i think we have a winner on our hands!
finally,
after years of searching,
someone is willing to take their clothes off to be in my movie!
“i’m thrilled to introduce
the only one of us that i’m paying
to be a part of this voluntary production i’m arranging!”
what do you want for dinner tonight?
kobe beef?
i’m buying.
the rest of them, give ’em ramen with egg!
now stroke, stroke, stroke for Sadie Benning’s sake!
“You have a room where you go inside and you lock the door, and I’m not even allowed in! How come you get a room like that?”
– Samantha Mathis, getting nowhere with River Phoenix about the whole “room” issue
“Well, I’ve lived here for a while, and I enjoy the space, I pay the rent…”
How many of you knew there existed a River Phoenix “gotta be a country music star” movie? That was the primary reason I chose to watch “The Thing Called Love”, controversies aside: it’s a nightmare to find anything I would consider “general viewing” in my house (ie. my wife hogs the TV & often complains about my movie choices). She was a ranch-hand in another life, so to say my spouse is a fan of country music is like saying bananas have potassium. And for the first half of “The Thing Called Love”, I thought I had found a winner: a making-it-big-in-Nashville odyssey with Samantha Mathis (Daisy from the “Super Mario Bros” movie) directed by the “Don of the Down & Dirty” Mr. Bogdanovich (“The Last Picture Show”), with music that my wife actually knew the words to? To say, then, that finishing the movie was disillusioning is pre-emptive, since no one really talks about the film: either as a Phoenix movie (even though it was his last-completed before his death) or a Bogdanovich movie. But I’ll tell you why anyway. It’s hot outside.
Continue reading
France’s resident moviemaker/troublemaker Gaspar Noé (“Enter the Void”; “that movie where Monica Bellucci gets raped for ten minutes”) has a new movie out called “Vortex” . It’s one of the best new movies I’ve seen in the last 10 years. That’s a mean feat. Discuss:
Vortex is about a small family – an elderly couple, living alone; and their son – dealing with the late-stage dementia of the matriarch. And while in many ways it – aesthetically & thematically – slides nicely into the controversial director’s filmography at this point in his life (he’s turning 60 next year), it’s also unique amongst his back-catalogue. In this way and others, it’s sure to draw comparison with Michael Haneke’s 2012 movie “Amour” (also about an elderly couple and their offspring dealing with the deterioration of the wife). With Amour, a well-known & incendiary director took his unique cinematic language and translated it successfully to a serious, contemplative “chamber piece”. I’ve always wanted to call a movie a “chamber piece” and now I can. Twice! Vortex is a “chamber piece”: a serious-toned character drama in-and-around one location.
Continue reading
theory of a daskeman 