You mean it isn't?

Phew! Was seriously questioning reality there for a minute.

How do I stream this?

Exactly.

It's funny, I have a visceral reaction to movies, and they can make me quite emotional, but in the end, they're just art, you know? Not real life. I get really excited at watching something that surprises me or is just great genre, you know? It never affects me in a bad way. Only in an aesthetic way.

For my GF, she cannot watch certain things. She loves horror movies, but not ones with serial killers or home invasions.

She can't stand when, in a movie or in her students' stories, an animal is hurt.

She has a rule for her students - no introducing a dog in the beginning of a story just so you can kill it later!

She hates Philip Roth. Like, with a passion. Not sure what he did ti her.

directTV has it on ppv right now....it might be available on other PPV platforms, as well.

Turn out all the lights and turn up the speakers so it rattles the china cabinet.

Also, I'm trying to figure out what the difference is between a movie like Mandy or Alien - great genre films and great art - and those horror movies I can't stand - any Saw movie or Eli Roth or torture porn.

Why do I love one and abhor the other? does it really just come down to artistry?

This is a great explanation of what people usually call the “magic” of the movies.

I sometimes feel that with music as well. I think it’s part of why people can feel so connected to artists (and characters, etc) they’ve never met.

Perhaps knowledge and experience. Let's face it. We've seen some of the greatest movies ever, so we know a little about the subject. But we also know there's more going in in a great film than an inferior one. I've enjoyed a number of suspense films, but few move me the way a Hitchcock film moves me because Hitchcock films say something about the human condition, something important. For example, Strangers on a Train is a technical masterpiece, but it also investigates what it means to know someone, from being a complete stranger to an acceptance of otherness, or to become known and to reveal one's self to another (at least in my reading of the film).

I suspect horror films, the great ones anyway, offer us more than we expect, and some great horror films delight us purely because they satisfy certain genre conventions. Sure, someone can watch Rosemary's Baby and be scared, but we can also delight in what else if offers: a very real sense of what it means to bring a child into the world and the hopes and fears wrapped up in motherhood.

In other words, I don't know.

"Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them; for there is no power to see in the eye itself, any more than in any other jelly. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all our lives."

Thoreau from "Autumnal Tints"

Stole her car and killed her dog?

Great Thoreau quote. Makes my day.

e·phem·er·al (adjective) əˈfem(ə)rəl/

1. lasting for a very short time.
"fashions are ephemeral"

synonyms: transitory, transient, fleeting, passing, short-lived, momentary, brief, short; temporary, impermanent, short-term; fly-by-night

***

John Cole;

I'll admit that I won't be heeding this advice. I probably need the exact opposite.

; me

P. G whodehouse uses this first line in one of his Jeeves/Wooster novels, to excellent effect. I, however, dismiss Keats pretty much as Bertie Wooster does. On occasion Keats lets fly with a good line or two but then mucks about in a sentimental bog of his own making. Ray Zee is a better poet than Keats.

That he does, but this Keats poem is perfect. I say so.

Excellent teachers are hard taskmasters! Kudos John.

Wow... Jurassic World 2 was bad. I mean real bad. JW1 was palpable at least, but 2... Oh lord.

Definitely meant palatable, not palpable.

The sky is clear blue and the sun is shinning brightly and voluptuous Autumn is dancing naked on the beach. And Lasciviousness permeates the tangy, salty air.

Saw 5 films starring Marcello Mastroianni yesterday. My favorite was the last.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (De Sica, 1963) - 3 different stories starring Mastroianni and Sophia Loren as different characters in different time periods. Generally humorous, famous striptease by Loren and wolf howling by Mastroianni. Didn't expect the more humorous stuff from De Sica, who I'd imagined as a super depressing Italian neorealist.

8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963, 35mm) - Have seen before a few times. I think of it as "Lynchian" (closer to what people think of as the more unhinged Lynch) despite the anachronism, which basically means surreal and confusing. Also plenty of "meta" about the making of the film itself and 4th-wall breaking. It doesn't do it for me in the same way that the best Lynch does, but regardless of what I think it's obviously a "canonical" must-watch.

A Special Day (Scola, 1977, 35mm) - A more serious film with Hitler as backdrop, a different performance for Mastroianni than the frequent "Latin Lover" character.

La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960) - Have seen before. I like it better than 8.5. Another canonical must-watch.

Divorce Italian Style (Fermi, 1961, 35mm) - Loved this. Farce/comedy that really holds up to modern tastes imo. Camera, editing, score, and voiceover are all in on the joke. Mastroianni shows off his range here even better than the serious role mentioned above. He's basically a wannabe version of the Latin Lover type, with slick greasy hair and a hilarious facial tic affect.

The story itself (about a dude who wants to be rid of his wife in favor of a younger woman) is engaging, suspenseful, and somewhat unpredictable too, always a big plus in a comedy.

I know of no other movie from its era or earlier (and maybe not until the early 80s) that I'd consider funnier.

Wow, that's quite a day. The ending of La Dolce Vita blows me away, especially after all that goes on before.

Mandy...well, that's a movie and a half...

Like Tarkovsky got resurrected, had a baby with Jodorowsky and the kid made a Hellraiser movie.

As visual/sensory movies go, up there with Solaris, Aguirre Wrath of God, Santa Sangre, Eraserhead and The Keep.


9/10

The first are enthralling in the way a great meal or great sex are enthralling, they fill the senses and overwhelm. The others kind of try and do that in the way in the same way as sticking your fingers down your throat can overload your senses?

Yeah it's artistry.

But I don't hate those movies the same way you do. I don't love them, but they entertain me a bit. It's cheap, dry hamburgers compared to a great steak - no comparison, but if you're hungry, it'll do.

Which part specifically? (Spoiler tags)

Probably no needs for spoiler tags. There's hope at the end, a moment when perhaps the world offers more than emptiness, a kind of salvation.

I do get your point, but the open-endedness leads me to believe that Marcello will change. Or perhaps I'm simply reacting to the ending the way I do to the ending of 8 1/2. And then there's that fish.