DISMANTLE WHARF

Has anyone seen Minding The Gap? I need to talk about it.

Great. Little Drummer Girl miniseries will fill the this week's void. Love a mini.

I really want to see Minding The Gap but I'm confused about the title, because it appears to be a reference to the London Underground (Mind the gap announcement) but it's set in a Rust Belt town?

I have no idea how it got that title, it doesn't seem to be referenced in the film?

This is near the top of the list of favorite things I've seen in the past few years. It's nominally about skateboarding and has lots of skating/footage, but it's also about young men in a dying rust belt town & the cycles of domestic violence and hopelessness that permeate their lives. It's very beautiful, very compelling- starts off slow and gentle and by the end you will be crying. The filmmaker knew these people since their early teens and there are YEARS of archival footage, plus several years of footage shot for the film. I think he's incredibly talented and can't wait to see what else he does.

Please, watch this so we can talk!!!

Thank you for the rec @meadows! We watched tonight. Heavy. Thank G*d for skateboarding—it's truly saved so many lives in this country. Like what would any of these kids have done without it? I love how it's always a conduit for making films too...there's always the kid in the crew with the camera, and it's so interesting how years of filming each other created a super open and confessional environment for documentary, they clearly all love and trust each other so much.

We just watched a similar doc a couple weeks ago, about skater kids in a fucked-up desert town in California in the early oughts. Similar thing, filmmakers had years of footage, pure American angst, kids skating around the ruins of once-thriving communities, except they're Christian emo kids so there's a cringey subcultural element that's a bit more nuclear.

Anyway, if you liked Minding the Gap you will like Only The Young (2012) too. It's on PBS:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085888/

I wish I had all the footage we shot in the mid 90s while critting around Portland on a skateboard.

I do have a video we made in 1994, editing straight from a huge VHS camera directly into a VHS deck. Pause, record, rewind, repeat. I'll try and find it and upload it. It's called "Nightmare On Wheels".

@alexshred420 RAD. I can't wait to watch.

I downloaded the almost five-hour version of Wim Wender's Until the End of the World (1991) which features radical dream sequences that were made by fucking around with early HD video. The results are super beautiful and in the realm of the dithering we know and love on this message board. Here are some stills:

That is one of my favorite films! I know I keep saying that, but this board is bringing up some real bangers. It's so silly, beautiful, "futuristic", emotional.

Those dream sequences are incredible. I think often about the idea of becoming obsessed with images from your own past- these ideas dovetail a lot with my relationship to and understanding of photography.

For those who have seen it, this is a great interview with Bing Liu about Minding the Gap. Wouldn't recommend reading if you haven't watched it yet.

https://filmmakermagazine.com/105737-i- ... -of-abuse/

Found it:
https://alexmahan.com/files/Nightmare-On-Wheels.mp4

2 Doors songs and a lot of really bad skateboarding! We'd only been doing it a year or so.

Enjoy.

★★★★☆

Four stars!

Well, for some reason we watched the whole thing! Just started and couldn’t stop! A real slice of life. Did you have *two* friends named Cole growing up??

WE AUDI!

My contribution to the skateboard theme is this gif of the only time in my life I have successfully ollied up a curb. It only took me...10 years?

Yes, I had TWO friends named Cole. Well, one was named Cole and the other Kole.

Cole Younger is a direct descendent of this Cole Younger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cole_Younger

Back to Until The End of the World: we did a marathon Sunday viewing of the 5-hour cut yesterday. Wonderful. The sheer scale of it! By the end we were like "remember when she was in China? that was three hours ago"--it was such an epic cinematic journey around the world, extra-appreciated in quarantine. I gasped audibly many times at production design and styling choices and never got bored, although @joni and I both agreed the film didn't quite stick its landing.

I read this interview with Wim Wenders afterwards:

https://boingboing.net/2015/10/20/wim-w ... -on-t.html

He talks about how the film was directly inspired by Aboriginal concepts of dreaming...so cool. I love how all the Aboriginal people bail as soon as they realize the mad doctor wants to record their dreams. How dare he? Dreamtime is something I've always wanted to learn more about. Anyone have any book recs on the subject? Seems like something at least one Dismantler might have developed an interest in over the years.

Wim Wenders also talks, in that interview, about how he developed Until The End of The World's representation of ubiquitous little video players and recorders after making a documentary about Yohji Yamamoto, Notebook on Cities and Clothes. I guess it's a device he used a lot in that film. I've tasked @joni with tracking it down, and it will be added to the Plex post-haste!

Speaking of dreams, we just watched this Chinese film "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and the last hour is one unbroken take and it was pretty amazing. About 15 minutes into the last hour, I was like "I don't think there's been an edit yet" and then we realized that there were no edits until the end of the movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp3IFEn0Gt4

The trailer isn't really representative of the movie though.

Last night we watched The Ornithologist and I fucking loved it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDdlOcrBSUM

This Wim Wenders interview is so good. I love the part about using the new HD technology to make distorted, disintegrating images, to the horror of the engineers.

I know! It really resonated with me because that’s basically what we did with machine learning a couple years ago. Using high tech to make janky-looking/sounding stuff—the engineers DO NOT get it.

It's so delightful! Like, they invented some incredible new technology that will deliver higher fidelity than ever before, and no one had seen or used it yet, and the first person to get their hands on it made glitch art. It's the coolest.

Somewhat related in spirit is this amazing thread about how to make your work Zoom camera set up look *more* mediocre:

https://ask.metafilter.com/351581/Mediocre-zoom

wow! so many contributions!

Thanks for sharing your Plex, C and J!

I was so looking forward to Promising Young Woman, but it didn't quite hit the spot. Mulligan was excellent and the cast were great, though.

Time to watch the rest!

Yeah, I didn't *love* it either. It defied my expectation of being a slasher movie, and the twist ending got me, but...it sort of lacked an emotional center, or at least enough of one to justify the conceit. We love Carey Mulligan though, I hope it's a big movie for her.

There's so much good stuff in the Plex, Bocko! I really recommend the documentary ASSASSINS—it's about the two women who poisoned Kim Jong-un's half-brother in the Kuala Lumpur airport a few years ago. I remember being fascinated by the story when it happened, but it's not at all what you expect. No spoilers but let's talk about it here when you've watched it.

Turns out Armie Hammer is even weirder than a giant loaf of bread! Who knew? US.

surprised no one has mentioned How To with John Wilson yet! I want people here's impressions. (I loved it.)

also watching/watched:
Small Axe
The Good Lord Bird
Betty
Schitt's Creek

How To With John Wilson is god-level!! It’s the only thing I’ve ever watched that has made me want to live in New York, for one, and I’m immeasurably grateful that anything so pure could exist in our capitalist death cult of a world. Gives me a little spark for humanity. Our generation’s Frederick Wiseman!

HTWJW is SO humane and tender. it's in the genre of TV shows that is so transcendent I spend the whole time imagining how was this pitched, who green-lit this, how did he get this footage, HOW!!!!

Yeah, that show is so good! It's interesting that Nathan Fielder is the producer because his show is actually quite cruel in comparison. I had to stop watching Nathan For You because it made me feel terrible, unlike HTWJW.

Yea... same with Nathan for You. I think both shows rely on the main character's performative sincerity. I feel like in that genre on the kindness scale you have Joe Pera Talks to You on the far end of nice, How to With John Wilson sits somewhere in the middle, and Nathan For You on the other end where it's pretty straightforwardly cruel. NFY laughs rely on taking advantage of like immigrant small business owners who don't understand what they're signing up for. NFY is completely insincere, Joe Pera is completely sincere (albeit still "performed"), John Wilson seems basically sincere.

But even some stuff in How To made me sad in Nathan For You kind of ways. Like Cancun Chris. I mean, the joke is roughly "this guy is lame and lonely". I guess I'm getting sensitive as a get older and any jokes that take advantage of sad people bum me out.

Majority of it was very charming and seeing NYC undergo the quar shift was very sad. Also the foreskin man, god bless.

I'm going to give it a try.

For some god forsaken reason we watched True Romance this week and it's the biggest piece of dogshit. I think we wanted to watch something big and fun, and neither of us could remember anything about it. It's TERRIBLE and super offensive and stupid. It has all of Tarantino's worst qualities (he wrote it)- dumb bimbo women, dumb/insane but somehow also strong and tough hero man, random gangsters, big shooting and violence. There's a scene near the end where Patricia Arquette's character gets the shit beaten out of her that was so full on we were both shocked into silence. I guess I'm just saying that Tarantino sucks balls and this movie is awful, don't be fooled into thinking it's a nostalgic romp!

I dunno! I'm usually hypersensitive to embarrassment comedy and man-on-the-street-being-alienating kind of stuff, but Nathan For You is so absurdist that it doesn't affect me in that way. He goes to such dramatic extremes without ever breaking that it starts to feel like endurance sincerity, and he brings out something really endearing in people—I mean sometimes they're obviously like "fuck this, no thank you," but other times their willingness to indulge him for the sake of saving face/being nice/being on TV is kind of beautiful, and it ends up somewhere really human, like in the episode where those strangers hike to the top of a mountain together and camp overnight just to get a gasoline rebate. I feel like the later seasons evolved into freeform social practice humanity television, especially as he started going back to the same people again and again. The most recent finale was high art IMO. I'm really desperate to know how it's made. I imagine there's some really heroic production work happening behind the scenes, but it seems like a well-kept secret in the biz.

I HATE Quentin Tarantino and ALWAYS have

I do think the gasoline rebate ep is solid gold.

I was just going to say, that episode with the mountain hike hit me in a sweet way! A lot of it makes me do a little sad cringe, but there are certain episodes that either offer a sweet moment of humanity or are either so twisted and convoluted that it becomes something else entirely.

Not a single character in True Romance has a background or quality that couldn't be described in about 5 words. You never know where people came from, why they do what they do, etc. It's one of the stupidest things I've ever seen and it made me so mad I have to take a movie break for a few days. I think we kept watching it because we just couldn't figure out what was happening, but I'd like to unsee it.

I am sure I am late to the game on this but I had the realization recently that movies that I thought were fine or even good in the 90's are often just shockingly offensive. A (Swedish) colleague of mine showed Billy Madison to a room full of 12 year olds who are in "extra-English support lessons" and I figured it was a weird choice but whatever, summer vacation starts tomorrow. Oh man, I was so deeply embarrassed to be a teacher who sanctioned this for young growing minds. IT IS BAAAD. The only woman in the ENTIRE movie is just a walking doll with no personality in dresses with high slits who falls for a total child-asshole. It's gross.

Do I live on Mars? I have never heard of any of these shows. Is the new formula for hip American shows, "a man's name and some general words?" I did fall deeply for "Billy on the Street" and his yelling schtick. I love it.

Agreed- the 90s don't feel like that long ago, and don't feel like they were as backwards as the 80s perhaps, but when you really look at the media of the time it's full of horrible stuff. We have this experience a lot with rewatching 90s stuff or even older stuff that has a reputation for being good, smart, funny, etc, and it's just full of totally inappropriate and offensive material.

I wanna plug the netflix documentary Disclosure again, for shining a hard light on trans representation in the media. It's really good, and really sad.

The 80s were deranged. Any broad comedy from the ‘80s is like unimaginably sexist. When’s the last time you saw a movie like Trading Places? Women are tits out for absolutely no reason throughout

Another movie that does NOT hold up is Beautiful Girls! We watched it a few weeks ago because I remember my mom & I both loving it when it came out. Wow. One of the central plot points is that Timothy Hutton, an adult man, is romantically pining over Natalie Portman, an actual child. Like, calculating when she’ll become legal sex age, wondering if he should “wait” for her...it’s supposed to be charming and romantic?? It’s so insane I almost recommend watching it for complete temporal social mores whiplash

Ohboy. Whiplash is right absolutely right.

Rewatched Death Becomes Her recently, remembering it as this feminist statement about obsession with youth/beauty culture. It is rough. The man who pushes his wife down the stairs AND KILLS HER is the hero of the film. Isabella Rossellini remains a badass.

Oh god yes but it’s SO funny

Meryl Streep is really under-recognized as a comedic actress. She’s so good in Death Becomes Her!

Old movies really do it to you! They look so amazing, and then present the most ridiculous and disturbing scenarios. In one of the classes I teach (studio lighting) I create a recommended movie list and always have to triple check that I'm aware of whatever insane things happen in otherwise wonderful movies so that I can prepare the students. Like, check out Rear Window, it's so amazingly crafted! Can you believe they created that complicated single set? So many specific lighting scenarios? Oh, also- it's about voyeurism and there are some pretty problematic scenes with him watching women either be sexpots or endure violence- nbd. Definitely watch it! Definitely know that it's weird!

If we didn’t watch problematic movies from the past how else would we know the world is (actually, gradually) becoming a better place?

It's a tough one for me. My view is that there's not much new under the sun--in every era there are movies that are morally exploitative and morally inspiring, and half the time it's the same movie.

In my view, for example "Promising Young Woman" has lots to pick apart but Hollywood needed to pat itself on the back with a Me Too movie and that's the one we're getting.

I love the Rolling Stones, the Death Wish franchise, Ms .45, the Joker... they all have meaning to me that affirms my view of the world. Granted, dealing with trauma is a theme of my life, and maybe it's corrupted me a bit. Not sure if I have a point!

(Edit: sorry, I know this was originally about teaching film and nothing to do with me loving bad things)

I haven't seen Promising Young Woman yet (too sensy these days) but read the spoilers and know people find the ending unsatisfying. but I wonder what to make of these post–Me Too movies, what do people want from them…? closure? revenge?

did anyone see The Assistant? I liked it in a Jeanne Dielman kind of way. in the context of Me Too find it compelling because it is resolutely focused on the system that enables a Harvey Weinstein type without you ever seeing the abuser or abuse.

I really liked the Assistant! Definitely thought about it in contrast to PYW (which I do not want to drag through the mud, the lord knows there are all kinds of ways to tell such stories and we need more of them).

I thought it really captured the ethical frustration of being in a situation you have no power to change, particularly as a young woman.

Unrelated to the current thread, but I want to pop in here and enthusiastically plug our friend Bret's weekly Twitch show, The Museum of Home Video:

https://www.museumofhomevideo.com

Tuesday nights at 7:30, he screens a grab bag of cinema rarities, music videos, deep YouTubes, found footage, etc. Bret is a longtime LA repertory film programmer with the deepest media archive in the world, and he's building out a streaming network of cool shows from other heads under the Museum banner. There's a really lovely community that's developed around the show (the chat is really fun) and it's been such a highlight of quarantine for us!

Back to PYW, Ayesha Siddiqi with the most incisive take as per (read the whole thread):

https://twitter.com/AyeshaASiddiqi/stat ... 78944?s=20

I haven't seen it and was happy to have read this and been spoiled. I'm now trying to wrap my mind around what this movie was trying to do.

Yeah it sounds real bad when you lay it out like this...