MOVIES MOVIES MOVIES! ACK!

[Little Sixes Little Nines]

aw man, i loved every minute of that movie. you really should try again, immediately.

[Ashley]

Me too!  I thought the whole thing was pretty damn charming.

Also, Delicatessen had been sitting around at like the 5th slot in my Netflix instaqueue for well over a year now and I finally got around to watching it last night, and felt pretty constantly thoroughly entertained.

I watched Delicatessen the other day because of this comment I guess?  It seems strange that it's from a post from so long ago, but I know I heard about it on lptj and did a search and can't find anything more recent.   I really enjoyed it!

[Nick Ink]

Me too!  I thought the whole thing was pretty damn charming.

Also, Delicatessen had been sitting around at like the 5th slot in my Netflix instaqueue for well over a year now and I finally got around to watching it last night, and felt pretty constantly thoroughly entertained.

I watched Delicatessen the other day because of this comment I guess?  It seems strange that it's from a post from so long ago, but I know I heard about it on lptj and did a search and can't find anything more recent.   I really enjoyed it!

I feel like I'm always talking up that film, so I'm also surprised it was that long ago.

Oh, look at this. Even longer ago, it seems I mentioned it in my "Get to know your fellow LPTJ readers".

[G.C.R]

Aw crap Nick, you know I'm gonna have to go read that whole thread now.

Oh, everyone's so young! Chet, is your favourite word still 'Cuntybollocks'?

[Anne the Man]

Ha!

Wow, heaps of you were my age when you started posting. I can't believe Miles was 21, for example. Miles you are perpetually older than the mountains in my eyes. (I can't get them out, it's a serious medical condition)

[YojimboMonkey]

Tried to find my contribution to that thread, found instead me getting into it w/ briggins over Alan Parsons Project. Ah, was I ever so... less old?

[Greg Nog]

HOLY SHIT THAT THREAD

There are so many weird memories there!

[Chet]

wow, i was 19 once!

my favourite bands still remain the same, probably, minus cursive.

i actually tried re-reading life after god recently and just found myself lol'ing.

things change. things stay the same.

not sure if my favourite word is still 'cuntybollocks' by the way.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

i have whole chapters of college-age expression logged here that i don't want to revisit

[elpollodiablo]

i have whole chapters of college-age expression logged here that i don't want to revisit

[elpollodiablo]

Also how have I not watched Game Change yet

[G.C.R]

i have whole chapters of pre-college depression logged here that i don't want to revisit

[Thermofusion]

i have whole chapters of college-age expression logged here that i don't want to revisit

Quoted for infinite truth. For that very reason, I cringe anytime I see ancient threads bumped. It's like, in a real-life conversation, you wouldn't just randomly quote verbatim some fucked-up or stupid thing your friend said six years ago when they were drunk or high or depressed. Not complaining really, I know it's just one of those weird endemic-to-the-internet points where the social code of a virtual group of people diverges from the protocol of a real one. Still makes me cringe though!

Anyway a year or two ago I went back and deleted my introduction post in that thread. Felt good!

[elpollodiablo]

in a real-life conversation, you wouldn't just randomly quote verbatim some fucked-up or stupid thing your friend said six years ago when they were drunk or high or depressed

Add "heard on the Simpsons" to that list and it describes pretty well every conversation I had from ages 16-23

[Thermofusion]

Yeah I'm not talking about dumb teenage jokes, I'm talking about truly regrettable things said by lesser, more vulnerable, more depressed versions of yourself in darker times. Stuff you'd like to keep in the dustbin. I dunno, my apologies!

[Ignatius]

I used to feel that way... But then I realized that seeing how dumb I was meant at least I'd learned not to say those particular dumb, insensitive things any more. At least for the most part. It's not that I don't identify with previous ideas I had, just that if they're cringe inducing I'm not gonna feel pegged to them as a source of shame.

[jebreject]

Ever try reading through your old LiveJournal entries? THAT is the fucking worst idea anyone can ever have.

[Thermofusion]

I used to feel that way... But then I realized that seeing how dumb I was meant at least I'd learned not to say those particular dumb, insensitive things any more. At least for the most part. It's not that I don't identify with previous ideas I had, just that if they're cringe inducing I'm not gonna feel pegged to them as a source of shame.

That's a good point, and I do feel completely detached from that previous incarnation of myself. But the detachment doesn't make the memories any less visceral, fwiw. Like the time I "flounced", my life was deep, DEEP in the toilet, and when y'all joke about it in passing it still brings back horrible contextual memories of why I was so on edge about everything at that moment in time. You know what I mean, I guess. Anyway, just explaining what I meant, not really looking to discuss it!

[davy]

Yeah I'm not talking about dumb teenage jokes, I'm talking about truly regrettable things said by lesser, more vulnerable, more depressed versions of yourself in darker times. Stuff you'd like to keep in the dustbin. I dunno, my apologies!

This is not so much an issue with me because I generally avoid being opinionated on the internet, unless it's about music or books, in which case, that stuff's not really embarrassing -- tastes change and all that. All the message boards I've been associated with, all the live journal posts, all the short-lived blogs -- I mostly just talked about my life, what was going on with me, what I was reading or listening to that got me excited. I guess I've always sorta used the internet as a great big interactive journal, minus the rants and vulnerability and depressive musings. Maybe it's not as honest as my girlfriend, for example, who filled notebook upon notebook with intensely personal, deep-down stuff. But it's worked for me.

The more I think about this, the more I realize there's a lot to say on the subject -- about how much this Internet-as-Journal construct has meant to me. When I moved to Colorado away from all my friends, when I dropped out of grad school the first time, when Finn was born and almost died, when I was going through my divorce, when I was finding myself afterward -- I needed to talk about these things, sure, to get my thoughts down on paper. But I also needed help from my friends; I needed feedback, which is something a locked-up diary can't really provide. This message board (and the ones before it), and facebook, and live journal, and myspace -- these have all been extremely successful ways for me to organize and record my thoughts, all while interacting with people I admired and respected.

When I look back through the archives here, or the first couple years of my facebook activity, or old message boards, or live journal, mostly what I see is the recorded history of those relationships -- the telling of an old story and the responses it received.

[jebreject]

That's pretty beautiful. Actually.

[G.C.R]

For real.

[auto-da-fey]

I went to an inanimate-objects-gone-wild double feature of Rubber and Death Bed: The Bed That Eats last night. The former, well, I gather it's kind of reviled around here, and I mostly hated it for most of its running time, but I will admit that it began growing on me as it went. The world most certainly did not need another meta-absurdist reflexive "horror" film about a killer tire, but at least it sticks to its guns and goes all in on really refusing to give you much of anything you want from it. I still came out antipathetic to it, but gotta give it credit for that--with the caveat that I am, of course, wholly supportive of the cinema of pleasure-denial.
Well, the many exploding heads did offer some pleasure, I suppose.

Anyway, the real find was Death Bed, a once-lost 1977 zero-budget fantasia that gets a chapter in Stephen Thrower's Nightmare USA, as yet unread by me (I began the book two years ago but don't read the chapters until after I've seen the films they discuss). It's ludicrous, all fizzy foam and carnivorous furniture, but it achieves this otherworldly delirium that resonates pretty deeply with me. One internet review likens it to mid-70s Herzog, and I agree. I'd only recommend it as a mood piece, but as such, highly endorsed.

The real mystery to me is the persistently low turnout for Andrew's Video Vault, a monthly free series that I've been attending for several years now (memorable screenings, for the sake of my own memory lane, here and here. in retrospect, I should have tried to make out instead of watching an Andy Milligan rarity, but I made a lot of bad decisions in 2009). It's FREE and the movies are almost always RARE and it's in this wonderfully spooky old building right on the University of Pennsylvania campus. I know basically nothing about Penn except that it has the execrable Wharton School, but I also know that no Ivy League school--well, maybe Dartmouth, probably the least hip of the gang--is without a sizeable film-buff contingent. Yet average attendance is around 10, with probably three being presumably-homeless guys who just wander in. I am confused about that. 

I mean, look at this lineup for the rest of the year--early 50s Douglas Sirk that I've never seen next month!--and try to explain that.

[auto-da-fey]

oh also revisited Marnie for the first time since 8th grade since M wanted to see it for something she's writing. It was my favorite Hitchcock film back then (!). This time I found the first hour fairly draggy, but did love the second half, which is basically a crash course in mid-60s notions of sexual perversion. It's great that basically every single character is some kind of perv, and the film very cagily both embodies and mocks psychoanalytic notions--I haven't actually read much critical commentary on this film at all, but gonna assume it's out there in abundance, and easy to see why.

[Thermofusion]

Never made it through the first half hour or so of Marnie (definitely draggy) but that compels me to rewatch it, as I've always mentally lumped it in with those other dull late Hitchcock flicks separating The Birds and Frenzy.

[G.C.R]

Oh man, that American Babylon you're talking about in that old thread sounds like something I'd watch.

I'm missing that newest Paradise Lost doco right now, which I feel a bit stink about - I've had a committment to seeing each of them lasting more than a decade now, so it feels like poor form to bow out at the end. Oh well.
 I did watch Bed and board the other night, which I liked less than Stolen Kisses, but really, watching Antoine Doinel puddle through his life being a clueless, charming and smarmy bugger is still all good. I was much more impressed with Claude Jade in this film - in Stolen Kisses I felt like she didn't have much to do other than react to Doinel, but in this one her character seems to have more desires and ambitions of her own, and so you get to see more of how she's doing an amazing job, playing someone who is really uptight and middle-class but still really likeable.