How did you like that movie / TV show / book?

Jeezum Crow! Is this our "grumpy old men" birthday? Is this what I have to look forward to in a month? And i thought I was the designated grumpy old man here! Are you stealing my shtick? Worse than that, you've put me in the unenviable position of defending the new millennium.
Take out the word "artless" and "spoiled brats who can't stop flapping our jaws" describes pretty much every great film director of the '70s... Scorsese, Altman, Coppola, Friedkin, Bogdonovich... so I think it's important to give said brats room to grow... and maybe keep them off Twitter.
I'm not sure whose cinema reflection you're seeing when you look into the American mirror. If it's senseless super-hero sturm und drang then I guess I can understand where you're coming from. But that also leaves it to you, as a member of our society, to put a little elbow-grease in to looking for something that speaks to you on our American experience, rather than offer a blanket condemnation. If you're weary of your own place in our Grand Experiment, perhaps experiencing our "American life and culture" through the eyes of a black man will change your mind. Fruitvale Station is now on Netflix and it's one of the best movies of this millennium about this millennium. Give it a shot. At the very least, it will help you kill a couple of hours before aforementioned Star Wars #19 comes out.
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Oh, and there will be blood! Okay, Bill, what have we talked about? No threatening people on the message boards! All apologies. Let's start this over.
Oh, and There Will Be Blood! That film easily makes my Top 20 Best Films Ever. After all, what could speak more clearly about the rapacious greed of American society in the early-21st century than a film about the rapacious greed of Americans in the early-20th century? Watching it through my own rather unique filter I also thought it worked as a pretty fitting allegory for our country's Iraq adventures. I'll admit, the pickings in American cinema do seem a little slim, but there are plenty of bright spots.

PS: what is it with the whole "downloaded subtitles" thing? I'm with you... I can get them to work about half the time... the other half? My high-school Spanish isn't enough to get me through a French film like You're Sleeping, Nicole. I've had that one sitting on my hard drive a couple months as I search fruitlessly for the subtitles. The thing is, in my current mindset, I'll probably put all this work into finding the subtitles, watch 20 minutes of it and turn it off.

Oh, and I'll kindly refuse your offer to look at a couple Cassavettes clips. I think you need to do the same thing I did; get good and prepared in the manner you see fit, see how long you can watch Woman Under the Influence, then report back to us. It'll be like a book club... but shorter!
 
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Damn Coppola. I wish he'd do a Godfather prequel about the rise of Italian Socialism, circa 1860's to WWI at the expense of the colloquial family trades, at the expense of The People by ruling class ex-nobles (like Sollazzo probably was, an ex-Noble Infiltrator), which then gave rise to The Italian Defense League and The Black Hand. The Origins, before they were corrupted by the infiltrators.
When Michael was but a gleam in the eye of a child named Vito, and America was a land of Liberty.

And how this era mirrors The Great Society some 50 years later. And now.

My second choice for Americana Cinema would be "The OW Movie". Based on Occupy Wall Street, as told from The Mayors office. A bit of Paddy Chayefski and M*A*S*H*.
It could save Sean Penn, dammit!
 
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Aw shit! You know, if I say it to somebody, then they won't rip it.

About that prequel, apparently, Italian Socialism was the design to pay for pregnancies and child rearing in order to populate the nation in anticipation of an Industrial Revolution; by producing a massive workforce. And this was done by denying trade, farming and fishing, to the people as producers.

When the socialist population became too large, this overpopulation led to the friction that culminated in part in the World Wars, possibly as a way to reduce the overpopulation.

The Black Hand once blackmailed Enrico Caruso, to acquire funding for their cause. But me, I'm thinking that he let them do it as a Gentleman, as a means to help finance the cause without facing incrimination by The State.
 
@bill,
da tavarisch, i know it sounds like a blanket condemnation... which is all the more odd coming from me. for what it's worth, i apologise to my fellow americans. still, it would probably take a nice long joint-aided conversation to explain how i got from A to Z on modern american civ, and is very likely beyond practicality to try to do so here.

hmm, i don't think of you as a grumpy old man in any sense. you seem chipper, playful, very clever and eclectic. at least, those are what these little pieces of paper say that i just pulled out of a hat, so try not to be too flattered / insulted or anything.

@subtitles,
it's been a little while, but i was messing around with this site for my subtitles:
http://www.opensubtitles.org/en/search

seems like every distribution of a film needs a specific file, otherwise the timing is off. not just because of a timestamp issue, but because of the framerate and maybe one other factor, i think. but heck, maybe it's an easier process now.

@film club,
sounds like a plan, particularly since you've managed to work a small armload of suggestions in just now!
 
LOL! Jesus, but I did, didn't I? It's like I have Tourette's Syndrome, but I yell out movie titles. Titfuck. Well, most of the time I do.
 
1900. Yes, but no Black Hand. No story of how the people formed the organization, or the infiltration. There is still a lot to explore there, more than the first twenty minutes of Part II.
And you might have been closer by referencing "On the Waterfront".
 
Ah yes, though how about those jetmen...


Amazing stuff..
 
Nah... I wouldn't have been. On the Waterfront is pretty Italian-free. What you need is a great book about the mafia in New York. Would you like to know more?
 

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I'm gonna have to disagree on Kingsman. It's only worth watching if you haven't seen Kick-Ass, which is by the same writer and director and is pretty much the same movie, but for the fact this one has an English accent. Kid gets plucked from an ordinary life, he's a lean, mean killin' machine by the end. Along with other plot devices lifted straight from KA which I won't divulge lest the Spoiler God Shamash devour my soul. But it was nice to see that cute little thing that played the witch in the Harry Potter movies as the kid's mom. You remember... one of the adult witches with the pink hair that you just wanted to pick up and run off into the woods with?
 
Colin Firth rocked... hands down! Man, I don't know about Chappie. It's by the guy that did Elysium and that was incredibly bad. But he did do District 9, which was pretty good.
 
ruby651 said:
Colin Firth rocked... hands down! Man, I don't know about Chappie. It's by the guy that did Elysium and that was incredibly bad. But he did do District 9, which was pretty good.
Click to expand...

Kingsman was fun. I thought Chappie was worth watching. Not as entertaining as District 9, but not NEAR as bad as Elysium... holy hell, that was boring.
 
And what was with Jodie Foster? She seemed to think she was playing Snidely Whiplash from the Dudley Dooright cartoons.
 
That was Jodie Foster with the Dudley stuff?
She's been around since I got ripped by Paul Schrader while taking a shit. The walls in this joint have ears, where the cockroaches crawl through.
That's why DeNiro drops by for the Doritos...the taxi man vet, Capone, and the Fockers.

Are you talkin' to me?

EDIT: Hey Bill. You're in Kansas. What's the story about the cicadas?

http://abcnews.go.com/US/kansas-reporter-bugged-swarming-cicadas/story?id=31673135
 
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There was a dude who shot pool at the teen rec center around '68, but he wasn't connected to the school and was a little older. "Bobby".
 
I was in Kansas! Now I'm rocked in the gentle sub-90-degree weather of Wisconsin which has been pretty cicada-free since I moved here.

Bill's Story About the Cicadas

1. I've never seen one this early in the year and never seen one before dusk. So that video's pretty weird. Maybe they read the Grasshopper's Guide to Good Eating ca. 1932 and they're munching their way across the state as I write this.
2. They are amazingly annoying. They're about the size of a pretty fat thumb, they make a teeth-grinding buzzing sound and they give not a single shit for anything in their way. Humans, doors, walls that the doors lead to... all just stuff to bounce off of to get to where they're going. Which I always assumed was Hell, to serve their unholy master.
3. They shed. It's gross. Really gross if you're barefoot. Let's move on.
4. Cats and cicadas don't mix! Not for humans, at least. Not really for the cicadas, either. But cats can't get enough of them. Something the size of a human thumb that flies? And buzzes? Yeah, make sure to bring that home as fast as you can!

Here endeth the lesson.
 
O've considered that cats are not about feasting on water-borne fish, but are more likely Insectivores. Like bats and rats, the cats have uniform teeth with small sharp points all around.

Would you happen to know if cats also love to munch on Grasshoppers?
That might be an explanation for why cats are so prolific, if they depend on the literal hoardes of locusts and cicadas for their native food. KFC...not so much. The cats that I've fed at the door ignore the smaller finches and avoid the pigeons and crows. But I've seen them flip crickets with their paws for a tasty snack. Crunch!

They'll also swallow roaches, not because they enjoy them. They don't favor them at all. It's only their way of removing them from sight. And if the cats had hands, then things would surely be different.
 
I have to back up now. One of my cats yawned at me. A cat yawns when he or she is saying "It's alright", else, that she is comfortable with you.
But in yawning, she exposed her long saber teeth. Like eye teeth. I think those are for small animals, though I think size matters, and those smaller, though proportionally long, saber teeth are probably dandy for piercing those thumb-sized insects.
 
I grew up in Kansas (Kansas City... not on the prairie) and we had one big tree in the backyard and at a certain time of the year would be covered in hundreds of cicada shells. I'd sneak up behind my sister and attach them to her back when she wasn't paying attention.

------

A couple weeks ago I saw a movie called "Ex Machina", which I thought was great. It's about a guy who works for an Apple/Google type company and wins a contest to go stay with the founder, a Steve Jobs type guy, who has a place out in the middle of nowhere, and he's doing experiments with robotic AI's and this guy gets to interact with one of them for some tests.

It is very good and very creepy and made me think about AI in way I never really considered before. Well worth the watch if you're into that kind of stuff. It's a thinker.
 
i love cicadas, but i'm sure that's a lot easier to do as a suburbanite than as a prairie-dweller or someone in japan, for example. apparently in japan they appear in such numbers and produce such a racket as to threaten permanent hearing loss for those without protection.


CicadaPeriodical01.jpg



i see there is also a nice movie called "cicadas" (2000):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212873/
 
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