https://open.spotify.com/episode/1eAvqEXUCoQZz6RFmNNpub?si=6301aa0f4dac409c
Cinematic Music with Pauly Deathwish
Season 1 Episode 5
Tag Archives: Thora Birch
“Belgian Lace, Pale Black Mascara” [2021)
https://open.spotify.com/track/7J139cO4CedLM9MW7pAoOu?si=f1b22b54b191426c
Recommended if you like Rollerskate Skinny
Leave No Trace [2018)
What a horrible day.
Valentine’s Day.
My favorite holiday.
To understand young men whom the economy has left behind.
Young men turning to violence and mischief.
Hating the state.
No more funicular.
Reach out to someone with PTSD today.
Even if you don’t have the right thing to say.
Just make an effort.
I did.
Sure, I want someone to give a fuck about me.
It sucks to be thoroughly disrespected.
This film is better than Jojo Rabbit.
But it has no sense of humor.
Living hand-to-mouth is not funny.
Homeschooling is the best.
But our society has been ruined.
Our societies have been ruined.
Hearing helicopters is too much.
Bringing you back to a mind frame where no moment is safe.
This film is no Hanna.
But this is still a poignant story.
Saoirse has lost her touch.
It was all too much for Thora and Dennings.
Thomasin is the hope for acting.
The best actress working today.
But she has only made one film that is good.
And that film is perfect.
And that film is Last Night in Soho.
Living off the grid.
War is hard on kids.
Kids want to play.
We need fun.
All work and no play makes us fucking crazy.
God bless the truckers who are reclaiming our freedoms.
KEEP GOING!!!
Sitting on a velvet couch in a cabin.
Velour.
The luxury.
Well-worn.
For years living on the forrest floor.
Now to curl your feet up sideways.
Instant karma.
It means something.
It all means something.
And we are back to hellish life.
American flags.
Get to know your neighbors.
My life has been stolen.
But I have successfully stopped drinking.
Haven’t touched the stuff for well over a year.
And I have successfully quit tobacco.
Haven’t touched the stuff for well over a year.
No nicotine up in here.
The challenge is living with something like GAD.
Sounds so easy.
Anxiety.
But tack onto that tachycardia.
A level serious enough to require medication.
And tack onto that high blood pressure.
A level serious enough to require medication.
Good luck relaxing.
You can’t.
Good luck being independent of medications.
My daily struggle and challenge is to become less dependent on my medications.
It is like building a fucking pyramid.
The progress is infinitesimally-small.
Each day.
Some days are a step backwards.
Every day.
Marking.
Tallying it up.
Am I making progress?
Yes.
SLOW.
S L O W.
Very disheartening to be alone again.
Grand gestures.
Wasted.
All for naught.
Bad match.
She needed to be the fucked-up one.
But I got problems too.
And vice-versa.
I’m trying not to judge.
I’m still trying to reach out.
On my favorite holiday.
With a hole in my heart.
War zone.
What’s your joy?
No joy.
I just dream of an actress from New Zealand.
Because her story speaks to me.
It is the hope that someone out there will love me in spite of all my flaws.
I look really bad on paper.
Because I am really bad in reality.
But I am still a person.
And I am not dead yet.
I hope the cats do their job.
Be nice.
Keep company.
My family.
Till the end.
I’m not blocking any energies.
I’m not blocking anything.
Except a couple of dickheads on TikTok.
Starting over.
I can’t breathe.
Everyone is gay.
Or lesbian.
Or whatever.
The whole world is fucking crazy.
And I need the crazy that fits with my crazy.
The crazy that matches me.
Reach out to someone with PTSD.
Don’t judge.
Don’t worry if you don’t say quite the right thing.
Don’t worry if you don’t get a response.
I’m lonely as fuck.
Instant karma.
It means something.
It all means something.
Thank you, God, for giving me a friend for awhile.
Please be merciful and let me not die of loneliness.
This is the loneliest life I have ever known.
45 years.
-PD
Last Night in Soho [2021)
First off.
I am in love with Thomasin McKenzie.
I think Saoirse Ronan has lost her touch.
Kat Dennings doesn’t even bother with films anymore.
And Thora Birch is too much of a liberal moron.
But then all actors are liberal morons, aren’t they?
Except for a precious few.
Jon Voight.
James Woods.
Rob Schneider.
Kirstie Alley.
Robert Davi.
Jim Caviezel.
Secondly.
This film is a masterpiece.
Edgar Wright is the best filmmaker in the world right now.
Is he better than Jean-Luc Godard?
No.
But Godard is not making films for mass consumption.
Is he better than Wes Anderson?
BY A MILLION FUCKING MILES!!!
Don’t get me wrong.
Wes Anderson made one perfect film.
And that film was The Grand Budapest Hotel.
And that film wouldn’t have been perfect without Saoirse Ronan.
That’s how important her presence in that film was.
Saoirse has made another perfect film.
Hanna.
But her others are mediocre.
Brooklyn.
Meh.
Lady Bird.
Even more meh (not a good thing).
Saoirse has gone astray.
Just as Thora Birch went astray.
Ghost World is a perfect film.
And American Beauty is close to perfect.
For my money, Homeless to Harvard is her other perfect film.
Kat Dennings films kinda suck.
Her masterpiece is actually 2 Broke Girls.
I’m serious.
But that’s not cinema.
Twin Peaks is cinema.
Even though it’s a TV show.
Histoire(s) du cinéma is the best film ever made.
And it was made for TV.
Homeless to Harvard is a Lifetime movie.
Made for TV.
It is not cinema.
Not exactly.
But it may be a perfect film.
Wes Anderson made his perfect film with Saoirse Ronan.
And he made a good film (Tenenbaums).
The rest are shite.
I did not understand Edgar Wright’s film language when I first saw Shaun of the Dead.
I thought it was crap.
How wrong I was!
Here is my contention.
Every Edgar Wright film is perfect.
Shaun of the Dead?
Yes.
Hot Fuzz?
Yes.
The World’s End?
Yes.
Baby Driver?
Yes.
Scott Pilgrim?
Yes.
And this film is perfect too.
But this is not quite the Wright you are used to.
This is a genuinely scary film.
But it stands up with Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Shining as one of the four best horror films ever made.
Edgar Wright films are all about detail.
But not the twee obsession with detail that Wes Anderson has.
Edgar Wright is overflowing with talent.
Wes Anderson is not.
Anderson needed Saoirse Ronan to make his perfect film.
And there was a bit (just a bit!) of grit in Grand Budapest.
Saoirse is missing from his other films.
And there is no real grit in any of the others.
Tenenbaums is good.
But the Wes Anderson players are tiresome.
Is Bill Murray amazing?
Yes.
But are his performances in Wes Anderson films his best work?
Absolutely not.
No more Jason Schwatzman (for fuck’s sake!).
Is Luke Wilson a great actor?
Yes.
What’s his best film?
Masked and Anonymous.
Maybe it’s Paltrow and Hackman which make Tenenbaums good.
For my money, Luke Wilson is the one who makes that film go.
But it is not on the same level as Grand Budapest.
Last Night in Soho is the Grand Budapest of the ’20s.
We’re in the ’20s now.
Are they roaring?
Like a fucking mouse.
Last Night in Soho is a gazillion times better than No Time to Die.
This film has everything the Bond film didn’t.
Substance.
Competent directing.
A story worth sticking with.
And so it is fitting that Diana Rigg’s last role should absolutely trump the death of James Bond.
The one George Lazenby film was WAY better than No Time to Die.
The death of love is more sad than the death of the hero.
Diana Rigg is the linchpin in the Bond franchise.
Pull that thread, and the sweater unravels.
Léa Seydoux is boring as fuck in the Bond films.
She was great in Blue.
But she was nothing compared to the one who carried that film (Adele Exarchopoulos).
Exarchopoulos made one perfect film.
Blue is the Warmest Color.
None of her other films are even good.
Wright makes what Youth in Revolt might have been.
He is not glib.
This is not a hipster film.
Michael Cera (who has made one perfect film [Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist]) is, mercifully, NOT in Last Night in Soho.
[correction…Kat Dennings DID make one perfect film]
Thomasin McKenzie’s obsession with ’60s London music is real.
It’s not a fucking Austin Powers joke.
Rita Tushingham is wonderful as Gram.
Excellent casting.
[take note, Bond franchise]
Thomasin hooks up with a black dude.
No big deal.
Take note, Bond franchise.
NOT EVERY FUCKING PERSON HAS TO BE BLACK IN ORDER FOR A FILM TO BE VIABLE!!!
Thomasin’s love interest is a black fellow.
I have no problem with that.
He does a good job.
For fuck’s sake…he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page!
Michael Ajao.
Fine acting!
There can be important black characters WITHOUT A FILM BEING A WOKE FUCKING JOKE (like the recent Bond film).
No big deal.
Don’t make it a big deal.
It has to fit with the story.
The story is the most important thing.
The writers of the Bond film (Purvis and Wade) have allowed their name to be attached to the fucking pathetic shit of No Time to Die.
So you get a kiwi to speak in a Cornish accent.
GREAT ACTRESS!
Thomasin McKenzie.
Say that name with me.
Jacinda Ardern’s father (or mother?) was a horse.
Ugly bitch.
Ugly soul.
Thomasin McKenzie is the best thing to ever come out of New Zealand.
However, there has been one perfect kiwi movie: Eagle vs Shark.
Synnøve Karlsen is so fucking annoying in Soho.
And she was supposed to be.
So, good job (I guess).
Every film needs a villain.
And Jocasta (Karlsen’s character) is the real villain of this film.
Thomasin is different.
Jocasta beats her down.
Mentally.
A stingy spirit.
Can never share in any of her joys.
Do you know anyone like that?
But Thomasin is troubled.
Hallucinations?
Maybe.
Seeing ghosts?
Maybe.
We’re trying to solve a case here.
Cold case.
Maybe a lot of cold cases.
Maybe a serial killer.
To the Belle and Sebastian bedsit.
Salad days are short-lived.
Don’t underestimate Sandie Shaw.
Always something there to remind me.
1964.
Puppet on a string.
Gotta pay your dues.
As a wind-up bird girl.
Brian Epstein.
Giorgio Gomelsky.
Andrew Loog Oldham.
ABKCO.
The influence of Vertigo upon Last Night in Soho cannot be understated.
The red of the Café de Paris.
The blonde of Anya Taylor-Joy’s hair.
And Thomasin’s hair.
[also, don’t underestimate Bergman’s Persona]
The glance to the side.
It’s not Jimmy Stewart.
It’s Thomasin.
Allusions to The Way of the Dragon and The Lady from Shanghai in the mirrors.
Sure, a bit of Pulp Fiction.
But that’s just for the kids.
Edgar Wright’s grasp of cinema history is way deeper than some Tarantino bullshit.
And yet, he likes zombies.
And shitty horror films from the ’80s.
I mean REALLY shitty, camp ones.
Slasher films.
Back to Vertigo.
Kim Novak’s apartment is bathed in green neon.
But Thomasin’s bedsit is a red, white, and blue homage to Godard.
An homage to Une Femme est une femme.
Dancing.
Dancing girls.
Prostitutes.
Vivre sa vie.
Pink dress fembot.
Pew pew.
Thomasin is way sexier than Anya Taylor-Joy.
Thomasin is the girl next door.
The frumpy hair of Homeless to Harvard.
I love it.
It must be this way.
To juxtapose the transition to Swinging Sixties glamour.
Is Trump just culture jamming with his vaccine tack?
Either that, or the hero has become the villain.
Did the D.C. swamp make Trump into a swamp zombie?
Maybe no one comes out clean.
International law was broken.
War crimes.
All these Wright films have zombies.
Or robots.
Faceless automatons.
A bit of Dragon Tattoo.
We all like a good microfiche scene!
Is Terence Stamp her father?
If Sandie is her mother?
Could be.
Otherwise, she would be the daughter of a prick.
But Stamp tried to save Sandie.
Arsenic and old lace.
The ones you never suspect.
Sicario.
“Buried” in the walls.
Decomposing.
Poe.
Gacy.
Wright’s “sympathy for the serial killer”.
What happened to these people that made them monsters?
Don’t underestimate Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 (his only English-language film…and a flat-out masterpiece).
In the world of Edgar Wright, it is records.
Vinyl.
Not books.
And sometimes the elderly want to die with their memories.
They are not going anywhere.
They are not fleeing.
It’s been a good life.
Going down with the ship.
Up in flames.
The shitbags want their deaths avenged.
After all, they were just horny, well-to-do dads who needed a little excitement.
Prostitution.
It’s the law, after all.
Murder is murder.
Crimes of passion.
By reason of insanity.
Not guilty.
Not insane.
But traumatized.
But Thomasin has been on the adventure.
She knows what Sandie has been through.
Trump was abused for four years.
That is true.
And he fought like a champ.
Is there no justice?
Is it culture jamming (I ask again)?
Confusion.
Keeping his enemies off balance.
Getting a foot in the door.
Truth Social will censor “hate speech” with a Silicon Valley AI bot.
In order to get on Apple App Store and Google Play.
But the roll out is delayed?
Lie about the vaccines.
“Safe and effective”.
Move in for the kill shot.
Against whom?
Big Pharma and the New World Order.
But we have to call out serial killers for who they are.
If you are saying the COVID vaccines are “safe and effective”, you are spreading misinformation that is endangering the lives of those who hear and trust you.
CDC: 11,879
Open VAERS: 23,149
Neither safe,
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html
https://openvaers.com/covid-data/mortality
nor effective.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-covid-deaths-2021-vaccines-b1963790.html
10,000-20,000 vaccine deaths should be read as 100,000-200,000 vaccine deaths because of this:
https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/02/underreporting-vaccine-adverse-events
And correlation does not necessarily equal causation…unless this (peep the myocarditis…you think that’s all JnJ? [nigga please!]):
https://openvaers.com/covid-data
But the election was stolen.
Or was it allowed to be stolen?
When will the other shoe drop?
Or does the other shoe even exist?
This charade is going to go on until 2024?
Maybe Sandie is not her mother.
-PD
MZFPK [2021)
Breakfast cereal video game.
Pauly Deathwish’s 3rd album.
I am behind.
I can’t keep up with this guy.
Out of the gates like Flaming Lips.
30,000 feel of despair.
The gash.
Right into Isao Tomita.
Doing Debussy.
Marching.
Martial.
Fantastic noises.
Like first Stereolab album.
Here Come the Warm Jets.
Cheyenne Mountain jams.
I can no longer see what I’m typing.
- What if I type in white? Ahh, yes. That does the trick. But it ruins my style. Louis-Ferdinand would not be happy. Totally Air. Pocket Symphony. Who is Kevin? Shields? Ayers? Fairlight. Synth clouds. Rich chords. Very sophisticated harmonies and arrangements. Cornelius from Japan. This sounds very modern. OH FUCK! Groove is in the motherfucking heart. Vogue! So on track two, we are straight up on a catwalk. But it could be Alan Vega or Martin Rev. Kinda Sun City Girls. Zoviet France. Fridmann never gets this crazy with bass. Wayne is driving it weirder. This was, from what I hear, done with ZERO budget. Is this a dance album? First you have poetry. Then you are prose. Amateurs. Into Odelay. That was a good drum break. The Strokes. Fuzzy vocals. Paliament/Funkadelic. Sly Stone! Later Stereolab. Tim Gane processing. Counter melody! For fuck’s sake. Somebody listen to this bloke. Whoa. What is up with this chorus? Roland Kirk? Like in Switzerland? Definitely hitting some Os Mutantes twee. Lo-fi as fuck. Great Godard tongue in cheek. Apparently about Neil Young and Rick James being in a band together when they were young and still in Canada. Yonge Street? Beats. Drake needs to hear this. Bit crusher lisp. Spiritualized at the grocery store. Swipe barcode. Song peaks at end. Masterful mix. A true climax. Savage mastering on every album. Whole mix jumps. It works. Needle skipping. American Supreme. Claustrophobic. COVID. Sad. Scared. Apocalyptic. The concept of the gaze in cinema. Bass drops in. Feel it in your sex organs. A sexy song. “Cobra Strike”. This is unequivocally a dance album. EDM all up in here. Lots of panning. Spliff it. Micro gestures. Pandemic planning. How long will it last? Soul-crushing. Zombie metaphor. Shaun of the Dead. Masterpiece. Beatle drums. First Velvets album. Rat trails. “Black Angel’s Death Song”. “The New Pollution”. Dr. No. Walther PPK. What does this kid know? He can’t possibly know, can he? Pure phase. Visconti. Lanois. Acid jazz. Nick Cave. Montage, mon beau souci. Flaming Lips. Jeff Tweedy drawl. Jesus and Mary Chain team up with The Cure. Disintegration. Heartbreak here. Who broke his heart? Bleeps and bloops. Robot noises. Heartbeeps. Jazz funk ’70s experimental upright. Great lyrics. Superimposition. Steenbeck! Fucking great lyrics on “Snip Snip”. Oh, damn. Glockenspiel at just the right time! Icy. Air. Virgin suicides. Dazed and confused. Blonde. Braids. Like glazed bread. German. Texas. Floating world. Old world. No one to smoke a doobie with and stare up at green trees. No tits. What is wrong with this world? Rambo. Fort Bragg. Delta. Boykin. Intelligence Support Activity. Send me. George Crumb. Black angels. Jungle echoes. 4thPOG. Ghosts. PSYWAR op. Make it loud. Romeo foxtrot. Shall we dance? Charlie don’t surf. Death on the dance floor. Public Image Ltd. Modes of limited transposition. Messiaen. Primal Scream. Standing with Johnny Rotten. #Trump2021 . But this is more about big tits. Giant opals. Garth Hudson. Telegraph. Total loss. Persona non grata. Window still missing. Swastika eyes. Paul Weller. XTRMNTR. Shoot speed. Kill light. Eyes owned 2020. The ugly had a chance. Masks work…if you’re ugly and need to get laid. Back with another block rocking’ beat. Private psychedelic reel. War metaphor. Is this about election? No. Too early. Look at liner notes. Living in COVID times was like a world war. War just beginning? Got my pina colada. Fuck it! Arizona. Living boldly. Masks have lost. Two weeks. Could have been a contender. Circuit bending. Talking about big titty schizophrenic. All footwork ruined. Toys. Falling apart gremlin workmanship. Awkward line about Thora Birch. Explicit warnings a little lazy. Getting a bit Lenny Bruce up in here. Russ Meyer. Second line. Double time. Crazy drums. Smooth as Sade. Tambourine is the star. One organic element. Wrote a song. She didn’t care. Wrote her 200 songs. She didn’t care. One has zero plays globally. She never bothered listening to it. Some things not meant to be. Liberals and conservatives. Go and create. Lobster. Work wasn’t. Bought her every flower imaginable. Thousands of dollars on flowers. Yoshimi laser warfare. A piano not standard. Some Tori Amos bullshit. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Only the finest pianos. Internationally famous. Neither deserve it. Pulled the plug at the wrong time. Would he have still kept the same track listing? Maybe so. Heartbreak to rehash. Goes by quick. Good drum programming. James Bond future theme. Brian Wilson. Phil Spector. Absolute Nigel Godrich. Cinematic. The album that never was. But this one is worldwide, motherfuckers. Third this summer. And a fourth already out. I can hardly keep up. I need to review movies. Doesn’t Pauly Deathwish know I don’t have time for Galaga? Falling apart. Short-circuit. Charlotte Gainsbourg. Flashback to Bucolic.
- -PD
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.
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
Lost River [2014)
There’s something very weird going on in Hollywood.
And it has been going on for a long time.
You can look for yourself in Kenneth Anger’s books.
Strange stories about Clara Bow.
The first “It” girl.
From the film of the same name.
And how she kept her skin so soft (ostensibly).
But the range of weirdness in Hollywood seems to move along a continuum.
There are levels.
Not unlike Freemasonry.
Or Scientology.
The hedonism of Henry Miller would be a very low level.
But what we are dealing with here, in this film, is an allusion to a higher level.
Really, the highest level.
There really isn’t a more mot juste for this phenomenon than Satanism.
And, perhaps, even that word does not fully describe what is at issue.
If one was hard-pressed to boil it down–to refine it further, perhaps “evil” would be the essential element.
Recently, the internet collective known only as QAnon “dropped” a crumb of information regarding an establishment in Los Angeles known as the Cannibal Club.
You can find all Q drops here.
The drop in question is #3917 from April 8th of this month.
Here is the website to which Q linked.
It indeed follows the train of thought I delineated above.
You will see the Henry Miller quote (an author I deeply admire).
But then you will see a perversion far beyond (to my knowledge) anything Henry Miller ever wrote about.
What you see on the Cannibal Club website appears to be a restaurant which serves human flesh.
However, with a bit of research, I came to the conclusion that this particular institution (as it is presented) is likely fake.
Why?
The names of the principals all come back empty. None of them have a digital footprint that I can find. Sophie Lafitte. Elspeth Blake. Hero Conners. Raven Chan.
The photo of Cannibal Club’s proprietress, Elspeth Blake, was first cached as a stock photo in 2012.
The photo of Raven Chan also was first cached (before it was used on the Cannibal Club website) as a stock photo. Both photos appear to have originated on the website istockphoto.com . They are generic pictures.
The Cannibal Club website went live with content in 2009. Neither the menu, nor the “events” have changed.
My conclusion was that this was a joke made by demented, artsy liberals in order to seed panic in America’s conservative population.
That was my hypothesis: it is almost certainly a sick joke.
But here’s the rub…
Things like this very well may exist.
Indeed, they probably do.
And thereby we come to the film Lost River.
It came out a mere two years before Trump was elected.
Before Harvey Weinstein was convicted of sex crimes and sent to prison (where, last I heard, he had coronavirus).
Before jet-setter Jeffrey Epstein “hung himself” in a Manhattan jail cell.
You know, Epstein…the guy who flew Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey to Africa.
All this was before Kevin Spacey had numerous sex crime charges brought against him.
And two of his accusers recently dropped dead (over the past year) bringing both cases to a halt.
Lost River.
I appreciate the style.
Very heavy on the David Lynch (with a modicum of Harmony Korine thrown in).
The focus on “place” is very similar to the technique David Lynch and Mark Frost used to ground the town of Twin Peaks in the TV series of the same name.
Evil.
In the woods.
Underwater.
Underground.
And in secret clubs.
Director Ryan Gosling did a pretty good job with this film.
We will forgive him for lifting the ambiance of that Orbison scene from Mulholland Dr. to repurpose it in his Lost River blood-and-guts cabaret.
Because the reason I watched this film at all was for Christina Hendricks.
She has the potential to join a modern pantheon which, at this time, includes only Thora Birch and Kat Dennings.
Though we are never told this in the film, it is set in Detroit.
And that makes sense.
Deserted neighborhoods with crumbling houses.
But it could be anywhere in America if China’s economic warfare (COVID-19) is not soon countered.
Matt Smith does a good job as Bully: the embodiment of serial-killer animalism.
The thug.
The gangster.
The cartel head.
Extreme cruelty.
Sadistic.
Gosling did a great job location scouting for the zoo scene.
The abandoned zoo.
Very much like the film Hanna and its scenes in the abandoned Spreepark of East Berlin.
Ben Mendelsohn is a fucker.
Such a prick.
But smart.
He’s not an animal like Bully, though he has rage inside him.
He is more of a predator.
And he is much more powerful.
His character, Dave, is a banker.
And Dave tells us, during the course of the film, that he sets up a little “club” in each of the towns he goes to.
Seems Dave gets moved around a lot.
Comes in.
Fires people.
Gets the books on a firmer footing.
And moves on to the next town where he can oblige the poor and demented with a bit of blood lust with his clubs.
Lots of blood.
Lots of lust.
Dave overlaps nicely onto the persona of Harvey Weinstein.
Christina Hendricks is immediately propositioned by the bank manager.
Dave is a thoroughly-unscrupulous scumbag.
Hendricks just wants to hang on to her home…dilapidated though it may be.
Saoirse Ronan does a nice job in a relatively-minor role here.
She glitters occasionally…as she plays her Casio on her bed with sparkly finger polish.
Whispering out a little song.
Or as she tucks in her pet rat for the night.
But it is not the ginger Ronan we are used to.
Her hair is black.
To fit with the landscape.
And to let Hendricks (also a redhead) stand out as the star.
Saoirse is the “girl next door”…literally.
In the tradition of American Beauty.
By this method we can trace Gosling’s influences.
The overarching one is David Lynch.
This film is creepy.
Plenty creepy.
Much of the creepiness comes from the casting.
It really is an amalgam of Lynch’s freaks with Harmony Korine’s amateurs.
There is the grief of the mute grandmother.
Caught in a loop of family films.
Mourning her late-husband who died tragically.
It is sad.
It happens.
The inability to talk for some time after a shock.
Extreme PTSD.
The family films are sad.
Watching how they used to be.
The way they were.
And the grandmother still a widow…with a fishnet veil for mourning.
There is some rubbish in this movie.
Kind of how the second season of Twin Peaks went off the rails.
Eva Mendes is good here.
And scary.
In the basement is something very Ex Machina (also 2014).
And even more so John Cale’s Vintage Violence.
Shells.
Mortal coils.
Simulation.
Apparently, customers can come down and “murder” real people in these shells.
The shells are of a hard, clear plastic.
And formfitting.
The shells supposedly prevent any real bodily harm.
But we never really see them in action.
Iain De Caestecker is pretty good here.
There is a realness in the urgency of his running.
Gosling’s editing crystalizes this.
Running for love.
Panic.
Running to save.
To set off running.
Unprepared for how long the journey really is.
Something special here.
Good vs. evil.
To give.
Charity.
To be selfish.
To ignore the needs of others.
To follow the voice of God.
To follow the instruction of the Holy Spirit.
To be humble before God.
To fear God.
To feel evil all around.
When it comes, and when it goes.
But the most quizzical scene is when Christina Hendricks cuts her own face off (in simulation, of course) in exactly the way we have heard about in the infamous, rumored Frazzledrip video.
In 2014.
Two years before such a thing came to light.
What a strange coincidence.
Let us synthesize more.
Could there be clubs (in L.A., for instance) where children have their faces cut off (for real) in front of an audience of sickos?
Further question, how does Hollywood (in L.A.) have the “imagination” to write these sorts of scenes?
Sure, there’s the old French film Eyes Without a Face.
But that was cosmetic.
It wasn’t for the thrill of spectators.
It was a medical procedure gone wrong.
Gory as it was, it was to SAVE the face of his daughter that the misguided doctor went on a hunt for faces.
Here, the faces are potlatched (apparently).
Or eaten.
But again, this is just a “cabaret”, we are told.
We see behind the scenes.
“Fake blood”.
So where is the truth in these “jokes”?
What kinds of personalities find humor in this?
John Podesta famously jokes about cannibalism in Time magazine and elsewhere.
He jokes about the cannibalistic Donner party.
He had cannibal art hanging on his office wall (a loan from his art-collector-brother Tony Podesta).
Strange fixation, that.
Very creepy.
Verging on Silence of the Lambs.
Ed Gein.
Dahmer.
Really vile stuff.
This is an interesting movie.
Gosling has talent as a director.
He should make more films.
This was his debut.
He has directed nothing sense.
My only quibble is this: Christina Hendricks was so misused here.
Saoirse Ronan was almost equally misused.
Gosling needs to watch more Godard.
More Hitchcock.
You don’t cast Grace Kelly only to have her wear the same sweater for the whole film.
But it’s also Hendricks’ fault.
She has talent.
But she must embrace who she is.
She is not a good enough actor to be a puritan.
-PD
Djam [2017)
What a deeply-moving film.
I would like to talk about Tony Gatlif, the director.
You might know him from Latcho Drom.
Or from the Asia Argento film Transylvania.
Let me assure you of one thing.
Djam (known as Journey from Greece in English) is MUCH BETTER than Transylvania.
Which brings me to the crux.
The star, Daphné Patakia (truly a star!), is MUCH MORE TALENTED AND BEAUTIFUL than Asia Argento.
Mark my words.
This young lady is amazing!!!
Which is not to denigrate Asia Argento.
She’s a very good looking lady.
Her film Incompresa (which she directed) is amazing.
But Daphné Patakia is in another league altogether.
Simon Abkarian does a wonderful job here.
Maryne Cayon is indispensable.
But Daphné Patakia sends this film into orbit!
How can I describe it?
Rebetika. Rebetiko.
Like “the blues”.
Daphné’s eyes.
Very much like:
Do you remember?
1984?
National Geographic?
Which brings us back to Greek-French.
Adèle Exarchopoulos.
Another fantastic actress.
Yes, Djam approaches the artistry of La Vie d’Adèle–Chapitres 1 & 2, but Djam is more special somehow to me.
Sure, there’s some nudity, but not much.
And we feel that this film might go the lesbian route, but instead it goes Lesbos.
It’s hard for me to overstate how important Daphné Patakia is to this film…and to film in general.
Very few actresses have done what she’s done.
It is, in truth, BEYOND our favorites in Hollywood:
-Thora Birch
-Saoirse Ronan
-Kat Dennings
Because it is done from left field.
And most related to these brilliant actresses:
-Anamaria Marinca
-Dorotheea Petre
and
-Julianne Côté
And less-so to:
-Adèle Exarchopoulos
-Pauline Étienne
One might even make a comparison to Moran Rosenblatt.
But I think the comparisons to Marinca and Petre are most apt.
Patakia is plumbing some serious depths in Djam.
And doing it with the joie de vivre of Anna Karina in Vivre sa vie.
One senses even a bit of Audrey Hepburn here.
That Funny Face bohemian dance routine.
But mixed with Anna Karina’s famous jukebox strut:
New era.
Film clips.
Keep up.
Text can be extracted (if there’s anything worthwhile).
But images moving make it flow.
People want everything all at once.
But sadness can be healed.
When we care for the crazy.
God does not ignore our efforts.
And the world knows and recognizes mental illness.
Reach out a hand and console.
An essential film.
-PD
Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story [2003)
Happy Birthday to Thora Birch, my favorite actress of all time!
Yes, I know…I know.
A film critic whose favorite actress is a young 35-year-old whipper snapper???
Yes.
That’s alright.
Laugh at me.
If the question was, “Who was your favorite classic Hollywood actress?,” then I would answer, “Lauren Bacall”.
But I said favorite actress of all time.
You can search my “Thora” category here on my site for why exactly this actress is my favorite.
Because otherwise, we’re going to be here all day.
And I have a movie to review!
One of my favorites: Homeless to Harvard.
It is, indeed …The Liz Murray Story, but I will be using the shortened title hereafter for brevity’s sake.
It is my contention (and I have made the point elsewhere…probably on this very site of mine) that Thora Birch produced a trilogy of acting performances which are more-or-less analogous to Bob Dylan’s classic trilogy.
Let’s start with Dylan.
The three (at unity from a similarity of intense expression):
–Bringing It All Back Home
–Highway 61 Revisited
and
–Blonde on Blonde
And now the Thora films which correspond in my mind:
–American Beauty
–Ghost World
and
–Homeless to Harvard
Sure…Birch didn’t direct these films.
But her acting is so strong, she might as well have.
By this point she was no longer a prodigy.
She was a mature actress. A master of her craft.
And the story here is one to really sink teeth in.
[In which.]
We recently touched on homelessness here in the review of Alicia Vikander’s stellar turn as Katarina from Till det som är vackert.
Pure.
But the esthetics of Homeless to Harvard are different.
This isn’t European arthouse. It’s a Lifetime made-for-TV film.
But don’t go running anywhere!!!
This is as gritty as any Lou Reed tale.
And it’s all real.
Too pure.
Heroin addict parents.
Mother schizophrenic.
Blindness.
Genetic.
Mother with HIV.
Father with AIDS.
Vice versa ice Ursa.
Father in homeless shelter.
Mother wielding knife. Vomiting.
Alcoholism.
Really appealing, eh?
But you gotta stick with it.
This isn’t Darren Aronofsky mise-en-scène.
It’t not, “Let’s win an award at Sundance.” Or, “Let’s sweep at Cannes.”
It’s more like one of Aesop’s fables.
It’s the message, man!
And so first, let’s honor the director.
Peter Levin.
Who knew a television film could be so artful?
Well, when you combine the history of Histoire(s) du cinéma with the precedent of Twin Peaks, you should know by now that television can produce good stuff.
Hell…
Your TV can even WATCH YOU! (as per WikiLeaks Vault7).
But I digress…
The weeper (no masonry) sob story…had me crying in my Junior Mints…we must attribute to the excellent writing of Ronni Kern.
Who the hell is Ronni Kern?!?
Male? Female?
I’ve had less trouble finding the gender of completely unknown foreign movie people.
But Kern is pretty invisible on the Internet.
And maybe there’s a point here.
- It doesn’t fucking matter.
- You should judge someone on their work, not their gender.
Hopefully Ms. Birch will appreciate this flash of liberalism should she read this review.
[I’m not holding my breath]
But we have just celebrated International Women’s Day.
And the fact that Birch’s character here is a “feminist” is a running pseudo-joke.
Which brings us to the performances.
Michael Riley is stellar, stellar (I know…) as Liz’s father Peter.
Kudos to the styling department.
That beard. And that hair!
Crazy, man, crazy!!
But Riley’s performance is really special.
It touched my heart.
Long ago.
When I first saw this film.
And dare I say, this movie made me appreciate my own family.
It made me miss my folks.
And so I salute Peter Riley and Lifetime and all involved for that effect on my heart.
Jennifer Pisana is really fabulous as the young Liz Murray here.
It’s an unenviable task.
To precede Thora Birch’s entrance.
But Pisana is indispensable to this little masterpiece.
Those sweaters.
And the full pronunciations…”Mommy”…”Daddy”…
Ms. Pisana affects the necessary naïveté to be juxtaposed against the sad schizophrenia of Kelly Lynch (who plays Liz’s mom).
And Lynch is great.
Think Cries and Whispers.
[cris et chuchotements…(( (( ((…et chuchotements]
Robert Bockstael does a fine job as Liz’s teacher David.
Very convincing. Excellent craftsmanship.
Makyla Smith is piquant in her depiction of Liz’s best friend Chris.
[God…the Magic Marker…and the pine box…fuuuuuuck]
Yes, friends…this is Lifetime Television.
So the brisure (bonjour, monsieur Derrida) is “crap”.
“Crap happens.”
Whoa…watch thy mouth, Kelly Lynch!
So again…Peter Levin does a fantastic job shoehorning a true X-file into PG territory.
We see a syringe here and there. A tourniquet.
Riley cleaning a spoon.
But the real heartbreak is Wheat Chex with tap water.
Yeah…
Hello Gummo.
Ellen Page has a small role here.
And she’s good.
Fine actress.
But we’ve been waiting to roll out the big gun.
Thora Birch.
On this, her birthday, I am only just now getting towards a handful of reviews honoring her unique thespian gift.
What to say?
That every look is magic?
That every glance is gold?
That she has crafted her microexpressions in solitude…and wielded them like an Arthurian sword for the duration of this flick?
Yes, yes, and yes.
[and an Oxford comma]
Because kids take it for granted.
Rich kids.
Harvard.
Penn.
Princeton.
Maybe…
But even more so the lesser ivied walls.
I won’t name names.
But the spoiled kids.
Not turning in homework.
Bragging about shortcuts.
Those, ultimately, will be life’s losers.
But Liz Murray worked her butt off to get into Harvard.
From sleeping on the B Train.
Four years of high school in two.
And Thora Birch has worked her butt off too.
She hasn’t gotten the roles her talent deserves.
But the roles she has gotten, she has largely smashed out of the park.
Like the Babe Ruth of leading ladies.
And so there are other actresses I admire.
But Thora Birch was the first.
The first to give me that magical feeling which only Neil Young has adequately described:
“I fell in love with the actress/She was playin’ a part that I could understand”.
Happy Birthday, Thora Birch!
And may all your days and films be filled with the joy which you have put into the world through your cinematic brilliance.
-PD
Sunset Boulevard [1950)
This is the story of O.J. Simpson.
This is the story of Phil Spector.
Too much foreshadowing?
Scramble. Scramble.
Scramble the meaning.
This is Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon come to life.
Fifteen years before anger published.
In France they have Angers.
And every George is a multiple.
Georges.
But what passion!
Yes, dear friends…
Sunset Boulevard is one of the strangest films ever made.
If you want to know from whence Mulholland Drive came, start here.
SUNSET BLVD.
Mulholland Dr.
If you’re really daft (and I am), you’ll think you’re watching that guy who played The Professor on Gilligan’s Island in one of the best films you’ve ever seen.
But there’s a big fucking difference between Russell Johnson and William Holden.
Or is there?
Just let the wind blow through the bellows of the pipe organ for a moment.
And imagine yourself in a dream so dark it could be a nightmare.
But it’s merely spooky.
The great art.
Has mystery.
What was director Billy Wilder groping for?
Never mind, for a second, the bursting cast.
Every extra a novel in themselves.
Just the story of Sunset Boulevard is enough to make a thinking person stagger into the intersection on the Rue Campagne-Première.
But there are so many intersections…
Mon ami.
It starts bad.
Like a second-rate Raymond Chandler ripoff.
But it compels you to stay with it.
A little underwater photography.
Novel.
The adjective.
So much hinges on Paramount Pictures.
The gate.
The arch.
And how criticism can thwart a career.
The straw that broke the needle in the camel’s eye.
It’s like something out of Breathless or Dr. No.
The precipitous turn.
Kicking up dust.
Before the boulevard was broken dreams and crack vials.
Syringes.
Just ordinary fascism.
Triumph over violins.
And we trace the line.
A shoulder.
A chin.
A palazzo. A collection of post-Impressionists.
Because we want to know.
For nothing could be more mysterious.
Lost a husband to the Spanish flu.
Lost two more, too.
But one lives as a ghost.
And his monocle groove is strangely vacant.
Erich von Stroheim.
Unreal.
Whether in a Jean Renoir picture or here.
Whether behind the camera or acting in his own film.
In two places at once.
Like Schrodinger’s cat.
But nobody remembers Schrodinger’s chimpanzee.
And a little coffin.
And the steps Stroheim has to take to stand in a hole.
This is the story of Michael Jackson.
This is the story of Emmett Miller.
Not gone, but forgotten.
And it is the true way entertainment worked.
When mass media was born.
At a million miles an hour.
1900.
Or 1898.
Churning out pictures.
From the dream factory.
And wax cylinders.
And who cares about these young girls…we can always find more.
But Buster Keaton sits in for Miller.
Because there is nothing more sad than a sad clown.
The waxworks…
The rogues gallery.
It could have been Elektra.
But it had to be Richard Strauss.
1909. 1911.
Great silence on one coast.
And great noise on the other.
Direct from Europe.
This is the story of Thora Birch.
The greatest star who ever was.
And I am just a humble servant.
Max.
There will be Max.
Always a sadness over beauty.
When beauty is counted in but one way.
One dimension.
3-D clustered, but without 4 time.
But you can’t bullshit a bullshitter.
And actors are all full of nothing.
Must empty out.
Each time.
To fully fill.
May the best shell win!
So that she stalks the shit outta him.
Like some Transylvanian octopus.
And Igor schleps his stuff in the middle of the night.
Like some dream from Dreyer’s Vampyr.
What the fuck?!?
Poor William Holden is living in the decline of the West.
The sagging tennis court.
The bowling alley in the basement we never see.
Because it would be like the Biltmore on hard times.
Truly grotesque.
Decay. And decadence.
Taken separately. Different connotations.
A piece of rotting fruit in the trash.
And champagne supernovas of drunken, naked excess.
But they are one and the same.
When rooted word-wise to rot.
Gloria Swanson is the hysterical car-wreck-of-an-actress here.
You can’t look away.
Bride of Frankenstein. Hell, Frankenstein himself. Sex changed. Sexless.
More hideous internally than externally.
And more nuts than the peanut gallery of an old picture house.
But no locks.
Perhaps a lock of hair…
But no gas.
No blades.
No.
It’s quite a spooky thing to be trapped in such luxury.
Such trappings.
Camelhair. Vicuña.
What the hell!
She’s paying, right???
Tails.
For godsake, man…Valentino danced the tango here!
But now the tarantula hums.
Manipulative receives new meaning.
An actress. A star! And that Roaring Twenties, gilded, cocksure, brassy optimism.
Unfazed by decades of disuse.
“She’s doin’ the ballet on/both of her wrists”
Goddamn…
If Echo & the Bunnymen were around in 1950…
William Holden has been sucked in.
To a vortex.
And it ain’t no fun.
No funny business. No funnymen.
Plenty of echoes.
Of his past life.
Mingled with her omnipresent portraiture fecundating the stale mansion.
“He could die happily ever after”
Bob Dylan knew about the pillars.
And the pillory of fame.
And so C. B. DeMille was a natural choice.
To depict the heartbreak.
Of a washed up life.
Hate to break it to you, kid…
But the diva is in denial.
Yes, the bitch is back.
Take Elton and a whole gaggle of crocodiles…and the Isotta Fraschini with the leopard seats.
Several leopards died for your ass(es).
How’s the weather up there?
And so she rides a white swan because she’s born to boogie.
With the swagger of Bolan.
Norma Desmond.
Monomaniacal about beheading the past.
On a platter.
American montage shows the unwieldy devices–to make young again.
Strobo-oscillo-sonic skin tauteners.
Franju had a less frightening story sans yeux.
Face without eyes.
Ah! […]
But the eyes have it all!!!
The fire of once-great dominance.
Champagne. Caviar.
The eeriness of Sunset Boulevard is that Gloria Swanson WAS once a great star (sort of).
And even more so, Erich von Stroheim WAS (REALLY FUCKING WAS) a great director!
And so Billy Wilder managed to tell their stories.
Only the names were changed to protect the guilty.
Devotion till the end.
Love for cinema.
Love for a woman.
A woman is a drum.
Where’s Duke Ellington when you need him???
Jealousy.
Jalousie.
Film noir.
Horizontal shafts of light.
But shadows all the more prominent.
This is our Rembrandt.
Our chiaroscuro.
How insensitive…
Norma with bitter, vindictive precision.
And then the curtain is pulled back on the waterworks.
And the fucking Pompidou explodes in hideous reds of dysfunction.
Yes.
Come and see where I live.
In a lonely place…
Maybe it’s better you don’t know me.
But he really wants to say, “Will you marry me?”
On this night.
What sadness.
We think such overwrought misery only exists in the movies.
But the intersections of real life sometimes make such tragedy possibly.
And we shouldn’t wish such on our worst enemies.
She can’t stand the shock.
But cinema is the ultimate beauty.
So fragile at the end…
We give thanks to see such a picture.
To see Stroheim one more time.
“Alright, boys… Let’s rev up those cameras!”
To see the silent era stagger down the stairs one more time.
Like a wrought-iron flower.
With a green patina.
Nickelodeons penny on the dollar.
Kicked to the curb.
Save for Langlois.
She just needed one more shot at youth.
It was too much, too soon.
One last shot in the arm of that excitement!
That camaraderie of Hollywood.
Before it became a drag.
Her youth.
Memory is scary as hell.
-PD
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