"Might as well be random."
Echoes of AMLO's mañanera...

More dystopian AU than parallel fiction or reality. Hard for me to read it as a 'satire' even, there are definitely funny elements to the American-fracture that Garland describes but it feels like an entrenched setting, building off sheer but efficient decor.

I think it's salient, and a fun 'prestige' inversion on a wellworn B-movie or pulp genre setting.

"This was a TV special made for Showtime Networks to promote the Showtime Premiere of "The Blair Witch Project." It was the first thing I was ever hired to direct, and to this day it's one of the strangest ideas of mine that anyone's ever green-lit."

Basso ostinato.


Gazing into fading light; aware of coming dusk and night. Tension—terror slithers in darkness. // Superimposition : Alana is the fading light. Do not go gentle into that good night!


Cooper. What's that? God, my heart is pounding.
Alana. Oh s**t. It's him.


Cooper watches in horror as his past and future catch up to him.


Heroic fanfare of synaesthetic lights : confidence, concentration, dominance. A behemoth taking baby steps—one minor blip and the whole game's up.


Alana. God, I feel your heart pounding.
Cooper. Pay attention.

Quote from: Find Your Magali on April 02, 2024, 10:23:42 PMI'm thinking you could absolutely have made a Cabin Fever/The Hitcher type horror film with Alana and Cooper being terrorized by Bradley.

Ohh, I'd actually love to see PTA make that kind of a horror film.

I'm thinking you could absolutely have made a Cabin Fever/The Hitcher type horror film with Alana and Cooper being terrorized by Bradley.

1:25:13–1:34:12

What if we receive the following images not from Licorice Pizza but as if from a serious hardcore action picture? Are the shots convincing in that alternate context?











In retrospect—the Truck scene may be absorbed as an "out-of-town" tryout for PTA's next?

Sick list. I've seen a good half to maybe 3/4-ish of what's on there (shoutout Meshes of the Afternoon and Funeral Parade of Roses :D) <3<3

The most delicious irony of all would be if it becomes such a box office success that the Academy shuns it.

Quote from: Find Your Magali on March 28, 2024, 10:10:38 AMcommercial bonanza.

Why muse on possible grosses? An idle pastime; but also a hope. What if, say, PTA has a 2001 : A Space Odyssey–type movie waiting in the b.g., a production to ramp up only if the (previously unthinkable) opportunity arises—i.e., a colossal hit awarding him Nolanesque carte blanche?

With Leo in the picture :

2010 Inception $839 million
2012 Django Unchained $426 million
2013 The Great Gatsby $353.6 million
2013 The Wolf of Wall Street $406.9 million
2015 The Revenant $533 million
2019 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood $377.6 million
2023 Killers of the Flower Moon $157 million

Glinda the Good Witch believes Leo can absolutely still hit $500 mil and higher without breaking a sweat—with the right project;—and it helps that IMAX is in the Situation.

e.g.,

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) $1,495,696,292

*

The Upcoming PTA Event Film should be the smartest blockbuster of summer 2025. 

The current Situation may be the most crucial in PTA's career; possibly just-about equivalent in criticality to "getting his first break".