You’re daughter is lucky!
I’m sure the discussion in Chicago will be great, too! It sounds like it’s going to be a thinker of a film, so probably lots to unpack!
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Might i ask where its showing in Chicago?
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It’s by invitation only. My daughter is hooked up! She sent me a one-time-use link so it won’t work for you, and I can’t figure out how to find the right person to email to ask for another link.
Here are the Chicago dates/locations:
AMC River East - Friday, February 24th at 4:00 PM
Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema - Friday. February 24th at 4:50 PM
Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema - Saturday, February 25th at 2:15 PM
AMC River East - Saturday, February 25th at 4:00 PM
Maybe if you call Landmark or AMC and ask them? I’ll be at the AMC on Saturday, FWIW.
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Thanks kindly!
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Hope you were able to make one of the showings! Unfortunately, ours did not have the promised discussion panel afterward.
As for my review of “The Quiet Girl”:
Absolutely worth the watch. You know how American films make Ireland bright green and always rainy and somehow stuck in the 1800’s? Yeah, this film does not do that. The cinematography is excellent, and the entire film is real, not a caricature. Someone started to compare it to Banshees to his date on the way out and I nearly turned around to argue with him! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film so perfectly filmed from a child’s perspective, even when the camera isn’t looking outward but rather directly at her. It says so much despite saying so little. (The people next to me talked, commented, and reacted so often that I believe they spoke more than the characters in the film.) And trust me, the adults are excellent in their roles, it’s not just about the girl, really. There’s no point in telling the plot, as it’s ‘simply’ the process of experiencing her life from the end of school term through the summer.
Two thumbs up, no question!
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Marc shows the “anti-woke” comics (who “can’t say anything anymore!”) how it’s fucking done.
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He was on Fresh Air recently to promote this:
Worth a listen!
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James Hong Rules!
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Great speech!
Shortcut to it:
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Meth Hedgehogs!
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An interview with Michael Douglas about Falling Down…
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Even today, King Kong exists to show bored and world-weary audiences that there is more in Heaven and Earth than is dreamed of in “safe” modernity.
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Hmmm, thanks, but I didn’t find that an especially thoughtful interview about an often awful film.
Douglas does say,
As far as a social message, I think it’s just about getting along. Sort of an answer to the polarization that’s going on now. And I would say that William represents more of the far right side, and a lack of an ability to accept or understand minorities’ positions. And just accept the fact that America is going to be brown in our future. The shade is going to be closer to brown than white.
Um, okay, but the movie doesn’t really convey that message. It’s too easy to read instead, as many people did, as a plea for the “real” victims, middle-class white men.
He also says,
One of the little side stories I do remember is after the film came out, Warner Brothers called and asked me to come down to the studio the next day for a meeting. I went down that next day and the meeting was with the Korean Grocers Association. I came down and the studio said, “Listen, Michael, this is the chairman of the Korean Grocers Association who is very upset with your interpretation of how you’re treating Korean grocers and your behavior.” I said, “Well, I didn’t write it. But there was a reason, I guess, that the writer wrote it. And there was a reason that the character resonated and it was one of the popular scenes in the picture.” He listened to me, and we left the meeting. Soon after that, the Korean Grocers Association started using “smile” buttons [that] they passed out to their stores all around the country. Little buttons with smiles, in terms of changing their attitude. I always thought that was funny. So it hit a note…
That’s “funny”? That the racist scene in the movie that includes an aggrieved white guy smashing up a Korean immigrants’ shop prompted real Korean shop owners to protect themselves from such a real attack with smiley buttons? And what apparently came out of that as good is not that white racism declined (the film instead enflamed it), but that the shop owners changed their attitude!?
GTFO, rich old boomer.
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Yeah I agree… I thought that people would find it interesting, given how we’ve talked about this film before.
Of course, lots of actors seek to defend the work that they do, either because their positions depend on that defense, or because they believe in what they did… Hard to know his position there…
I agree, but the same can be said about Breaking Bad, right? Plenty of people read Walter White as the hero, rather than as the “bad guy” in the film. I suppose at least in the film, the main character at least says “I’m the BAD GUY?!?” at the end. But you can never control how people will understand a film and I think creators are often frustrated by that.
Yep, indeed. This brings it back to intent vs. perception of a film… If you remember, people were worried that the Joker movie with Joaquin Phoenix would create some incel violence or at least inflame it… and I think that some certainly saw it as a rallying call for more of that violence…
But the larger problem hollywood still has is the perception that we need to keep examining privileged white men and their interior lives, at the expense of films about the interior lives of the rest of us… Sometimes even films that are supposed to be about racism, etc, end up being about white people rather than the people victimized by racism. It’s enraging!
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certainly, one can see how Kong himself is a stand-in figure for a proud African slave, dragged from his country in chains to provide the entertainment for an elitist society that is both fearful and envious of him. But the quality that makes King Kong so great is its sense or spirit of adventure.
“Modernity” against “primitive” or “ancient” creatures and cultures. That’s what I saw throughout the film. Sure, the colonizers see going to other people’s countries to conquer and capture as an “adventure.” Using film and a stage show to promote it that way just encourages the audience to see your “safari” that way, too. That’s just the “thrill” those “world-weary” folks needed! 
I’m doing this while reading the idea that Kong represents freedom. 
Ok, the captive escaped and provided the reviewer with the narrative of an uncontrollable force of nature. Wasn’t he controlled long enough to generate money for Denham? Who felt free to capture and kill him? The very idea that the motivation was boredom…
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Whoah! OK. That is valid modern criticism
That being said, those effects by Willis O’Brien were neat. Out of 3 versions Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray were still the best versions of their roles.
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