A Short Parody of Catherine Breillat’s 2001 Film “À ma sœur!” (“Fat Girl”)
CONTAINS HUGE SPOILERS!
Management would like to acknowledge & thank the participation of the involved, for their assistance in producing the above video.
Tag: movie
Jay’s Take: The House on the Edge of the Park
A spoiler-free revisionist movie review.
Ruggero Deodato’s “House on the Edge of the Park” is straight up “genre trash”. Terrible movie. Review over. For those wondering why this lesser-discussed grindhouse rape-revenge “most disturbing movie of all-time” nominee is so bad, let’s talk. Come on, I know this spot over by the park where we can groove, baby. I’ll be quick (probably not).
Selected Scenes: Thief
A spoiler-heavy single-scene film analysis & review.
Are there directors you are familiar with who you think you know everything about? You swear you’ve seen ALL their movies, you understand their technique, and when a new movie of theirs’ comes out you recognize their trademarks & make sure all your friends know them too? “That’s why you’ll always find me in the kitchen at parties.” I’m like that with Paul Thomas Anderson, and Michael Mann, apparently. When I first started writing this “Selected Scenes”, I had intended it to be a “Jay’s Take”: I was convinced I knew enough about Mann’s filmography that I was qualified to write a lengthy, in-depth review, as opposed to a quick discussion (since it isn’t like the film doesn’t have a Criterion edition that includes a wealth of supplemental material of more qualified people saying the exact same things… right?). Yes, I have seen a handful of Mann’s movies: some more than once. But to think I am an expert is a fool’s errand: I haven’t seen “Ali” or “Collateral”, nor “The Last of the Mohicans”, or 2015’s career-ending box office dud “Blackhat” (and you think I WOULD have seen that, just to know what the fuss was about). Did you know there’s a Michael Mann horror movie about Nazis and the occult, called “The Keep”? I didn’t, and it sounds awesome! Although, in a way, I know it will also be incredibly disappointing. That’s where I’m at from what I HAVE seen of his, and “Thief” – although it is early Mann, man – follows this methodology to a tee. Even with the seeds of doubt, I still think I know more about Michael Mann’s movies than I platonically should, and I think you’ll find out that you do too.
Continue readingSelected Scenes: Bad Lieutenant
A spoiler-free single-scene film review & analysis.
Do you ever have a bad day on the road? Sometimes, I get a kick out of pretending that asshole who just cut me off has a life far worse than mine (even though they drive a shiny Escalade with a bumper-sticker that says “My Other Whale Is My Boat”).
Par-example: today at 3 PM, near a school, my wife and I are trying to get out of our Chinese-reflexology foot massage clinic’s underground parking (or CRFMCUP). My wife was driving, and – men, let’s commiserate here – she’s not the best driver. Truth-be-told we’ve never been in an accident, but I sometimes fear for my life just the same. Now picture a four-way traffic stop, and we’re trying to turn left. Everyone driving straight is coming from the Middle School, and left is bumper-to-bumper because of construction two blocks down. My wife pulls into the middle of the intersection – not letting anyone turn right – only to be denied access to the last spot before the light at the end of the gridlock from some person & their kid in a pick-up. We pull in behind him & stick-out ass-end just as the light changes and we start moving again. It doesn’t sound so bad describing it – considering it took all-of five-whole-seconds out of my day – but I assure you that I was on Death’s door.
Continue readingJay’s Take: The Godfather Part III (Coda, whatever)
A revisionist & spoiler-heavy movie review and personal analysis.
A Roman, divorced from his wife, was blamed by friends for the separation. “Was she not beautiful?” they chorused. “Was she not chaste?” The Roman, holding out his shoe for them to see, asked if it were not good-looking and well made. “Yet,” he added, “none of you can tell where it pinches me.”
– Adapted from Plutarch by Reader’s Digest
When I was in Grade 9, a few friends and I got together one afternoon and shot a movie on my Dad’s ancient Hi-8 Panasonic camcorder. Grade 9, how old would we all have been… 15? In this riveting independent feature (that took hours to film and only yielded 10-minutes of useable footage), there is a gang war between humans and bottles. Anthropomorphic, Ebonic-spouting plastic Pepsi bottles with angry faces scribbled on them in black Sharpie. There were three scenes: the prologue, with the bottles encroaching on the humans’ turf; a “driving” scene where the humans go to the bottles’ hideout (where all us underage-teenagers pretended to drive around in my friend’s mother’s sedan, which was parked in the garage); and a final confrontation where the humans kicked the shit out of the bottles. We win, The End. It sounds ridiculous just writing it here, and it WAS ridiculous, and a good memory. But – being the fledging cineaste I was – it wasn’t good enough. It could have been better. So I tried to “improve” it by adding 90-minutes of stock footage stolen from both poorly-converted VHS tapes of Hollywood movies and the public domain database that came off the editing software CD I was using.
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theory of a daskeman 