Last Movie You Watched

[ritter]

I've only watched Melville's Les Enfants terribles (based on Cocteau), but the comments @T. D. , @brewski and @Papy Oli has led me to read more on him, and I've just ordered this —his first film— on DVD:



This is a movie adaptation of the novella Le Silence de la mer by Vercors (alias of Jean Bruller). The book is one of the main literary texts of the French resistance. Bruller co-founded the prestigious Les Éditions de Minuit publishing house in occupied Paris to (clandestinely) release his book. The novella was translated into English, as Put Out the Light, by no less a figure than Cyril Connolly (while the war was still ongoing).

Apparently, Melville was director, producer, screenwriter and assembler in this movie.

[SonicMan46]

Mary Poppins. I still love it. Honestly, if I'm in a pugilistic contrary mood, I find the "Feed the Birds" number overly sentimental, but no such conditions prevailed yesterday.

Karl - did you ever see Saving Mr. Banks (2013) w/ Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks?  Dave

[Karl Henning]

Karl - did you ever see Saving Mr. Banks (2013) w/ Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks?  Dave

Yes, Dave. Delightful!

[Karl Henning]

As happens, watching a reaction vid prompts me to re-watch the movie itself. Now: Neil Simon's Murder by Death. 

[T. D.]

Belgian and Dutch newspapers were basically positive about this film, even if,apparently, in some cinemas some people ran out in disgust.

From "De tijd":

"If 'The Substance' holds up despite all its exaggeration, it certainly owes that to the performance of its lead actress. Moore is not only perfectly cast because of her background - sex symbol and world star in the 90s, then slipped into anonymity - or because she has never hidden her frequent visits to the cosmetic surgeon, she also deserves applause for the fearlessness with which she literally and figuratively exposes herself.

Fargeat also deals unusually with the abundant nudity. 'When I show a naked body, it is never in a sexual context', she explains. 'It is the reality of real flesh, a body lying on a bathroom floor. That ties in with what I want to say. The film juxtaposes two ways of portraying a woman's body. One way is in the outside world, the TV studio. There the body is extremely objectified and sexualized. The other way is more internal, as seen in the bathroom. There the body is alone with itself. My point is that the outside world has a negative impact on the inner world. It influences how you look at yourself in the mirror at home, alone.'

She speaks from her own experience, Fargeat admits. She turns 48 this month, and in recent years she has regularly caught herself having dark thoughts. That she had become irrelevant, that she no longer had a place in society, that no one saw her anymore, that her life was as good as over. 'At a certain point I asked myself where those thoughts came from,' she says. 'I am well-educated and a feminist, and yet I had those ideas in my head. I came to the conclusion that it was self-hatred, whispered to and fed by the world around us that reduces women to sexual beings. I don't know a single woman who doesn't have an eating disorder or who doesn't punish her body in some way. That's insane.

Like all good genre films, 'The Substance' is essentially one big and thinly veiled metaphor, in this case a call to do away with skewed power relations. Because that is ultimately what it is all about, regardless of the mutated flesh that Fargeat unleashes on the screen. 'The question of the body stands for all the other questions about power and the way our society has been organised for so many millennia', she concludes. 'To be honest, I am amazed that women have not burned the place down yet. It is time for something to really happen. #MeToo was a good start, but since then it has mainly been chatter. And when you speak your mind, you often get shit thrown at you. That is why I prefer to incorporate my ideas into a film like this. If 'The Substance' can be a cobblestone on the right path, I will be very satisfied.''"

"I don't know a single woman who doesn't have an eating disorder or who doesn't punish her body in some way. That's insane.'"
This may be true in the film and fashion world, I don't recognise it in my- admittedly "old" and "retired" world.
Shockingly however,very young children (toddlers, boys and girls!) are influenced by ads for beauty products, operations, diets, unattainable physical ideals etc.

It's showing nearby.
I was considering going, but probably won't.
Though somewhat of a David Cronenberg film, I almost never see things labeled as "horror".

[T. D.]

Considering seeing this in a cinema:


Seems to have gotten good reviews, though Catholic reviewers tend to disapprove. I was brought up RC but no longer practicing, so can argue for or against seeing it.

[Karl Henning]

Considering seeing this in a cinema:


Seems to have gotten good reviews, though Catholic reviewers tend to disapprove. I was brought up RC but no longer practicing, so can argue for or against seeing it.

Catholics also burned Beatles albums and protested Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ, some of them without bothering to watch either movie. Just saying.

[T. D.]

Catholics also burned Beatles albums and protested Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ, some of them without bothering to watch either movie. Just saying.

Catholics not digging it is not a negative for me.
I thought Spotlight https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1895587/ was an outstanding film, but as a lapsed RC it kind of bummed me out.

[Karl Henning]

Catholics not digging it is not a negative for me.
I thought Spotlight https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1895587/ was an outstanding film, but as a lapsed RC it kind of bummed me out.

[Apologies in advance for an extended tangent.]
Not sure I even qualify as "lapsed." I feel wrong saying "I was raised Catholic," when (for instance) my late dad never went to church (and yet, it is because my grandmother was Italian that my dad wished his children "brought up Catholic." I suppose I can factually report: I was sent to Sunday School at a Catholic parish. Notwithstanding all the appalling abuses I later learnt of, I have a fondness for the sect and tradition. Whether I regard myself as Catholic is at present an imponderable.