I'm not sure if Lost In Translation would make the top 50, but, for some reason, I keep thinking about it. I love this scene:



Bill Murray can't sing, yet he plunges in, and it's one of my favorite cover versions of any song. Note the blue lighting, the racking focus Coppola uses to highlight Scarlett's attention, and even the other patrons swaying to this Roxy Music classic.

More and more, I've grown to love this movie. In part, I think it's my own sense of ennui is reflected in Murray's character. Perhaps it's because I've traveled alone with no one to talk to for a couple days, surrounded by strangers. Perhaps it's that this film is also funny and sad. Think of the scene in which Murray is being directed in Japanese. "Did he really say all that?" Murray asks if the translator. Indeed, something always gets lost in the translation.

Movies end, and this one ends ambiguously. What the hell does he whisper in her ear? Does it matter?

Once, I was at a conference in New York, pretty much alone, except for a sponsored dinner. After dinner, I went to the hotel bar. One of the women from the dinner came by and sat with me. We didn't know each other. I bought her a drink, and she called her husband to check in. It was a lovely late October evening, so we left the bar and roamed Manhattan for a few hours. Sometimes you just need that human connection because it makes the world seem a little less strange.

If Lost In Translation is about anything, I think it's about feeling a bit more at home in the world, in New York, or Tokyo, or anywhere you find yourself.