Modern Movies

My knees are almost totally ruined so I've been watching movies instead of walking. Someone showed me a website where every movie under the sun is available to stream. Once you wade through some pop up jungles you watch anything. I'd post the link here but I don't want to encourage illegal streaming.

I watched Spring Breakers, by Harmony Korine, and while you'd think it would be for the bikini girls, it's not. I like Harmony Korine's approach to his modern reality. Bully, Gummo, Julian Donkey Boy...Kids...he gives me hope that someone actually will risk being unpopular and starving but will make movies that are true to his creative ideal. Because the story line of Breakers veers into insanity, a Spike Lee film with skinny white girls, I can't say I liked it. The scenes don't add up...and the characters seem to be developed on the spot.
I totally get that some 19 year old girls will go to St. Petersburg, Florida to "go wild" and show their ass and snort coke. So what? I already knew that. I'm a bit puzzled that this is true but I'm an anti-social loser so that's understandable. I wonder why a girl would grow up today and suddenly decide getting drunk and stoned and oil wrestling another nude girl while a bunch of men pretend to piss beer into their mouths is cool. When did that become cool? Korine has absolutely no answer, but he seemed to be entranced with the ritual results. The directing and editing was titillating. But I'm not sure what Korine was making a statement about. I really don't. The bleak amorality of Spring Break, or the life and death decisions of gold-toothed gangbangers? Because I don't think there was a case made that they are equivalent. For a minute it seemed that Korine had become a director of a higher budget "Girls Gone Wild" video, which would make him artistic dirt in my judgmental eyes. Like he was standing behind the camera saying, "Now, give the gun barrel a blow job..." and the actresses obeyed and Korine was thinking he was capturing something enigmatic when in reality he was merely manipulating girls who wanted to get paid...which is what Girls Gone Wild does.
There's a scene in "Apocalypse Now" when a Playboy Bunny does a dance routine for the Vietnam grunts. It's classic and the use of Suzie Q makes my mouth water.

But no one is going to confuse Apocalypse Now with a tit flick. Call me crazy, but Spring Breakers actually has a shadow of Apocalypse Now but gets lost on the way to the finish line.
What was missing was a line like..."Charlie's idea of R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat..."
Hey, Harmony Korine, GET THE FUCK OFF MY LAWN!

Paupers Field Trip

Back To The Future

The staging of this film is outstanding. There's a scene when Marty first meets his grandparents that's all one take and timed with precision. When I was 14 years old I didn't know I was seeing real talent and excellence. It shows me that it takes work to make a good movie. The generic directing of today basically reduces each scene to composite parts...allowing actors and directors to do the bare minimum. There's no effort involved. Furthermore, acting has taken a place to real life "personalities" who then basically play themselves.

A few notes:
1) The red-headed student who cuts in on George is the Red-Headed drunk on the park bench back in 1985. But that suggests George had pushed the red headed kid in the original 1955 because Marty recognizes him in the altered 1985.
2) I love that George is the agent of change in his own life ultimately. He changes and that's the movie. And the Lorraine/Marty romance is cut short because Lorraine realizes something is wrong when she kisses him. It's all tied up neatly.
3) However; The photograph that is symbolic of 1985 reality being erased would not suddenly spring back to original form when George kisses Lorraine. Because that reality has been totally erased, Marty's brother and sister would never have staged that photo. The future changed and so that photo can't exist, for the same reasons that it was being erased as the future was being altered, it would've been erased completely, but Marty would've technically existed. But his parents led totally different lives from that point on so that photo couldn't exist.
4) The movie on the Town Theater marquee in the original 1985 is "Orgy: American Style" but when Marty comes back from 1955 (where the movie is "The Atomic Kid") it is now an "Assembly of Christ" meeting place.

Wolf Walk

It seems that the codecs for video format finally caught up with my archaic Windows Movie Maker and now all video that I record with my cheap digital camera can also be edited. This was not the case for the last 7 years. As .AVI required Apple specific video editing software. This should explain why the video ends when I walk up and turn the camera off. Because if I wanted to make a neat edit I would have to transfer that file to my computer, convert it with some bootleg software that left a watermark on the video, then import it into WMM, then edit the first and last 4 seconds off, save the file as a movie, then preview it and finally upload the video to my blog.  Now WMM works. But I'm still going to leave the last few seconds on because it seems in-genuine to cut them out, like I'm some kind of hip movie star in my own fantasy film...with make up artists waiting nearby to make me pretty. I'm not. I have prostate pain and my back aches. The bottoms of my feet are a horrifying paper mache type texture like a 90 year old diabetic. I have dry mouth syndrome. I HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS THAN THE LAST 4 SECONDS OF MY VIDEOS. My normal videos are real. This wolf quest video is supposed to be commercial so I can justify the edits.

This Newfoundland footage was taken with my video camera, a different animal, in fact, a camera that broke from cold and heat exposure two winters ago, so I had to buy a different camera to capture the video to my laptop, which also broke over the winter. It's all so complicated. But this latest development means no more uncut songs because I don't want to bother getting my video camera out. I'm boring myself with this kind of talk.

The footage is not good...but I have to concentrate on finishing the video for the sake of the wolf. Even though I have sold out to corporate ventures I can still pay tribute. My hypocrisy doesn't deter from the message.

Leaking

The exhausting hunt lead me here.

Not as important as NSA secrets, but this leaking window caused me so much grief. It's right over my bed, and the water would actually pour on my back as I drove. I replaced the sealant, my attitude, drilled holes, made a shrine to Shiva, everything but the rain still poured in. But I looked for the leak last time there was a tornado and I think it was the very edge of the glass. We'll find out when it rains for 40 days and nights soon.
These might be the worst designed windows ever.

Round The Bend

"Perhaps the road has a curve in it. Perhaps it is necessary to go round the bend a little before you can see clearly to the end."

Homage

Here are some more words that aren't my own. Mainly because if you can't improve on something then it's prudent to plagiarizer.

"I inspect some of the work you do upon these engines and these aeroplanes," Connie said. "God, the All-Seeing and All-Knowing, He inspects it all.....With every piece of work you do, with every nut you tighten down, with every filter that you clean or every tappet that you set, pause at each stage and turn to Mecca, and fold your hands, and humbly ask the All-Seeing God to put into your heart the knowledge of whether the work that you have done has been good or ill." - Connie Shak Lin

 Round The Bend by Nevil Shute