Lost Transmissions [2019)

This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

QAnon.

Katharine O’Brien should have failed film school.

Or she should enroll in film school, submit this film for her final project, and then flunk out.

This is the most unartistic hunk of shit I have ever sat through.

For fuck’s sake.

It takes a special lack of talent to make a Simon Pegg movie suck.

But this bitch did it.

And she had some help.

Juno Temple is a horrible, talentless fucking actress.

Jesus God.

So bad.

Especially next to the amazing talents of Simon Pegg.

Pegg is decent here.

Juno Temple is all-world bad.

Born of a communist family.

Makes sense.

Nina Temple.

U.K. commies.

Nina.

Sister of Julien Temple.

Nepotism.

No-talent Juno gets this gig.

Julien Temple has talent.

A lot of it.

Juno Temple has no talent.

At all.

Whatsoever.

But just when you think this film can’t get any worse, Harley fucking Quinn pops up courtesy of vapid null Alexandra Daddario.

Lots of nepotism.

Emilio Q. Daddario.

Connecticut.

Democratic Party.

OSS.

Fort Meade.

You are watching a movie.

One in which Nakasone kisses Michael Hayden’s ass.

And Colin Powell’s ass.

Who else inflicted this film upon the world?

Filip Jan Rymsza.

Shame!!!

The music isn’t horrible.

Hugo Nicolson does alright.

Gravitas Ventures should have chucked this film directly in the nearest trash bin.

Straight-to-video would have been too good a fate for this moronic feature.

Tribeca Film Festival should have categorically denied this film a venue.

Because it is utter shite.

De Niro loves the Chinese commies.

Li Shaohong.

Liu Fendou.

Li Yang.

Keep the money flowing to De Niro and Tribeca.

Then we have to suffer through the maudlin coda with Tao Okamoto.

Nepotism everywhere.

Richard Harris’s son Jamie.

No talent anywhere except for Simon Pegg.

And Hugo Nicolson.

But mainly Pegg.

This is a fucking movie.

Q: What makes for a good movie?

A: The exact opposite of all the rubbish crammed into this godawful flick

Nepotism.

Robert Schwartzman in his cousin Sofia Coppola’s films.

Sofia has talent.

Quite a bit of talent.

Unlike the director of Lost Transmissions.

What ever happened to Q?

Almost one year since the stolen election.

Our military cucked out.

A bunch of fucking pussies.

Commies.

Mark Milley.

Michael Gilday.

Lloyd Austin.

Commies all.

Fuck ’em!

Talia Shire’s son.

Talia had talent.

A lot of it.

Unlike Juno Temple.

Who has none.

Then you get Schwartzman’s nepotism brother Jason.

Jason Schwartzman.

Band Rooney for Robert.

Geffen.

Must be nice.

Phantom Planet for Jason.

Epic MCA Geffen (2) Interscope.

Must be nice.

Polish Jews.

You don’t say…

Italian Catholic.

Ok.

Uncle Francis Ford.

Cousin Nicolas Cage.

Nepotism.

Jewish Catholic.

Uh huh.

Weezer.

Lame.

The Strokes.

Must be nice.

But the main offender is the screenplay.

By director Katharine O’Brien.

For fuck’s sake.

Ten minutes worth of material spun out into a 105-minute wank fest.

Yeah.

O’Brien does not have control of her craft.

No one (not even herself) should have funded this folly.

This film has no plot.

…and not in a cool way!

It is just the Jew bitch with the big nose chasing Simon Pegg around screaming “Theo” for 105 minutes.

Lame, nepotistic tripe.

The Prague International Film Festival should be ashamed for enabling this shit.

Best actor?

Ok.

Best actress?!?

You gotta be fucking kidding me!!!

And the GRAND PRIX???????

God damn.

ANYTHING would be better than this film.

Give me 105 minutes of Czech TV commercials.

It would be better than this.

Trump loves Pfizer, Israel, and America [maybe].

In that order.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-i-got-the-pfizer-125703879.html?guccounter=1

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/trump-says-israel-literally-owned-congress-in-interview-683759

Trump lost me when he started shilling for Pfizer.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html

CDC lowballs it.

https://openvaers.com/index.php

For a person who supposedly reads several newspapers a day, Donald Trump sure is one dumb motherfucker.

He owes at least 9,367 apologies to the families of those who perished due to the vaccines he rushed to market through Operation Warp Speed.

But he’s not fighting for you, Mr. and Mrs. America.

As you are losing your jobs because of the Biden vaccine mandate.

Trump wants us to fight the rigged election.

But he is not fighting for us.

He is ENCOURAGING people to get these deadly shots.

How many newspapers does one have to read in order to pretty quickly conclude that the COVID vaccines are neither safe nor effective?

And in case you wanna pretend Pfizer (the most deadly vaccine in America according to VAERS data) didn’t get any OWS funding, you must admit that the MASSIVE U.S. government preorder allowed them to scale up production.

It was an advance.

Hell…Trump even funded the AstraZeneca clot shot.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219231756/https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/explaining-operation-warp-speed/index.html

N.B. Janssen = Johnson & Johnson [vaccines developed in the Netherlands by Belgian JnJ subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals]

Recapping:

Johnson & Johnson [Janssen] $456 mil. + $1 bil. = $1.456 bil.

AstraZeneca at least $1.2 bil.

Pfizer $1.95 bil.

Moderna $4.1 bil.

Again, Trump RUSHED these vaccines to market.

And left us at the mercy of Joe Biden and the globalists who are now killing us with them.

Either we can take the #NeitherSafeNorEffective vaccines, or we can lose our jobs.

We can be refused organ transplant surgery.

We can be kicked out of the U.S. armed forces.

We can be fired from NYPD and FDNY.

Where’s Trump?

Sure would be nice if he called the vaccines bullshit (which they most certainly are).

He is so at ease in calling bullshit on ANYTHING in this world, but not when it comes to these vaccines.

Ask yourself Y.

Let’s go, Brandon!

-PD

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Lovelace [2013)

“I know it when I see it”

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

Obscene.

Pornography.

What is pornography?

As of two years ago, the sixth most visited site by American internet users was Pornhub.

https://www.businessinsider.com/internet-users-access-porn-more-than-twitter-wikipedia-and-netflix-2018-9

Two of the other top 15 sites for American internet users: XNXX and XVideos.

The latter two sites are both owned by WGCZ Holding.

Pornhub is owned by MindGeek.

WGCZ Holding’s “country of origin” (?) is France, yet their headquarters is in Prague.

MindGeek’s “country of origin” [I suppose this means “where the company started”] is Canada, but its headquarters is in the country of Cyprus.

In our current coronavirus pandemic, it is not hard to find information about the world-wide INCREASE in pornographic viewing.

So it seems only fitting that we come to this wonderful film.

It is a beautiful film.

As beautiful as Amanda Seyfried.

But also a sad film.

Reminiscent at times of Requiem for a Dream.

There are moments, in both of these films, when their respective sadnesses could be viewed as “loss of the soul”.

In Requiem for a Dream, heroin steals souls.

In Lovelace, the porn industry threatens to steal Linda Lovelace’s soul.

But what we get in the movie Lovelace is something more specific.

Spousal abuse.

Domestic violence.

Human trafficking.

Sex slavery.

Spousal sexual abuse.

It’s not very titillating stuff.

It turns the stomach.

It’s like watching Ike and Tina as a fly on the wall.

I’ve seen Deep Throat.

I think it’s an excellent film.

But there is a dark underbelly.

Linda, it appears, was coerced (to put it mildly) into making the picture.

Lovelace (Seyfried) states near the end of our film that she was only in the porn industry for 17 days.

Yet she is probably the most famous porn star ever.

And not without good reason.

Whether it is accurate or not, Chuck Traynor (Linda’s husband) is portrayed as a scumbag.

A creep.

A really bad dude.

There is agenda setting in Lovelace.

We are SUPPOSED to see Traynor as bad.

Which makes me suspicious.

The subtlety of Dostoyevsky is nowhere to be found.

Linda good. Chuck bad.

Perhaps that is the whole story, but it would be an unlikely black and white moment in a world of gray.

But let’s enter the world of color for a moment.

Amanda Seyfried is so beautiful in this film.

And it is beautifully shot by cinematographer Eric Alan Edwards.

Interestingly, we have two directors on record as having helmed Lovelace:

Rob Epstein and

Jeffrey Friedman.

Which brings us to a familiar story.

Jeffrey Epstein.

If we go further, we realize that Hugh Hefner is played in Lovelace by James Franco.

There’s something going on here.

I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Chloë Sevigny plays a brief role in Lovelace.

Sevigny performs actual oral sex on actor/director Vincent Gallo in his film The Brown Bunny.

What are we seeing here?

How long has this been going on?

It’s clear by this wonderful movie, Lovelace, that Deep Throat brought pornography into the mainstream.

But since then, it has still hidden…and peeked around corners.

It is everywhere.

It is pervasive.

Perhaps it has lost some of its taboo.

But it is still widely regulated.

And ACTUAL hardcore PORNOGRAPHY is still rarely seen in Hollywood films.

So what do we have here?

We have Amanda Seyfried looking beautiful.

We have actors reminiscing on older actors.

We have a major industry paying homage to a minor industry which is itself becoming a major industry (especially during the coronavirus pandemic).

But I’m here to talk cinema.

Lovelace is cinema.

It skirts in and out of being a masterpiece.

Some scenes are timeless.

Others are a little clumsy.

I would say it is well worth a view.

What is particularly interesting is the role that parental judgement plays in Lovelace and Requiem for a Dream.

In Requiem…, the parental element is more of a reference.

But both movies evoke sadness.

Parents want the best for their children.

Most parents probably don’t want their children to grow up to be heroin addicts or porn actors.

There is genuine heartbreak in both of these films.

Kudos to Robert Patrick for playing Linda’s father.

He verges on a caricature of Chris Cooper in American Beauty.

But Patrick is better. Warmer. More human.

Wes Bentley is here in Lovelace.

As he was in American Beauty.

Then there was Kevin Spacey…in American Beauty.

And flying around with Jeffrey Epstein.

And Thora Birch was in American Beauty.

And her mom was in Deep Throat.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

It is a very weird spiral.

An almost-invisible web.

What does it mean?

If Trump wins the next election, we have a chance of finding out.

We are ready to unleash hell.

-PD

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Žert [1969)

It would be, perhaps, best to list this as a Slovak film.

Slovakia.

We always talk about Prague.

But not enough about Bratislava.

Yet all of this would make little difference were this film not notable.

And it is quite notable.

The direction by Jaromil Jireš is admirable.

He plays with time. A very unusual montage of flashbacks.

Haunted. Haunting. Hunted by communism.

This, then, would be a subversive film.

To show the corruption within Czechoslovakia.

To show the nightmare of reeducation.

The term is never named as such, but that’s what it is.

Punitive military service.

The soldiers with no weapons.

Because their country doesn’t trust them with such.

In the mines.

On the ground.

Relay.

Hup hup hup.

Power trip of professional army in service to socialism.

Trotsky is forbidden.

And so is humor.

Don’t make your jokes too pointed.

There’s no squirming out of the fact that you stand in opposition to the ethos of your government.

It may not be a momentous occasion to realize that literature is being made.

For it skips under your nose as mere nonsensical rubbish.

Poppycock. Hogwash. Eyewash.

Tropes and memes and drupelets hanging low. Evolving necks. Giraffes.

I am of two Yiddish species:

schlub and schmuck.

Unattractive. Fool.

Me and Josef Somr. Who lives! Age 82.

A masterful performance. As real as my daily routine.

Shirt coming untucked.

I have kept my hair, but his combover parallels my gut (his too). Sucked in.

Beware of jokes.

You are being watched.

Your letters are being intercepted.

And you will have to answer for your words.

Just what exactly did you mean by, “…” ???

Well, this is Milan Kundera with the story.

And I rebelled all the way.

I drew Baudelaire with lightening bolts. And chartreuse dreams.

Kundera lives! Age 87.

Born in Brno. (!)

But let’s back to this love-hate.

Not Mintzberg.

At the same time.

Alternating. A constant election.

Affinities.

I will achieve 17,000-word vocabulary. Just you watch.

I almost hate my town too. I know.

Was I imprisoned?

No.

But I lost music.

Like Ludvík.

The name is significant.

Like lost hearing.

And so the clarinet is indispensable.

I mention Jana Dítětová because she was from Plzeň.

Pilsen. Pillsbury.

The selfish gene.

Tricked. Objectified. MILF revenge reified.

Pithy memetics.

MIKE MILF.

Markéta is significant.

…Lazarová. Two years previous.

A permanent opium war of mankind.

Opiate of the masses. Asses. Snippets of military abuse.

You’ve never seen…like this.

We can still insult liberalism. And neoliberalism. And neoconservatism.

We can still find Starbucks artless. And Subway.

But Wal-Mart passes over to kitsch. Of which Kundera would understand.

Like Warhol meets Flavin.

All that fluorescence.

Non-stop.

Europe endless.

Schubert.

Dip the waves.

Coyoacán borough of Mexico City. D.F. Day effay.

Trotsky died the same year Conlon Nancarrow moved to Mexico.

1940.

And Nancarrow would make Mexico City his home.

Las Águilas. With his Ampico player pianos.

Ludvík is expelled from his teaching position like Dr. James Tracy.

History is always with us.

We see the corruption of good intentions.

Communism. Socialism.

Teachers of Marxism.

How the country had slid.

And Věra Křesadlová eats her cotton candy. Stunning.

We wonder why the movie couldn’t have been about her.

But we needed the schlub/schmuck.

And the attempted suicide with laxatives.

Which is to say, there are far more than six stories in narrative history.

Bollocks Schenkerian analysis.

-PD

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Rozmarné léto [1968)

I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass.

This one starts out slowly.

Too long at the first location.

The river bathhouse.

The dread of boredom begins to creep in.

No girl. No gun.

Until Jana Preissová makes her first appearance.

It was unbearable.

A rainy summer.

Every day the same as the last.

In a small town.

A closed circle.

But like Fellini, the circus comes to town.

Thank God for the circus.

Cotton candy. شعر البنات

Is it girl’s hair? Pink. A one-piece pajama.

Or a pig.

It is like the sweet words of the beautiful Haneen Elhaj in Bethlehem.

Girl’s hair.

Running on the electricity of a car battery.

Spinning sugary magic.

Sandy stone (when the mirror of translate is turned upon itself).

We want to know literally what ~~Heidegger~~ Derrida was talking about.

And so it only took director Jiří Menzel two years to lose his voice.

It was perfection in ’66.

Ostře sledované vlaky.

That is the cynical view.

But we must realize that Menzel was literally walking a tightrope.

It’s not funny.

It’s not engaging.

It’s slow.

It’s effective.

By the end you see that Fellini is the right reference.

Capricious Summer (our film) bridges the gap between the antics of La Strada and the lovable freak show of local color that would be Amarcord (1973).

But this was 1968.

A very serious year.

The Czech and Slovak (respectively) socialist republics came into being the following year.

We know the legend.

Mai ’68.

All hell broke luce.

Even Cannes was cancelled.

[Cannescelled]

But what is a film festival compared to an invasion?

Before our Capricious Summer was the Prague Spring of 1968.

Lasting well into the summer.

And blooming well before winter had ended.

January 5 – August 21.

Then the invasion. The Warsaw Pact countries.

Operation Danube.

Romania (and Albania), to their credit, refused to participate.

108 Czechoslovak civilians killed.

Liberalization. Decentralization. Democratization.

Like the beautiful Anna. Fleeting.

Because the circus always has to pack up and leave town.

Our film.

Released May 24. During the Prague Spring.

Pražské jaro (or jar).

Czech. Slovak.

The only difference between my bank balance and Bill Gates’.

More zeros at the end.

Infinitely more.

Later these “Springs” would become manufactured (if they weren’t already).

Libya…

We all know about color revolutions…but the Czechs would have a textured revolution in 1989.

From velvet…we could have had the corduroy revolution (ribbed, for her pleasure), silk revolution, cotton (the revolution of our lives)…etc.

The “nonviolent” Prague Spring resulted in the deaths of 96 Soviet soldiers.

84 of them by “accident” (friendly fire?)

and the accidental/”suicide” deaths of 10 Poles.

Apparently none of the Poles died conventionally.

At least the two Bulgar soldiers killed perished from intent.

The four Hungarians all slipped on banana peels in front of Škodas.

This is the tone.

Lola Montès.

Plucking the feathers from chickens.

The chubby wife returns.

Drench the nubile.

Menzel, then, was many months ahead.

Knowing that summer would really begin when autumn usually fell.

Another 20 years before the circus returned.

-PD

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paulydeathwish

cinema dossier

Tag Archives: Prague

Lost Transmissions [2019)

Lovelace [2013)

Žert [1969)

Rozmarné léto [1968)