Reviewing Hollywood snakery

[pov603]

Yes! Cheers Flabbergasted!

[sublimity]

Speaking of which, here is a screenshot from the extended cut of Independence Day that is similar in composition to the average 9/11 rubble image.





Source: http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=587558

[VexMan]

I wanted to share with all what I found a while ago... not sure, if it is going to fit perfectly into this thread but anyway, it most definitely is food for thought for anyone willing to think about Hollywood machinery. It's about the movie "The Counselor", made in 2013 by Ridley Scott from a script by Cormac McCarthy. The review was written by Jasun Horsley, full link to it here: http://auticulture.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Counselor.pdf. There are few points from Horsley's review I'd like to bring forward here :

As a vision of evil The Counselor is completely persuasive. Its depiction of soullessness as eerily sumptuous, even sickly erotic, of moral incoherence as the driving force behind civilization, makes it almost Lovecraftian. With its relentless, seductive insistence on horror as the soul of the plot, it may be the first really postmodern horror film. By going all the way into the nihilistic perspective of a godless universe, it achieves what Coppola failed so spectacularly to do with Apocalypse Now, and takes us all the way into the American heart of darkness.

And—surprise, surprise—it’s in Mexico

I bolded in above quote what stunned me when realising what Horlsey observed - there need to be no images involved in order to make a horror movie. It for sure wouldn't be the first movie which tried to inflict emotions of fear/horror without showing any image of it (Blairwitch Project as a recent example), however The Counselor is not a horror movie neither by story nor by any context. So while talking about the snakery, this movie comes as a prime queen of such.

There are many of very profound points Horsley makes in his observations. I'll quote just one more as an example , which interlaces many of the subject discussed here on CF. IT is about the specific part within the movie where a dialogue is set between the diamond dealer and the counselor:

The diamond dealer gives a long, difficult to decipher speech about how every country that has driven out the Jews has “suffered the same fate.” He makes the bold claim that there is no culture (since the Greeks) besides the Semitic culture, and that the heart of a culture is found in the nature of its hero. Western culture, while driving out the Jews, has adopted the Man of God, Christ, “the prophet-penitent,” as its hero, even though the God in question is that of Jewish culture. “How do you steal a God?” he ponders. The counselor offers no answer. The dealer winds up his speech by saying that “The Jew beholds his tormentor in the vestments of his own ancient culture.”

The insinuation of this speech, as far as I could tell, is similar to something the poet William Blake wrote, that when a nation rejects the Jews but adopts the Jewish faith, it becomes subject to “Jewish rule.” Christians worship the same God as the Jews, and yet the Jewish God is temperamentally opposed to the Christian virtue of mercy and forgiveness. Jehovah is a wrathful, avenging deity who smites anyone who displeases Him (and even some who don’t, as Job can testify). The Jews appeased Jehovah by offering up blood sacrifices, and the film’s heart of darkness (Mexico, the barbaric land outside the walls of the Empire) is a killing field where young women are tortured and murdered for the entertainment of cosmically depraved overlords—as blood sacrifices to appease monstrous appetites.

[Farcevalue]

I found this to be a very powerful movie, although I could not bring myself to recommend it to anyone. Well executed might be a way to describe it without bringing the Nietzsche-esque abyss-staring aspects of the content into it .

There was a clearly nihilistic moral in that the most unabashedly innocent suffered horrible fates, while the most corrupt psychopaths prevailed. This is an ending that movie goers generally find intolerable (or at least most producers must think so, as it is very uncommon).

I actually liked, not necessarily enjoyed the movie, although perhaps being preoccupied with the world as I now understand it to work in reality has tempered my ability to endure that type of content.

I find it to be well within the current context of glorification of anti-heroes and normalization of psychopathy, with a bit of in your face "Whaddya gonna do about it?" thrown in for good measure.

I am curious to see Suicide Squad, although refuse to fund it, as the premise is recruitment of psychopaths to be used in the service of good.

If we can make heroes of our murderers, pedophiles and rapists, bankers and politicians must surely be angels.

[Flabbergasted]

A piece of number trivia

Director George Lucas was fond of the elevenoid number "1138", which became popularized through the title of his social science fiction movie, "THX 1138".

THX 1138 is the name of the protagonist. The two other main characters are called LUH 3417 (female lead) and SEN 5241 (villain). The letters seem like random sequences ascribed to dehumanized people but they are likely thematically intentional. It is fairly certain that THX stands for “sex” and his companion LUH stands for “love,” (the two rebels become connected via sex and love after refusing to take their government-mandated, mind-altering drugs). SEN stands for “sin.” The characters SRT, NCH, and PTO are believed to represent Sartre, Nietzsche and Plato, respectively, because of their philosophical ramblings while THX 1138 is imprisoned.

Lucas is said to have named the film after his San Francisco telephone number, 849 1138 (the letters THX correspond to 8, 4 and 9 on the keypad), although in an interview for the DVD compilation "Reel Talent", he claims he chose the letters and numbers for their aesthetic qualities, especially their symmetry.

The title of the film, or parts of it, appears in other productions, such as:
- American Graffiti (1973) - the license plate on John Milner’s car is "THX 138".
- Star Wars, Episode IV, A New Hope (1977) - Luke Skywalker and Han Solo transfer Chewbacca to "prison cell block 1138" while disguised as stormtroopers.
- Raiders of the Lost Ark: a loudspeaker in the submarine dock scene announces "ein, ein, drei, acht,"
- The cinema sound certification developed by Lucas's company is called "THX".

The number 1138 probably appears in many other media productions, like so many Easter eggs. The other day I saw it twice in a Duke Nukem game (episode 2, level 2, Incubator). It´s pretty well hidden, though.

On the wall, below a UN-like logo:


On a computer screen nearby:


More here:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/76955/15 ... t-thx-1138
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066434/tri ... tt_trv_trv

[dblitz]

Good noticing Flabbergasted, are you a gamer?

Also, Farcevalue -

If we can make heroes of our murderers, pedophiles and rapists, bankers and politicians must surely be angels.

Great point.