Movies Talk

general
1388

@“xhekros”#p76789 I‘d say read the short fiction in chronological order and jump into the novels that seem interesting to you. There’s a very clear thematic and stylistic flow to his fiction over his career, with the main current being the short fiction and the novels developing off of certain lines of his thinking.

There's a lot of short fiction though, so these are the high points you shouldn't miss imo:

"Deep End"
"The Voices of Time"
"The Terminal Beach"
_Vermillion Sands_ collection per JoJoe
"The Air Disaster"
"The Dead Time"
"The Smile"
"The Ultimate City"
"Low Flying Aircraft"
"The Dead Astronaut"
"My Dream of Flying to Wake Island"
"Memories of the Space Age"
"Myths of the Near Future"

and the best novels are

_The Crystal World_
_The Atrocity Exhibition_
_Crash_
_The Unlimited Dream Company_

@JoJoestar have you read "Having A Wonderful Time"? it's about Gran Canaria being used as a gulag for english tourists

1389

@“yeso”#p76800 Yeah lol, english tourists are the most annoying so doesn't exactly qualify as “fiction”.

1390

So yeah, Monday, time for another FORT90 FILM CLUB, but it's also the 4th of July, so time for some movies that “celebrate” this country by highlighting what a dumpster fire it has truly become.

First if, what happens when an expat fashion photographer decides to produce a scathing satire of his birthplace via a superhero movie, one that lacks any subtext whatsoever, and is also absurdly well costumed? Well, you get...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R614shARgd8

Next is a pseudo-documentary from 1971 that feels way too real in 2022...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiWZEZkg0uY

Third is why July 4 is no longer the anniversary of America being founded, but instead the anniversary of me discovering racer trash, and to mark the occassion I am playing the very first thing I ever saw from them...

https://twitter.com/fort90filmclub/status/1544048751697879041

Last but not least is something that is legit one of the greatest anti-Vietnam movies ever produced, tho be warmed: it is a hard af watch cuz it is GRIM...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzykMZ1xs3w

Stream starts at the usual time, 8PM EST, and at the usual destination...

https://www.twitch.tv/wondervillenyc

1391

@“fortninety”#p76845 Mr. Freedom is such a great pick for this occasion, thank you for reminding me of it.

1392

@“rearnakedwindow”#p76888 @fortninety I ended up on a four hour long work call and had to miss the end of Punishment Park :sob: (and the rest of the broadcast afterwards. I really wanted to HWG the start of id4)

I also had to have Mr Freedom on mute for most of it due to being in (online) meetings, so I have my own interpretation of what was going on and I cannot imagine what the genuine authorial intent was

1393

watched White Men Can’t Jump and got upset with how badly woody botches things with Rosie Pérez. What are you doing man unbelievable

1394

downloading tubi to watch Thief tonight

Speaking of which I pre-ordered the _Heat 2_ novel but don’t have real high hopes for that after seeing it has a co-author and also it’s still titled “_Heat 2_”….

1395

@“yeso”#p77491 co-author is quite concerning. Makes me wonder if Crichton just gave an outline and handed it off for someone else to do the work

1396

I wonder what the first numbered sequel was

1397

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@“Gaagaagiins”#p77533 I wonder what the first numbered sequel was

[The first use of a number in a sequel title was probably Quatermass 2 in 1957, the follow-up to The Quatermass Xperiment.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NumberedSequels#:~:text=The%20first%20use%20of%20a%20number%20in%20a%20sequel%20title%20was%20probably%20Quatermass%202%20in%201957%2Cnote%C2%A0%20the%20follow%2Dup%20to%20The%20Quatermass%20Xperiment.)

1398

@“Gaagaagiins”#p77534 wait wow that's super late.

1399

watched about a half hour of world war z because the algorithm wouldn’t leave us alone about it. Jerusalem is able to hold out against the undead horde because they have big walls and the IDF protecting it, but then a group of Palestinians start singing a happy song together and the zombies hear it then breach the wall and kill everyone.

1400

Watched the 1997 Selena biopic for the first time as an adult(saw in middle school before I think?). Loved it. JLo and Edward James Olmos are great in it. I really dislike biopics for the most part and I think the thing about this one that made is much better is they don’t portray each individual event with too much overwrought importance. In these movies they usually treat every scene as this pivotal and dramatic point in a person’s life. Just every scene is some melodramatic bs. Selena is really grounded and sweet though, I think it does a good job of collecting scenes that illustrate who she was and what her story was instead of making everything a career-defining dramatic event. Plus just love hearing Selena songs tbh. Fuck Yolanda Saldívar!!!

Classic scene that has probably aged well or poorly depending on who you ask but personally love it:
https://youtu.be/ZwDlsyOL_Kg

1401

Watched critical darling The Worst Person In The World last night and pretty much hated it outside of a couple scenes. It’s a super shallow sketch of a women trying to figure out her life, a story that has been told 1000x before. It checks the boxes: drug scene, manic pixie dream girl stuff, >!manic pixie cheater girl!< stuff. I felt like its philosophy was tell don’t show because other characters constantly say things about her being a wonderful person, a wonderful writer, and we’re just supposed to accept them as fact and move on it feels like because the movie spends next to zero time showing those things to be true. It makes for pretty paper thin characterization. Along with some also very messy and shallow exploration of older dude creative anxieties about wokeness and screens. Just hard to really connect to and take seriously.

1402

@“yeso”#p78211 wow

1403

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@“TracyDMcGrath”#p77551 wait wow that’s super late.

It does seem late, but I suppose that's the reality of inconsistent media preservation practices, and so perhaps the numbered sequels of yesteryear are lost forever...

Some say that we may never be able to find decisive evidence of _Henry I_ through _VII._

1404

@“Gaagaagiins”#p78547 don‘t know if it counts since it’s not literally Don Quixote 2 but the second part was written in a 100% official sequel frame of mind. There had been a few knockoff “sequels” by other authors to the original, which made Cervantes have to write his own definitive part 2

1405

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@“yeso”#p78572 don’t know if it counts since it’s not literally Don Quixote 2 but the second part was written in a 100% official sequel frame of mind. There had been a few knockoff “sequels” by other authors to the original, which made Cervantes have to write his own definitive part 2

I think something being a direct continuation to something already existing and fully realized isn't a numbered sequel even if it's called _Part 2,_ but that doesn't really describe _Don Quixote_ either, does it? I could hear arguments that Cervantes would absolutely have called it _Don Quixote II_ if it was a convention at the time and thus its just an early attempt at the concept of sequel-izing, but since it's called "Part Two" rather than just "The Second," I could also hear an argument that it's more of a retroactive expansion in scale of the original work. Maybe another similar edge case would be something like _Lord of the Rings_ being compartmentalized into not three but 6 books, although I don't know how much of that is just vestigial logistical decisions when it was more complicated to manufacture printed books.

I guess it's ubiquitous now but there is a certain audaciousness to just calling something "Creative Work The Second," which at least to what I can think of, for a lot of western history would be the domain of like monarchs or popes mostly. It's a funny thing to think about at all. That being said, historical direct sequels and figuring out what the first one would be would also be a funny and interesting thing to think about too. It'd be probably be a novel? Which were sometimes also published in an ongoing serialized fashion too right? Maybe that adds another complication to figuring it out.

1406

@“sabertoothalex”#p78338 we watched this in school 12 years ago, I don‘t remember a lot of it but EJO and JLO were in full command. All I really remember are Selina’s mom being upset over Selina wearing a bustier while performing, and in a separate scene EJO getting upset and screaming “It‘s over! It’s over!”

Regarding The Worst Person, I reacted differently to these parts:

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other characters constantly say things about her being a wonderful person, a wonderful writer . . .

This seemed like an intentional abbreviation, like we were meant to take her baseline goodness for granted, and it's left to us to recognize that of course she (or anyone) is or can be a nice/good person despite only being shown a series of her embarrassments and moral failings (depending on the harshness of the viewer's judgment). Only telling us what a good person Julie is puts us in her shoes: it's impossible for her to see whether she is really good or not, all she notices are the ways in which she's a screwup and how she hurts others.

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exploration of older dude creative anxieties about wokeness and screens

That was maybe given too much emphasis but I definitely felt that embarrassment was the encouraged emotion toward that guy's comments on those topics. Look, he's on Live Television, putting his foot in his mouth! AAAAA!

I mean the way you're describing the movie sounds awful, I can see why you don't like it. Just wondering where our perceptions differed. I remember thinking the ending was a bit weak, not sure why though

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@“Gaagaagiins”#p78576 Maybe another similar edge case would be something like Lord of the Rings being compartmentalized into not three but 6 books, although I don’t know how much of that is just vestigial logistical decisions when it was more complicated to manufacture printed books.

Not sure if the [Tolkien Gateway](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings#Books_and_volumes) is to be believed but the story goes it was divided into [3 volumes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-volume_novel) according to a 19th c. publishing convention and due to the paper shortage following the war—if the first doesn't sell then paper isn't wasted on the other two. It was divided into six "books" as in books of the Bible, or the five books in _Les Misérables_, but I don't think was conceived to be published as six volumes at any point (although the three volumes [could have](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings#Editions_and_revisions) been named Vol. 1: Book 1 & 2, Vol. 2: Book 3 & 4, etc).

1407

Classic Polish films made available for free online: 160 feature films, 71 documentaries, 474 animated films and TV shows (why are those grouped together?), 3,108 Polish newsreels shown in theaters 1944-1994

Here's the site: https://35mm.online/en

News to you @yeso?