Dirty Dancing from the point of view of 2018

When you look at Dirty Dancing from the point of view of 2018

Now my intention is not to shit all over a 30 years old movie. Or is it? I feel like this movie always get a pass, because... the 80's right?

It's a teenager movie, meant for tweens. On a deeper level the dirty dancing is symbolic for sex (and in fact for anal sex. That's why is dirty: Takin' the old dirt trail, Spelunking... ) 

The scene of the late night party when all the staff employees are dancing, and she tries I mean, she... but she doesn't look sexy, like the rest of them! No! She dances like a moronic child. Then Patrick Swayze approaches her just out of pity, and teaches her about dance/sex. It's a pity fuck.    

Her time at Kellerman's that summer is a loss of innocence — and I am in fact talking about the loss of her virginity.

When we first meet Baby, she's like reading Plight of the Masses or something, and she's worried about underdeveloped world, southeast Asia starving children and Buddhist monks burning themselves in protest...

But after meeting Patrick Swayze - a.k.a the 80's-  all she cares about is that hot sweat body dancing at the rhythm of the dirty mambo!!!

From the first minute she sees him she's all wet for Johnny Castle - yeah that's his name - Johnny Castle!!!

Well... that's the message I get from the movie, it's an explanation on how Women are molded to be dumb in our society. 

We don't want you to be clever, We want you to dance bitch

You know, some people think this is like a Women empowerment movie or something. There's a bullshit article about that here 

I'm all for the women empowerment thing and I agree with the journalist, I don't know how people get this is an "ugly duckling gets the guy" movie, cause she's fucking hot to me!

Granted, blondie looks better, but hey: that bitch can't act!

So, yeah Baby is not ugly. Totally fuckable!

In fact she's on my mural of the top 80s actresses I want to fuck the most:

Ugly duck gets the guy is the plot of the remake "Dirty Dancing 2017"  ... Well I don't know about ugly, ugly is too strong of a word. Beauty and ugliness, like contact lenses, are in the eyes of the beholder...

Is Little Miss Sunshine girl, Abigail Bressing or something. 

(By the way she's bad. She's fucking bad; long gone are the days of her being a child prodigy, right?...) 

But the thing that really gets you is... Well I don't know how to say this without sounding like an asshole... Well I am an asshole, so:

She's Fat! 
(Oh come on! you though that too: Hungry Eeeeyes hahahaa)

I was surprise to see that in real life she looks kind of Hot! ya'know?

So, my only conclusion is that over the production of the film they made her gain quite a few pawns... they feed her with Nuggets, Doritos, mayonnaise and shit, down it all with pancakes syrup and butter...

Cause is that sort of overweight. Calculated: not disgusting Precious levels... I'd say above average Woman, slightly above chubby, but not that far off you wouldn't like her... They needed their female audience to identify with her. I call that genius.

Appealing to the Bridget Jones, My Greek Wedding audience or the Queen Latifa movie were an NBA super star bangs her?...

(Hey I'm not the one being a fat-phobic here, Hollywood is. Before writing this shit I didn't even know Fat-phobia was a thing.)

So yeah not ugly duck: Fatty Goose!!

So the entire movie becomes like a satire. You are always like: Oh my God they gonna make the lift?!!!

Anyway, back to the original, Baby becomes more and more stupid as the movie goes on. The result of sex I would assume...Yeah sex make us do fucked up things... There's a reason why Peter Abelard, the famous medieval Philosopher and Theologian, remained a chaste. 

At one point, I'm looking at her and just thinking... Why is she carrying a watermelon?!!! Ok she's taking it to the party,

It is something from the 80s? Did people ate watermelons at parties? (Did they spit the seeds on the floor too?) Why aren't they bringing like beer or cocaine, quaaludes or something. I don't get it. I don't get it. 

Ooooh I get it! the whole point is for her to say something really really stupid to Johnny the first time they met.

Her first words to him are the infamous: "I carried a watermelon"

(by the way her delivery here is just terrible)

Who though of that?!! It's so stupid that I'm even tempted to think that somebody actually gave it some though. It would work the same with beer, "I carried beers"

So yeah, she's more and more stupid. And the only reason why you would think she's smart or brave or special, is because Johnny Castle keeps saying it so... but he's human trash: Of course you gonna think being a doctor is the greatest shit ever! You are basically a male prostitute!

But she doesn't do anything special. She doesn't save the day! You just like to think she does cause she's now friends with the cool kids of the neighborhood. But Johnny's first reaction was the right one: Big deal! you got the money from daddy.

Hey Frances you didn't make the world better, the children are still starving out there, and Dhalai Lama is still exiled from LalaLand...

Who cares?! I am LOVED now! 

And there you have it, the best line in the movie, gets me every time:

- So What's wrong? 

- She's knocked up baby

Is just hilarious. 

And then baby asks: What's he gonna do about it?

And Johnny Castle gets offended!!!!! "Oh it's mine. Right away you think its mine"

Why he gets offended?!! I cannot understand that! You are the one dirtydancing Penny all over the place and the other guy is calling YOU, of course she's gonna think that is your baby you silly sonofabitch!

I mean, this is such a chick script! And that's always the problem with chick movies they make the guy assume the perspective of a chick: and then the guy is like saying chick things, like good old Johnny here. 

- For some reason I keep thinking of this guy:

But the movie is filled with these chick scenes... Some days later Penny talks to Baby and tells her, "I just want you to know that I don't sleep around... Whatever Robbie might have told you. And I though that he loved me. I though it was something special" 

(yeah, the Mustafa special)

Why you want Baby to know that? Why would she care? (I mean you know her from like what? Three days?) And isn't that something you say to the guys? 

Hey, you know, I'm not like that, I don't sleep around etc. etc. Is she hitting on her? Like I say, I don't get it...

And also, guys are pigs, they always gonna tell you that they love you, Penny!!!

Many great lines and scenes! When Penny is in pain after the abortion, Baby says to Neill Jones (Nick):

-I though you say he was a real M.D. (yeah like real M.D.s are gonna charge you $250 for an abortion. And she's clever why?

Because she reads books.)

And Nick's answer is just gold:

- The guy had a dirty knife and a folding table. I could hear her screaming in the hallway.

Like damn! This is the stuff nightmares are made of.

This movie prevented more abortions than Opus Dei's crazy people (...quite the redundant expression there)

And there's like a disgusting abortion towel!

I don't know how this got a PG-13. (Not only that, apparently it was edited like three times before it got approved... I wonder how was the assembly?) 

But then they fucked up the scene with Patrick Swayse comforting Penny and dropping his:

"It's all right...

And I'm just laughing hysterically, and feeling guilty cause my Oma, my 103 years old granny is here, watching the movie with me, and she's giving me the look now: "How can you laugh? The poor girl is about to diiie"

So now she thinks I'm some sort of a psychopath...And I could never explain her why I found that to be funny!!!

(Or why I'm masturbating while we are watching it)

And in any case. Why da fuck Lennie is in this movie?

Lennie should be cracking morbid jokes on a rape murder scene not here! Is just so out of place!

And I love Lennie, I do! But who though he'd be a great "good dad"? Nooo! Goddamit, Lenny has seen too much evil in this world of ours.

Why is he giving money to random people? Ok, Baby asked for it, and he didn't know it was for an abortion... but then he writes a check and give it to Robby for him to go to school or something; and he just met him! And he's not rich. Like, come on Lenny, you are just a doctor! You are in the resort on invitation, because you saved the owners life or something (that guy from Casino) 

And his final line. 

"I know it wasn't you the one who got Penny into trouble" 

Why are you calling her Penny? It should be "that girl" you just knew; it should be that bimbo that had an abortion with my money and then I had to save!!!

Well, at least they fixed everything with the final dance. Everyone's dancing, I guess everyone's happy?

I remind you that Johnny is still out of job (for all we know, probably end up in The House of Painters and Plasterers AND without his summer bonus) 

Penny can still have children, Which is great... I guess. But still believes every bum on the street telling her that they love her.

And what about Baby?

Well, she didn't cure cancer, I can tell you that much. 
Wait, Was that from the remake?

(by pelida77)

Top Ten 1947 American Movies (Part 2 of 2)

Ok, so... Here comes the second and final part of the definitive list of the best American Movies of 1947 (look in my previous post for number 10 to 6)... But first, I'd like to point out some things I've learned through the hard, painful - sometimes even perilous - journey (this is like my Golden Boy diary):

- The best job you can get is in a music store (Guys and Girls): selling LP's or something, and the guys usually know how to play piano, and they all sing with pretty voices (in their charm, they are quite annoying!)

- Is not a Noir unless you got a crooked woman. Rule number One. This could be: The Femme Fatale; The double edge lady (a moral character but hiding something or working two sides) or just plainly The Whore

- There's always a happy ending, and when there's not is always that kind of unhappiness that brings some sort of dignity to the characters, like they get a redemption through pain or something.

-  Rule Number 2! Is not a Noir, unless you got the Noir aesthetic. Let's call it Gothic! The shadows have meaning!

- Everybody smokes in the Classical Hollywood. As Nick Naylor well puts it "directors need to give their actors something to do while they're talking" Doctors give their patients cigarettes, parents let the Kids smoke, Old people smoke, pretty girls smoke, ugly chicks chew tobacco; if there's a fucking monkey in the movie they would make him puff.

- All Enterprise Studios movies are excellent

- At least once they say "Swell", or even multiple times, Guys and girls say it. "Was the coffee any good? Swell. How's the Missu? Swell. At that fancy party the girls sure were swell" (and then they light a cigarette, yeah smoking and swelling!)

-There's almost no horror movies in 1947 :(

- All these fuckers (actors/ crew) married and divorced at least 4 times.

- They never gonna make movies like these again, movies with heart, movies that looked and felt like movies.

5. Desert Fury (1947, Lewis Allen) Slightly Erotic Thriller / Film Noir 

Paula (Lizabeth Scott), the young daughter of casino owner Fritzy Haller (Mary Astor) fells for middle age gambler Eddie Bendix (Burt Lancaster)... Soon she finds he had some sort of involvement in the past with her own mother...

Is the most shocking movie I've found in 1947, because like I said is slightly erotic, but I should have said HOMO erotic... is not overtly gay, old people won't notice that's for sure... (I don't know how though? with lines like, Burt Lancasters: "I wanna feel all that Desert Fury in my ass...mmmm Swell")

From this year there's a well-known homo erotic mainstream short called Fireworks (1947, Kenneth Anger), very scandalous at the time (the director was put in jail. Shame on you and your ignorant communist round table witch hunt, senator McArthur!!!) 

But that movie was just a short, and a gigantic piece of experimental shit. This is a AAA produced by Hal Wallis (the man behind Casablanca), distributed by Paramount, shot in technicolor (Every frame of it, screams: Expensive!) and it's good!!!

It's a Noir Melodrama, but the love triangle here seems to be established between the girl and two boys... Wait that's what usually happens in a Noir... yeah well, here the boys are fucking each other!!! 

And if that's not enough there's something between the mother and the daughter too: holy shit!... In any case for many reasons is definitely a unique Film Noir.

Lewis Allen had like a great timing; this movie is so fast paced that feels like a 90's thriller, but with all the elegance of classic Hollywood (the photography by Charles Lang as always flawless, and the music by Miklós Rózsa... I mean what else do you want?)

4. Golden Earrings (1947, Mitchell Leisen) Romantic Spy: Marlene Deitrich, Ray Milland

A British colonel (Ray Milland) escapes from the Gestapo to the Black Forest (south-west Germany); here he'll find the help of a gypsy, Lydia (Marlene Deitrich), and end up posing as her gypsy mate. 

I think more people would mention this one on their lists of best classical movies ever, if it wasn't so politically incorrect... Cause this movie could be understood as sort of racist, sort of... Gypsy's are depicted as filthy, ignorant human beings; devoted to commit thievery and other hideous crimes... But at the same time there is a certain Cervantine quality to it (if you ever read La Gitanilla you know what I mean) Romani people here are a symbol of freedom, liberal kindness and unconditional friendship against oppressive states. And that's what our colonel Ray Milland discovers while posing as one. And Marlene Deitrich's Lydia is really good (I mean, could this woman act or what?) You LOVE her. You'll end up loving her so much: in her filthiness, with all the racist jokes... She's so cute! She'll warm your cold selfish heart.

3. The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947, Joseph L. Mankiewicz) Romantic "sort of" / Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, Natalie Wood MUS: Bernard Hermann

Young widow Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) moves away with her daughter to a secluded seaside cottage. The ghost of the former owner, sea captain Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison), is haunting the house, but Lucy gathers the courage to stand up to him, and then woman and ghost become friends. 

At first, you don't feel it... This is one of the very best movies I've watched. Because is so silly right? A Lady and a ghost fell in love, not only that: he's a sea captain, and a grumpy one, like: Graaaaaar!

But you end up feeling the wind in this movie, and the sea, and you end up loving both characters... and the one thing that makes all REALLY work: Bernand Hermann's score. Of course, he's a legend, but he's always remembered for the Hitchcock movies or Cape Fear, or The Twilight zone... but I honestly believe this is one of his best ever, you will forever remember the music in this movie, it will haunt you, and you'll long for it like a sailor needs the sea... (puns! puns!) The movie is simple, but the score just elevates it. You can listen to it, here:

Gene Tierney is just fantastic. She plays a single mom that has invested all her money on this seaside cottage, and then she discovers there's a ghost in the house! But you know what? Fuck you! I'm not allowed to be scared: I'm a single mom. So we're gonna stay here and fuck you if you don't like it ghost! 

And Rex Harrison is just... shocked! And amazed by this tiny woman.

  

I said is a romantic movie, but we don't have any romantic scenes, like kisses, or declarations of eternal love... everything is more subtle: like looks and smiles... But it's a tragic love really, cause they can't even let themselves fall in love. Not even that... I love this movie.

2. Nightmare Alley (1947, Edmund Goulding) Film Noir / Tyrone Power, Coleen Gray, Joan Blondell, Helen Walker / FOX

Traveling carnival Stan Carlisle (Tyrone Power) cheats his way to learn an ingenious "act" code that let him pretend to have mental powers. 

Not much to say, other than it's a great movie about the rise and fall of a con-man. A perfect example of a non detective noir, all the characters -except perhaps the accomplice played by Coleen Gray (but even her) are twisted and fucked... There's no morality, no fear of God, no nothing: there's no God in this world...

But the thing that really gives you the creeps in the film is... destiny similarities, the effect is just spell bounding: like a mirror house in a fair... And essentially this is a horror movie: Stan Carlisle is like one of the monsters from Freaks (1932) that escaped from the fair into the world.

  

(I'd love to see the uncensored version... Supposedly - like the things are said in myths - supposedly, originally there was a scene of the Geek actually biting the chicken's head off... like... Daaamn!)

And the Number One goes to...

1. Body and Soul (1947, Robert Rossen) Drama / John Garfield, Lili Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere, William Conrad / The Enterprise Studios

Amateur boxer Charley Davis fights in order to save himself from poverty... but discovers that winning has cost him way more than he bargained for.

Old tale: a dream that becomes a nightmare or how success can corrupt a man's spirit. The irony when the attainment of our dreams brings out our perdition... It works, why fix it? 

There're many reasons why this is one the greatest boxing movies of all time and the very best of 1947, but I will only mention two: the Soul of this movie, which is, of course, John Garfield, one of the most talented actors of his generation in his best performance ever. This is the first in the Holy Trinity of Boxing movies, the other two being: On the Waterfront (1954, Elia Kazan) and Raging Bull (1980, Martin Scorsese); but I would argue that both Brando and De Niro took things from John Garfield's performance... Quite a bold statement... 

That's the soul. And the body of the film: the cinematographer James Wong Howe. Any movie made by this guy is worth to be watched, but here... you can feel all the freedom and the savagery of an experimental movie (It was an Enterprise Studios movie so...); the final fight sequence is just mind-blowing, the guy put himself on a fucking pair of skaters and shoot from below the ring... and the effect is just amazing!!!

Talking about the best DPs of all time people mention Greg Toland or John Alton, or whatever, but everyone forgets about Wong...

and this is probably his very best.

Well there you have it. One last thing, if you are curious Here is the list of the best one hundred 1947 movies, maybe you can find your favorite in it... maybe not... Anyway: God Bless Movies

(by pelida77) 

Top Ten 1947 American Movies (Part 1 of 2)

Ok, after working on it for like 2 years, here's my list on The absolute very Best 1947 American movies. 

Of course, you can disagree with it... but unless you've watched 200+ 1947 movies - as I have - , and I mean you need to tolerate movies like Gas Kids go West, Hi De Ho or The Fabulous Dorseys (Just to mention some crappy ones in the good list)... So, How could you feel entitled to?... No way! Antagonize me?, Ha! 

You are just a Film illiterate, and an internet whiner. 

I think I've been fair with the whole bunch, except perhaps with 

The Lady from Shanghai. For once that movie is an early example of disgusting Whitewashing practices. Oh Come one! Rita Hayworth wasn't fucking Asian, call it the Lady from the Sea or something... (though she had some Spanish blood in her... by the way, she was always ashamed on how Spanishy she looked.

So she fixed it... with bleach skin lightening and hair electrolysis, yikes!)

ALSO I hate Orson Welles. Don't get me wrong, he is a genius director... But I just hate to see that egotistical fucker in almost every piece of film he directed. There are better choices out there for the role you narcissistic fuck! so HA HA Orson Welles I made your master piece rank as low as I could.

I also would have made rank really high to Black Narcissus (1947, Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger), like maybe top 3?... But it is a British movie so (only Americana, dude...). 

So lets begin:

10. Gentleman's Agreement (1947, Elia Kazan) 
Drama: Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, John Garfield

The journalist Phillip Green (Greg Peck) is asked to write an article on antisemitism. He decides to adopt a false Jewish identity. Which kind of raises tension with his new love interest Kathy Lacey (Dorothy MacGuire); though she thinks herself as a liberal, she's really filled with prejudices against Jews... 

Here's the Oscar winner of 1947. It's 10 on the list of my preferences, but of course it is a very good movie. 

The reason why I made it rank so "low", is because I feel about it the same I felt for Crossfire (1947, Edward Dymitrik) which was a movie that also dealt with antisemitism (though the original novel was about homophobia: you can still see some glimpses of it in the movie) So yeah, we are tolerant, and we are preaching... but not THAT tolerant. It comes out just a tiny bit fake, it doesn't go all the way... But I guess that's always the case with first-timers and you know for a 1947 racism movie this is pretty much unique. 

Of course the director is the great Elia Kazan, and the movie just has to be excellent... and it is... But that's the other problem I have with it... Boomerang, also directed by him, also a 1947... Is not as good of a movie as this one (you can even call it just a regular movie), but at least there, the camera did some crazy interesting shit... You can see the hand of the director... here's just like good, you know? Just really good. In any case, as always he got the best from his actors and the movie is super fun and intense.  

9. The Other Love (1947. Andre DeToth) 
Drama: Barbara Stanwyck, David Niven, Richard Conte / MUS: Miklós Rózsa Enterprise Studios

One of the greatest novels you need to read is The Magic Mountain (1924, Der Zauberberg, Thomas Mann), though there's nothing magical about that shitty mountain... is about death and disease... I confess I could never finish it, for once is as big as the bible... and the reading is deeply personal, is just so disturbing! I must have tried it at least five times but had to leave it, had to.

I was close this year (to get to the end I mean) but a burglar... can you believe this?, a fucking burglar stole my book! (Who does that these days?! Leave it to me to get the only literate thief in the whole world. So, Mr. Burglar if you are reading this - you probably are because you like to read- Fuck You!)

Well anyway, this movie remind me of The Magic Mountain, I think it was influenced by Mann's work (At the very least the novel this was adapted from) Andre DeToth is a weird filmmaker for classic Hollywood, he's more like an atmosphere creator. A master of Noir (though he didn't call it that, for him it was gothic movies)

Concert pianist Karen Duncan (Barbara Stanwick) checks in a Switzerland sanitarium not knowing that her tuberculosis is terminal.

She'll fell for auto racer Paul Clermont (Richard Conte), so they'll "escape" to Monte Carlo to smoke, gamble and drink, that is: she will race the very few months she has left. 

8. Ride the Pink Horse (1947, Robert Montgomery) 
Film Noir / Robert Montgomery, Wanda Hendrix.

Lucky Gagin (terrible name) arrives to the Mexican town of San Pablo during Fiesta seeking for mobster Frank Hugo to extort him. FBI agent Bill Retz is also in town for Hugo, and when he finds that Lucky has a telltale, he asks him for it. But Lucky has his own ideas for... revenge...

The third directorial effort of Robert Montgomery, who kind of grew to like it once during another production, They were Expendables (1945) when John Ford got ill and he took over.

And he's... kind of talented, for the Noir bug. 

Ride the Pink Horse has a surreal quality to it, at times it looks like a freaking nightmare. I think it helps that the photographer is non other than Russell Metty, a master in the light and shadows.

Lucky is a man consumed by revenge, but he finds peace surrounded by all these beautiful and kind Mexican people, and specially teenager Pilla (Wanda Hendrix); so yeah it's a story about how a man learns to overcome hate... I don't have much to say about it. Good Movie!

7. Brute Force (1947, Jules Dassin) 
/Drama Prison movie

Prisoner Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster) plots his escape together with fellow prisoner Gallagher (Charles Bickford)

The prison is ruled by the mean brute force guard Cpt Munsey (Hume Cronin) It's an example of a movie trying to depict the criminal's soul... Why they did what they did, It's trying to make you feel for the criminal but...

"I have no pity"

Cause you are a fucking criminal, right?

Is trying so hard to make you see victims and not criminals,  that really gets the opposite effect: Hey there's a reason why these fuckers are in jail... By the way, these all are romantic criminals! Because, all of them got into trouble because of some woman in the first place. For example an accountant commits fraud just to keep buying shit for the way-out-of-his-league waifu.   

As the sadist cell keeper you got the Cocoon old guy, it was nice to see him...

though he's not much of a sadist here in my opinion... I mean, movie guards these days are real nasty motherfuckers. 

Still, a great villain. I think in most Classical Hollywood movies you hate the villain just because...

I mean the message is great: prisons should rehabilitate and not just punish; and I might have agreed with that when I was in my 20s; but it's really hard to swallow this with our cynic middle age souls. Still, a very well directed movie, well paced, fun, great performances, great shots...

6. Ramrod (1947, Andre De Toth) 
Western noirish / Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Don De Fore /  ENTERPRISE STUDIOS

A sheep ranch owner Connie Dickason (Veronica Lake), loses her fiance at the hands of the local cattle owner Frank Ivey (Preston Foster). The stubborn woman decides to hire Dave Nash (Joel McCrea) as an overseer to help her raise her sheep and face the cowboy bully. 

It's just a Western, a good old Western. But what makes it really interesting for me is the performance of Veronica Lake, she would do anything to defend what is hers... The Italian title is way more suitable: La donna di Fuoco (The Lady of Fire). She seduces men to kill and die for her. There's so much lust in the dust in this film (it's 1947!), that I even remembered to be a Technicolor: it isn't, it's black and white... and just a harsh reminder of what men would do for some pussy.

La donna di fuoco, Connie Dickilove: she's gonna fuck them all! 

(The list continues on the next post...) (By pelida77)

Blade Runner 2049 and don Quixote

Blade Runner 2049 is a great sequel, and the thing is the most great about it: is not really a sequel. Is its own thing.  (By the way, you know? Disregarding what I've just said, In my pop twisted mind, this is a trilogy, and the second one is Oshi Mamoru's 1995 Ghost in the Shell)   

It's a Science Fiction film at its core (with a kind of detective neo-noir thing), but the secondary plot is sort of a romantic story between Officer KD9-3.7 (Whom I strongly suspect is a replicant) and an AI called Joi. 

First of all, it reminded me - of course -, of the movie Her (2016) But without the whole creepiness of it... I don't know why?!... Maybe because it seems so natural that K being not a human, being a replicant, could fall for an AI... Robots do dream of electrical sheep!

But, you know, at least K doesn't look as much of a perv as Joaquin Phoenix's Theodore! (Maybe just because he doesn't have like a cleft lip?) 

They both fell for their Operative Systems, but at least Ryan Goslin is not pretending to fuck thin air while masturbating to the sound of Siri (and he doesn't complain about the hooker's lipquid... that gives him points)

So yeah Spike Jonze's Her, but mainly... Weird!!! Yes, it reminded me of don Quixote!!!

Of course, I wouldn't dare to say that don Quixote, the 17th century Miguel de Cervantes novel, somehow influenced the work of a 2017 science fiction movie (or the other way around).

What I'm trying to say is that art tend to portray the ultimate truths, the eternal ideas, the greater myths...

The same things that affected the audiences (or readers) back in 1605, move us now... Because even though those filthy motherfuckers (literally) dumped the contents of their bedpans right into the already filthy streets, they were not complete savages!!! They were human beings, and they cried and they laughed, and get aroused or simply excited by the same things we do. We are not that different!

So yeah, for me it depicts a topic... I don't know how to call it, maybe: The Fall of the ideal Woman.

We think of don Quixote as this crazy old man that believes to be a chevalier, and goes out to the very prosaic region of La Mancha looking for adventures; but really the novel is about a man that dreams he's in love, that searches for love in the world, and commits and serves to this love unconditionally... at least that's the way don Quixote sees himself.

In his mind he builds this ideal woman, Dulcinea del Toboso, based upon a peasant from a near town: Aldonza Lorenzo.

Among many other things the Quixote is also a romantic novel (there's probably very few chapters were Dulcinea is not at least mentioned once)

And even don Quixote says that a Chevalier without a lady to love, is not a Chevalier at all... (a bit more poetic) and We can say the same thing about Chivalric Romances 

(they were like uh... the rom-coms of their time... But of course, not as good as today's material. Civilization has improved.

(By the way, I think there's no Mr. Right for you Hellen Degeneres. And Who da fuck though that a movie where Meg Ryan meets Wolverine - as an 18th century time traveler?!!!- would be a good idea?)

Romance is at the core of Amadis de Gaula and Orlando Furioso; and even in minor works like Cirongilio de Tracia you got tons of love letters and declarations of eternal luuuve.  

For don Quixote Dulcinea is like the ultimate ideal of love, because he doesn't even know her! And that's the merit in it.

He madly loves her just of what he has heard of her... And yes that's fucking crazy! but not a lot more than like... I don't know, getting a Russian Bride from a dating website, you know... to sponsor

Then, in the second part of the novel, he wants to actually meet his lady; so he travels to El Toboso... and - of course - because he has never met her before, Sancho Panza, his squire and loyal sidekick, actually tries to deceive his master by making him believe that three random filthy peasants that come from working the fields mounted on their burritos, are Dulcinea del Toboso and two of her virginal maids...

In any chapter of the first part of the novel (1605) don Quixote would just idealize and he would see three gorgeous women, mounting magnificent white horses,dressed as princesses

(like what he did when he met that cocksucker Maritornes)...

But now something weird happens, Don Quixote can only see reality! When there are three smelly, sweaty peasants; he sees lowlife disgusting vulgar peasants; and Sancho is there putting beauty to the picture: lying his ass off; describing how beautiful they are, how refined their movements, how nice their odour feels... the odour is important, don Quixote later says that the thing that really got to him was the garlic smell that came from Dulcinea's mouth!

Same thing happens with our Officer K. He's in love with an AI, she calls him Joe, and he buy her presents (Oh, aren't they cute?).

I don't know how that happened! Is never shown.But he lives in a shitty part of the world where even the little people are being racist to him (and you know, you gotta be pretty fucking low in the social scale when a goddamn midget is calling you a skinjob)

... and then I guess he was feeling lonely, and went

to that Captain Phillips black dude and traded him the AI for some replicant smelly turd

Joi is first introduced to us in 50's garments, so she's like the embodiment of Hollywood's ideal of a Waifu: with a classic meal, having a drink with you, lighting your cigarettes, lifting your feet after a hard long day at the office... bringing you some hookers...  and sometimes you just wanna believe your woman when she tells you, with that sweet Siri voice "I always knew you were special" So, yeah, he fell for it.

   

You, the spectator, start wondering, because you know nothing about this world: Is she fucking real? - you know?- Does she have like real feelings for him? Maybe in the future humanity made AI's evolve so much that now they have like real feelings and shit

Nope! She was just a fucking tramp. A Whore!

She was just saying the things he wanted to hear: because she's selling a product. She is the product!; and that's the most shocking reveal this movie has... Nothing is real, similar to the first Blade Runner when you suddenly discover that even memories could be implanted... and then that Deckard might be really a goddamn unicorn? I didn't get that part...

All this, reminds me of another don Quixote moment when our hero in Montesinos cave has a dream in which Dulcinea in peasant form ask him for - I don't know how to translate this: "prestarle sobre este faldellín [...] media docena de reales" she's asking for money on some undergarments? Which is something the prostitutes back in the 1600s used to say, is the equivalent of:

Our narrators way of saying that Dulcinea-Aldonza was nothing but a prostitute the WHOLE time (there were some allusions made by the playful malice of Sancho... but nothing concrete, you know? This is like definitive: She was a whore, and deep down he knows it.)  Imagine the disappointment of our hero. This is a pivotal moment in the novel. Beyond this point don Quixote cannot see other thing but reality. It destroys his soul. 

There's nothing left for him now but to die... he cannot continue to be a chevalier! He cannot longer be special in this lousy world of us. Because deep down he knows he was a moron all along.

I can't get why some people only laugh with the Quixote, because at the same time it's so freaking sad, right?! 

Same deal here. It's soul crushing for K: the thing that really gets to him is not Luv breaking the inmanator, but later seeing the virtual ad of Joi in her pleasure model version... he is of course seeking her, and what he finds is that... she never existed.

I say: What a dirty dog! 

Well in any case it really is a love story. Otherwise why so much emphasis on how faithful he is to her?. He refuses advances from four women (well one milf and three skinjobs really... but what a tempting skinjobs those are, uh?)

Everyone wants to fuck Ryan Gospel these days! I think he could like even fuck the one that is in the glass cage eeeeasily, and not because that little bird is locked and cannot escape, but rather she was kind of flirting with him. From what I got she was a photographer. I didn't get why she was in the movie though... Meh, probably candy for the eye...

(by pelida77)

Novitiate (2017): a movie with some damn hot nuns

For a change let's talk about a last year movie I really really like: Novitiate, written and directed by a ladybird... by the name of... Maggie Betts. That's it!

I was expecting kind of a melodrama, and a really fucking boring one, because nuns, right?... but no, the movie is very straightforward, very honest and keeps you on the edge of your sit, the whooole trip.

It's about a girl that wants to become a nun, so first she has to pass like a 2 year trial period called the novitiate.

And is set right about that time, 1962, when the Vatican II was release. The Vatican II - please don't confuse it with the Vatican I - Was a council called by the pope John XXIII, with the objective of kind of modernizing the Church. There were some practices that came all the way from the middle ages (like the penance cilice in your ass thing-u? The one that, that albino leprechaun use on The da Vinci Code?), so they forbid some things and adapt others (and it all remained basically the same, right?, the mass is made now in vernacular languages

(Which is stupid in my opinion, at the very least you were learning something...the language of Virgil and Catullus, you know?)

The priest facing the audience during the mass... uhmm... I think the Holy Inquisition was disbanded too? And Torquemada judge and found guilty!

And of course, the more traditional factions of the Church didn't take this kindly (I think they killed John XXIII,  The "Good Pope", like a month or so he was invested? Actually I think he didn't really have time to be a "Bad Pope", right? The Godfather 3 shows all these. They poisoned his tea or something?)

So yeah, that's the Whole plot of the movie, she wants to become a nun, but the whole nun-thing is changing.

Let me tell you, the movie villain - sort of - is The mother superior of the convent (Melissa Leo), she's like a real bitch with the novices

and resist the changes. So is THAT character, but a great villain, because you can totally understand where she comes from. This is like the only thing she's known her whole life (she's been inside that damn convent last 40 years!!!), love as a sacrifice, as self-inflicted pain, as peaceful humble silence, as silice in your ass.

And now those cocksuckers!!! Are taking it away from her!

Not only that, you feel for her, you feel her pain. For the villain! Is awesome. She really feels betrayed by the Church, and blames JesusChrist Almighty himself for letting this changes to happen.

In one marvelous scene she's praying and crying:

"Where are you? I can feel you, right next to me, for so long.
With me all that time, my darling husband.
And now you've abandoned me.
And you hoped that I would lose faith in you?
You imagined that I would just walk out those gates?
I cannot. I made a commitment forty years ago.
And even if you choose to turn your light from me forever...
I am yours."

Damn! Like Damn! My darling husband... and there's something intimate in the way she performs all this.., Is like the sweet recrimination of the loving Wife to the cheating husband.

The mother, I mean the actual biological mother, is the weak spot... 
I've seen that bitch before in some minor movie... and Law and Order; I think she was fine there...
So I'd say underwritten.

She's an atheist but still take her daughter to a mass? Because, she's letting her "decide" when she grows up (Did she take her to eat Harikrishna pretzels next?...)

I mean you believe or you don't. If you think this is all silliness and a scam, Why would you take her there? It's so fucking stupid.

And then when she finds out her daughter's decision she ask herself: "What did I do wrooong?" Well lady, putting

her in a fucking nun school, for start.

  

And yeah, like I said is a very honest movie. These girls - the novices I mean- they're not just some virgin wackos that want to throw away their young precious lives. They really feel they have been called. They think they're in love with God. 

They really think they're becoming the wives of Christ.

In the novitiate ceremony they even made them dress in white wedding garments, fCs!!! And in a very childish manner after the wedding they dance around the fire, like in some pagan cult shit, singing and laughing: We're married. We're married!!! (like annoying kids)

Which reminded me the ending of another movie?

And maybe in real life they do, I mean becoming the Wives of God... Not in this movie though. The movie is like kind of atheist...Well that's a bit strong... At least Anti-Clericalist.

I'd say it's a movie that's trying to depict the big crisis in faith, that modern times, or more precise '62 brought to Catholicism. 

All our protagonist want is to be special to God 

(Not "special" like "we all are"...

But rather something unique... not like the rest of us losers.)

That's why she wants to become a nun. But she's so young, right?!

And yeah... I mean when you are young you have all this like crazy ideas of becoming a saint, and devote yourself to being perfect, and love all humanity... But then, one magical day your underwear

start to tickle... and you found yourself knocking 2 a.m. in the morning on some ugly chick's door begging her to comfort you, right?  

  

How could she make that decision?!!! She knows nothing about life, or like pervert Dr Freud used to say "sweet sweet Sexualität".

She knows nothing about boys... or girls...

And there you have it... The best scene in the whole picture. You got like two almost-nuns fucking each other! I was like: Daaamn!

(I tell you this much, We've come a loooong way since the days of Black Narcissus lipstick, right?! In a sentence this movie becomes like Black Narcissus, but without the Himalayas thing and there's no David Farrar in tight short pants either. And you got a sweet delights of Lesbos scene)

But like she says when she is confessing in the circle of trust... something like: "It cannot be a sin if it felt so right down there"

At least that's how I'll remember it.