Shit Happening

[jenkins]

potential best Shawn Levy movie since Real Steel which is the best blue collar futuristic movie ever so far

there's a literary similar concept novel

A deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, and escaping the roles we are forced to play—by the author of the infinitely inventive How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: He’s merely Generic Asian man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but he is always relegated to a prop. Yet every day he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. At least that’s what he has been told, time and time again. Except by one person, his mother. Who says to him: Be more.
 
Playful but heartfelt, a send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes, Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterly novel yet.

[jenkins]

the disruptive component is the idea of a Ryan Reynolds Cinematic Universe innit. i mean he don’t impress me neither but he’s happened

[jenkins]

as last year's um Ron Howard Republican Book Adaptation was converted into a Misc Thread, so thereby was Free Guy transformed into a Shit Happening Thread

[jenkins]

from the director of Fantastic Four and that teenage superhero movie whatever it was called. he's also the writer and, oh, editor. costarring Kyle MacLachlan. Lynch's dp. Music by El-P

Was originally intended to be theatrically released but due to the COVID-19 pandemic these plans were dropped in favor of a direct-to-digital release. May 12, 2020

[jenkins]

You Should Have Left is an adaptation of a Daniel Kehlmann novel, written and directed by David Koepp. it's listed as Completed

the book is a breeze of a read and it doesn't make its The Shining influence unclear. the movie not the book


um the line between reality and dream becomes blurred for a writer owing to a mountain setting

i'm sort of fascinated by the idea of being a marvelously gifted individual who's magnetized by imitating King, Kubrick, or their powers combined. like theoretically fascinated

[jenkins]

that previous photo is slightly blurry which drives me insane and unfortunately an insane man can't make the minor effort to fix it, though i did concentrate when taking a photo of my favorite line in the book, also placing a red box around it



"The devil built it and a wizard destroyed it, with God's help." i def most like the part about God helping the wizard destroy a tower the devil built

this is a better book than it will be a movie maybe, because it's seriously an easy read, and it says things like "The hall expanded, and I ran, stumbled, caught myself, kept running toward the stairs" and "[...]in addition to the three dimensions you have to imagine another three from the other side, or actually from within . . ." i was into unfamiliar spooky voices the father heard, and people appearing from nowhere! new doors appearing! strange reflections! it was so fun how it kept scaring me

i fully support its sense of adventure while also thinking that it doesn't exactly rattle my soul, however well it's written, when a father and his daughter walk down a mountain to arrive back at the top. i'm like oh, okay, overall. that's why existentialism is my thing

[WorldForgot]

from the director of Fantastic Four and that teenage superhero movie whatever it was called. he's also the writer and, oh, editor. costarring Kyle MacLachlan. Lynch's dp. Music by El-P

Was originally intended to be theatrically released but due to the COVID-19 pandemic these plans were dropped in favor of a direct-to-digital release. May 12, 2020

CAPONE's Madness is a Breath of Fresh Air

This is a go-for-broke movie on every level, from Tom Hardy's ferocious lead performance to Trank's aggressively non-conventional script to the grisly tableaux Trank gleefully parades Capone through as he tries to get inside this dying, increasingly-insane gangster's mind. The discourse surrounding this film has already become a reductive echo chamber of "lol Tom Hardy poops his pants" observations, which is pretty stunning when you consider how much more there is to chew on here. I'm honestly not sure what would motivate anyone to make this particular movie, but the fact that Josh Trank's the one behind it makes the whole thing even chewier. Given that, it's the sort of film you might feel compelled to decode, but I suspect that would ultimately prove to be a dead end. Capone can't trust his mind any more than we can trust the film itself (both are unreliable narrators of the highest order), and what clues we think we've found would likely turn out to be red herrings.

You see? Fascinating.

There's very little narrative to CAPONE: it's 1946, and Alphonse ("Fonzo" to virtually everyone in the film) Capone has been sent home early from prison thanks to his deteriorating mental condition. He, his family (including his supernaturally patient wife, played by a stellar Linda Cardellini), and a small army of gardeners, servants and handymen fill out a massive estate in Palm Island, Florida, where everyone does their best to navigate Fonzo's outbursts and occasional cruelty. He might sit for hours in a chair, chewing a cigar and looking out across the lake behind his house (Is someone watching him from the other side? Are those...binoculars?), only to suddenly explode in a fit of mush-mouthed obscenities. What caused the outburst? Who knows? Whatever's going on inside Capone's mind as he rides out this final year is not pretty, and it's everyone else's job to stay out of his way ... and, when necessary, to clean up after him.

There are dangling plot threads. $10M which Capone may or may not have hidden somewhere on the property, and the various hangers-on and government stooges who seek to get their hands on it. An illegitimate son who appears to be in cahoots with some of those stooges. A doctor (Kyle MacLachlan) who's trying to avoid prison time. These threads exist but they're never fully explored or resolved; the vast majority of the film takes place within Capone's sizzling, collapsing brain, and what we find there is a swirling miasma of disconnected memories, simmering fears and rage. As crazy as this sounds, the film I kept thinking of while watching CAPONE was Pablo Larraín's JACKIE, another film which was more concerned with impressing a feeling and tone upon its audience than a traditional narrative (that CAPONE's score, gorgeously rendered by Run The Jewels' El-P, also sounds a little like Mica Levi's JACKIE score only serves to make the comparison feel less crazy).

[jenkins]

i recently read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is a marvelous book, that has been adapted, though i'm in no rush to see its adaptation. what interests me is i learned that just this year Elisabeth Moss acted as Shirley Jackson in a biopic directed by Josephine Decker. the release date is June 5. it played at sundance and has thus been reviewed

[jenkins]

Written and Directed by Nicholas Ashe Bateman
Executive Produced by Shane Carruth and Lawrence Inglee

[wilder]

Wow that looks different. Good different.

[jenkins]

i liked it better after my second viewing. sometimes i often say i want to experience the movie freshly, without the trailer, but i think that works best when i already know i’ll like the movie, and on occasion one has to get to know a movie in order to feel comfortable

to me there’s a sense of rigidity that suppresses the ecstasy of infinity but idk sometimes you gotta serious chat about love and beauty, so i gotta loosen up to get serious

[jenkins]

Shane Carruth Discusses The World-Building In The New Indie Fable, ‘The Wanting Mare’

The first thing I wanted to ask you is how did you get involved with the film?

Here’s the deal. I’m not involved with the film. I didn’t make this. I just know Nick was in CoatWolf [Productions]; Evan has a movie coming out called “Canary.” It’s gonna pretty much destroy everybody all day for years. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen and he’s still not done with it. So it’s still getting better. In the meantime, Nick did a lot of work, a lot of 2D, CG editing. Making it. Perfecting it. 

And after that, he knew that he was his own Alpha Wolf and he needed to make his own thing. And so they separated. I loved it. Because I get to be friends with both of them. And so Nick, he’s been building this world. If I talk to him to call him, then we’ll talk about “The Wanting Mare,” about Whithren. We’ll talk about cities. And after a while you have a map in your head and you’re like, “Oh God. This guy’s only telling you a fraction of the story of how this works.” But I can pull out shit right now about what’s coming next. And it blows my mind, the ideas that he has. But you know, it’s not time for that. Still, the guy made a world, and now he is taking a moment. It’s so good.

I found myself gravitating toward the mythos that’s been created around this world of horses and different continents. There’s that first aerial shot that’s a map. Immediately I was thinking, “What’s that dot? That dot?”

Totally. Totally. And that’s what I mean. And of course, I mean that’s not real. That’s just him being awesome with Blender. He’s amazing. And here’s the thing: the guy’s going to get promoted like a CG 2D artist, like a Neill Blomkamp kind of guy. “Oh, okay. That’s a skill. I get it. Cool.”

That’s not the case with this guy, dude. Like yes, that stuff. But he did it out of necessity. It doesn’t mean that the literature is less. The literature is real. In the trailer it says, “If you’re not going to get me across, then you’ll just have to forget me. I’ll forget you. You forget me.” That is not somebody who’s obsessed [solely]  with using CG-like rendering, right? This is literature. It’s just in this day and age, some of us have to come up with clever ways to get it across.

Something that really interested me was the ecological theme in the film. There’s a scene where someone turns into dust and is consumed by a horse, which on its face feels fantastical, but is actually grounded in realism. As you know, we ultimately return to the ground and become the mulch for the grass the horses graze on. There’s a Whitman transcendentalist quality to it, which reminds me of “Upstream Color.” Could you speak on the return to nature theme that’s prevalent in “The Wanting Mare.”

I’m thinking. Alright, well I’m stuck. I’m in a dichotomy right now. Cause what you said could be true. It could be. I can’t fight it, but I’m not here to say that at all. I don’t say that there’s similarities.

I mean, you know my deal with “Upstream,” right?  I didn’t know that I was stealing from “Walden.” I don’t think I was stealing from “Walden.” I really don’t. But I do see it. I see the similarities. I see what I got from it; what I stole…Maybe that’s the wrong word. So I’m not going to do that with Nick, but um… 

I wouldn’t call it theft. Just a theme that feels recurrent, like with anything that ends up feeling somewhat universal.

I could try to do it. I could make a connection, but I’d be lying. I’m still watching his film. I watch it once in a while. I watched the trailer. It’s one of these things. It’s like you leave the theater, you know, after “Phantom Thread” or whatever you saw and you’re like, “Okay, well I don’t know if I saw a whole movie there, but I just want to talk about it.”

What’s that Tarantino movie that Tony Scott directed starring Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette?

“True Romance”

There we go. “True Romance.” Okay. It’s like that. There we go. Great. Because in “True Romance,” after they see the movie, Patricia Arquette, says she wants to go have a piece of pie and talk about it. That’s literally the only reason I even brought it up was to recall that scene.

I think one of the values you get from making something that’s a little bit obtuse, a little bit insular, a little bit inside itself is that you allow the audience to walk away and have something to talk about. And I don’t mean it as a trick. I don’t mean you should make movies obtuse just to make people have a reason to go get gelato afterward. I just mean that there is such a thing in film that is just like the greatest book you ever read, and you can’t wait to tell your wife about it. And have her read it; and you can talk about it in depth.

What have you taken away from “The Wanting Mare?” How has it connected with you?

It’s the women, generation after generation, that have the same dream. They have the same longing. They know there’s something they should probably do, they think, but they don’t know what it is. So they live in this place, but only once in a while can you actually ever leave. And so eventually the third one decides she has to go. She’s gotta get out of this. It’s “Thunder Road.” “We gotta get out of place. We’ve got to go to a city. Pack up. You want to get in the car with me?” That kind of stuff.

In the meantime, you have a lot of men running around with guns that are worried about tickets and horses. That’s the bit about money. That’s the bit about dollars. That’s a bit about coercion. Moving and pressing, and you mix them both up. Then you have something like a spirit that’s got to get out of that fucking town.

i'm not sure if he was the right person to interview for this

[jenkins]

have decided to make it a personal mission to appreciate this movie

[jenkins]

Carruth’s executive producing gig has dovetailed into a trailer pitch for his next movie

https://vimeo.com/23608364

[Drenk]

A Topiary won't be made, they just made public the mock trailer. The script is available on the world wide web. You can see a still from the creatures of A Topirary in Upstream Color, by the way.