Like normal life but quietly dark family drama with nice scenic shots?
The last movie I watched and really liked was Force Majeure, which I hadn't seen. So stressful, so fun. Also featuring Vivaldi's Summer which is key in Portrait of Lady on Fire. I love the entries for composers on IMDB... Antonio Vivaldi "known for" the soundtrack from Pretty Woman.
I’ve seen about half your list, I’ll get cracking on the other half! I’m excited to have movies to watch, I’ve been in a drought. My household is very big into the theater experience, so we’ve cut back dramatically on movies.
The Evans-Bechtolt household is deep into Season 5 of Six Feet Under, a show I totally missed the first time around and would have definitely watched sooner had I known it took place in Los Angeles. Anyone else an 'Under-head?
ME, I'm an underhead! I haven't watched it since I watched it all on DVD in the mid aughts, but it fucked me all the way up then. I struggle with death and grief and watching was instructive and difficult at times. I've watched the last scene of the last episode a few times on youtube and sobbed, so get ready for that.
It feels transgressive in America to have a long running piece of entertainment that's just about death and difficult emotions. We hate to think about it so much.
Yeah, totally! It's been especially weird/instructive to watch now, during COVID/general American death-cult times. You'd think it'd be too much but I find it grounding. Everyone talks about that final episode and now that we're finally approaching it I'm scared!!
On another note: Claire's art school years are so fun! [mention]joni[/mention] and I were just talking about how we wish art in real life was like art in Six Feet Under...like all you gotta do is make some weird egg sculpture or take a sexy photo of your friend or spray-paint "Terror begins at home" on the wall or do a photo-collage and everyone thinks you're a tortured genius. Is that what art school is like??
Well, it's both totally not like that and kind of a little bit like that. The hollywood version of art school is really exaggerated, but there are certainly seeds of truth. Most students are really young and still going through a lot of self discovery, so there are intense feelings flying around.
There are also lots of quiet students, and lots of students who just want to paint a picture and not be tortured, or are super tortured but their work is doing a painting. Different schools have different vibes too! My tiny west coast art school experience was chill and supportive and organic, while the fancy east coast art school was exciting, intense, grueling.
*I really love it when people make the clichéd work, it means they're trying to get personal or deep! Hopefully just a stopping point on a longer journey but I'm charmed by all of it.
definitely got really into Six Feet Under circa 2006 via netflix mail DVDs. like [mention]meadows[/mention], it really fucked me up, ha! I genuinely started seeing my first "grown-up" therapist during that period because I became so existential. have you talked to [mention]w0lf[/mention] about SFE yet, [mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention]? she is the #1 underhead in my mind.
also, I used to live just around the corner from the Six Feet Under house in Jefferson Park/West Adams and would pass it any time I was heading east on the 10. def recommend a drive-by if you haven't already! can be combo'd with visit(s) to the Peace Awareness Gardens, Revolutionario Tacos, and/or The Underground Museum when visiting such places is safe/possible again ().
Aw [mention]meadows[/mention] I love this tender interpretation of art school angst. Bless you.
Lol [mention]infopetal[/mention] I have talked to [mention]w0lf[/mention] about it!
This final season is such a prolonged downer, everyone is having such a hard time and I can't deal with Ruth's tragically bottled-up lil soul for a second longer! Just watched the one where Nate kills the bird at his 40th birthday party. Jesus.
I'm definitely planning a Six Feet Under filming locations pilgrimage once we're done with the series. The house itself has such a flowery history! Originally built by "a Swiss native who came into wealth through his work with a gold mining company based in Death Valley. After World War II, the house was purchased by General Hilario Camino Moncado, Filipino by birth and the founder of the Filipino Federation of America, which uses the house now."
[mention]meadows[/mention] the finale was rough! I was aware that something special/unique was going to happen just from pure cultural osmosis so I was maybe a little bit overprimed for it, but it was still really impactful. You'd think for a show that started every episode with a death and its fallout that it would have already conveyed the message that death, in fact, comes for us all, but it really makes a world of difference to see it happen in such a matter-of-fact way to a group of characters you're emotionally invested in. My main complaint: why the fuck was Keith still working private security when he died?? I thought he was co-owner of the business? They did wrong by him IMO.
In terms of waterworks, though, it was Nate's funeral that really annihilated me! The raw intensity of actually burying someone you love with labor and a shovel feels so lost in our world.
I read the book a few years ago (on sometime boardie [mention]w0lf[/mention]'s recommendation) and remember thinking that it was the most written-for-TV book I'd ever read. Every chapter was its own totally self-contained story and it seemed tailor-made for adaptation. I say that with zero judgement. I was actually very inspired by the forward-thinking hustle of it. I can't remember enough about it to comment on the adaptation's authenticity but I've been loving the series! I think it walks a great line between gory horror fun and clever, layered social commentary. I like how it uses spoken word and poetry the way other shows use music. I like how it reclaims horror tropes from avowed extreme racist HP Lovecraft. And the performances are all so good. The part in that last ep where Tic's Dad finally lets go of his baggage and embraces joy in the drag club?? I wept.
My only criticism is that I wish we had more time to get to know the characters beyond the broad strokes, but it's very fun and I never know what to expect from week to week. The horror of racism alongside the fantasy horror is very well done.
The drag club!!!! So beautiful.
The body horror... squelching skin sounds... won't be rewatching that particular episode.
Is anyone watching Raised By Wolves? It's very beautiful and has some interesting/scary androids but isn't incredible on the whole. Child actors aren't great, some religious themes are corny, etc. It's a cool world that I wish had a better story around it.
I was just saying to some friends on Twitter that I like how the whole medieval monsters / Crusades aesthetic is a refreshing change from the heavy cyberpunk / bleak gunmetal gray modernist look most contemporary sci-fi is pushing. I think the actress that plays Mother is really good. Guessed that she was Nordic (a Dane) just from her clipped accent. She's amazing at putting a TON of performance into her voice and absolutely none behind her eyes or in her face, which is super eerie. Campion's a dweeb.
I realize these mournful family dramas are not everyone's cup of tea but sharing this new trailer for fellow 45 Years–head [mention]marijke[/mention] as it's is being marketed as having the same producers:
Did you talk about Tales from the Loop (Amazon) already? It's a sci-fi series of interconnected one-off episodes inspired by the art and writing of a wildly imaginative artist named Simon Stålenhag.
It's like if CERN built a loop in a small town in Ohio in the 1970s. Very far out, yet nostalgic.
One of my best Hollywood-style art school moments was when a brilliant, demanding Spanish painter of hyperreal marine life said to me "you are a sorcerESS of LIGHT!"
(Here's another one: recently I keep thinking of an art school assignment I did that was a diorama of a museum display in the future with a sign that said "WHAT WERE BIRDS?" Hollywood art school students are very intense and upsetting!!)
Just watched Lost Highway again last night. They do sooooo much sex to Patricia Arquette. Oof.
But how had I forgotten, "Don't you fucking ever tailgate!" What a magnificent scene.
Last night we watched Underwater, a newish movie that's basically Alien underwater. It was very scary, very fun, and hardly even that dumb! Dumb in a fun way. The only truly bad part was that for awhile Kristin Stewart is in her underwear, for no good reason. Her clothes got blasted off or something. The rest is great.
It really hit the spot... I wish there was another, because I would watch it right now.
We just watched Basic Instinct the other night. It's a film I always assumed was some kind of sophisticated European-style cinema noir, having not seen it—but as it turns out, it's also trash. Did you know that Sharon Stone had no idea her vulva would be on camera?
That is SO fucked.
It reminds me of hearing that when Megan Fox was working on Transformers she was shooting a scantily clad scene sitting or working on a motorcycle and acting to a camera in front of her.... not knowing that there was another camera behind her, capturing the footage they actually used. Butt cam.
What a loathsome, cruel, disgusting, depressing place, Hollywood.
Ever since Hereditary, I can NOT jam enough demonic possession movies into my eye holes.
What are some good ones?
I'm refreshed in the pursuit due to Daniel Isn't Real, which I liked so much I watched twice within a couple of days. It is an "is it mental illness? Or supernatural evil?" story that stars the children of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, AND the Governator and Maria Shriver. They have "the stuff" if you ask me and their performances are as exciting as discovering "The Flowers of Evil."
Speaking of Megan Fox and demonic possession, now is the perfect time to rewatch Jennifer's Body, which I was so delighted by.
There is this Scandinavian one I've been trying to remember the name of and Can Not. It is about two kids that live somewhere remote. Like 'alone in the woods with one guardian' remote? One is "new"? One is a witch/demon/monster? I'm shadowy on the details but I remember it being excellent. Might be 10 years old or so. Maybe 15?
Sweeping in with a strong rec for "How To With John Wilson," the new Nathan Fielder-produced philosophical docu-comedy on HBO Max. Pretty indefinable but definitely in that Nathan For You-echelon of disarmingly earnest satire.
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