Film Analysis with Luke

Tarantino and fingers Getting pregnant from one time Dream encyclopedias are overconcerned with sex Urine analysis in the 6th Sense The Affair is atrocious The Loudest Voice and I’m Dying Up Here

Whos Afraid of virginia Wooolf Sixth Sense is about masculine repression in society Upstream Color Band of Brothers, underwear in the shower? Band of Brothers, reserved dialogue = good. Like Zodiac, not Hacksaw Ridge. A Star is Born, ears and nose Wind River (Netflix) yay, Air Force One hard nay

The Sixth Sense, single  mothers. The Master, window to the wall scene. Band of brothers, no snipers. Movie recs: Rams and as I Lay Dying (cement or concrete?) Movie pet peeves and things I love

A Star is Born. Half faces. Billy Madison is Sandler’s best film. It takes artistic risks. Most gruesome wrist-slits in films. Heaven Knows What, On Body and Soul The other 3. (I keep forgetting the numbers): It’s important when characters laugh The opposite of brown and where does Silver come from. Characters shouldn't wear what they're feeling.

Sexual abuse theory, brother confusion, more.

Great podcast episode! I highly recommend watching the Mmep first (or at least after). I have some misquotes. Brief clips from: House of Cards, Pulp Fiction, and more. (All film/audio clips used for analysis purposes #FairUseHopefully).

Decent fluff till 13ish minutes (I tell two jokes I love). Then House of Cards talk. Lighter essays first then the heavier one. A few season 5 spoilers. Enjoy!

Today we analyze one of the strangest aspects of Mad Men: why Betty Draper and Glen Bishop connect so well.

We examine the different meanings of red and blonde hair by comparing Helen Bishop, Betty Draper, and the prostitute. Short episode. Medium difficulty.

Difficulty: MEDIUM-ADVANCED Length: SHORT Format: FULL TEXT or AUDIO   Essay about bad parents, migrants, and the Bible.

Ladies meditate in the bathroom, men do on the train. The train is a transition stage. Megan’s home is a time capsule -- past gender roles on bottom, future on top. To skip the fluff and go straight to analysis, start at 6:35.

A company asked me to review their documentary (Incarcerating US) but it was basically half baked propaganda about prisons, mandatory minimums, and the evil that is justice in the US. So I decided to tear the doc a new one.  “How come you don't attack conservative propaganda, Runge?” Because that wouldn’t balance the world we live in: Anything remotely critical of African Americans: racist; must be in KKK Anything anti-abortion or anti-birth control: sexist; must hate women Anything pro-gun: you must sleep with a rifle and adore mass shootings. Anything that even hints at taxing the rich less: Ok district 1, tell us if you ever come to reality. This is the emotionally incompetent PC culture we live in i.e. 90% of what we find on Reddit, Imgur, twitter, and the news. If the pendulum ever swings back (which it might) and I have 1dimensional conservative/right wing arguments shoved down my throat day in and day out, I’ll crucify that simplistic moronicism, but that’s not the world we live in.

Keep in mind that each theme is not specific to this episode but repeats and repeats and repeats throughout the series. My topics are not arbitrarily chosen. (I wrongly attribute a quote to Henry Francis that was said by Francine. Whoops.)

Here it is, for Mad Men lovers and novices alike, my Mad Men discussions (starting with episode one). ​ Knowledge of the series not required -- these episodes are interesting enough to be listened to without watching the show -- but the ideal usage of these episodes would be as a companion. ​ I hope to analyze the first season (episode by episode) and then see if I feel like continuing.

9 minutes. Not very heady. Let me know your thoughts. Enjoy! SPOILERS

The Film: They Look Like People Quick episode. About 15 minutes. Talk about a Netflix semi-scary/thriller movie. Enjoy!

Film: Drinking Buddies I loved this film so much. Enjoy the episode (it comes in under 15 minutes). We talk about relationships, what types of people work, and some of the metaphors in the film.

The film "Nana." Only 10ish minutes. Another one from old that I'd never finished/published so it's lacking a bit of polish but still good. Enjoy!

14ish minutes. 5.3-5.6 are ones I did a bit back and didn't publish so that don't have exactly what I love but are still good. Enjoy!

Quickie episode: 9 minutes. Enjoy!

Scientology, Catholics singing, and Tom Cruise - Oh my. Enjoy!   This is a loose follow up to episode 4.7 (massage chairs).

Did prehistoric humans understand color better? Are anti-love movies actually be pro-love? All that and more (like how to use a condom as a metaphor…) The film: Gaspar Noe's Love *The first half of the episode is the sales pitch for the movie. Listen to that, then watch the movie, then listen to the second half of the podcast (the analysis).   **I added nature sounds instead of music because I think it's relaxing. I also slowed my voice down because it makes things easier to process and I sound so manly now.

Supplementary video on website http://www.film-podcast.com/#!blog/ch7d   “Limitations are not constraints, are not necessarily restraining: they are tests. If you can’t write a poem with only words beginning with “b,” you don’t deserve the rest of the alphabet; if you can’t paint with one color of the wind, you don’t deserve the spectrum. Constraints make it so we’re not the only ones in charge (even if we’re the ones that create them). You get a partner, a backboard in your creations.” “The human brain operates on stimulus -- jolts of electricity come and domino as far as they can go. There is the initial zap, the travelling, and where it ends up finding its resting place. A minimalist/slow/ lackalist movie, with its lower number of spider-webbing zaps, forces the viewer to make some of its own thunder storms;” “Maybe watching challengingly static films -- pain with little experientially fun payoff -- is exactly like forcing yourself to sit on an adult timeout chair. If the film gave in, like a weak-willed parent, and added in some T&A, a lollipop and some love, we wouldn’t benefit much.”

Some teasers...“Prompt: You are given 1 million dollars to direct three five minute films: one thriller, one scary, one horror. What would these films be for you?” “Many films booked as Black-Horror are actually Gray-scary - It Follows, A Girl Walked Home Alone at Night, a bunch of vampire/ghost…” “But Horror, oh man, that’s a completely different apple pie. The hell of horror is a sticky combination of the insurmountable, the torturous, and the unknowable. Getting beat up by Mike Tyson…” “There is a Helplessness in horror and you know it when you feel it.” The “capacity-for-horror scale” or the “how-tough-are-you scale” “Everyone has a sweet spot for pain where the stimulus feels masseusatory (made up word for therapeutic). There’s a type of teasing…” “A good indicator, I’ve found, to show where a person squats on the “capacity-for-horror scale” is how they react to main characters dying.” “Me personally, after learning of more and more of man’s inhumanity to man (damn you Dan Carlin and your Hardcore History) I’ve grown to enjoy…”

“I mean it completely when I say I loved this movie. On my first viewing which is usually analysis-light and mainly for fun, I enjoyed this movie for a variety of reasons. First: you know those like waterfall or jungle sound recordings people use to fall asleep? Well, the sounds of this movie are earthy and hypnotic…” "I have a friend who’s about 6”4, can do back flips on a snowboard and is really good at urinating, that confessed that no matter how much money he makes or..." “See, our generation is “narrative super saturated.” Put simply, we have so many stories that we don’t know what to do with them. We’ve…” “A good example of this is the initial sexcapade. She is forcibly deflowered by Akin whilst looking for Flowers the cow and this can be seen as a feminine submissiveness. However, it is revealed that this sexual liberation was actually her idea, that she was truly in control…”

I left in some of my “ummms” and screw ups for pacing…to humanize/humble some of the intellectualism. Hope it works and isn’t annoying. Today we talk about “There Will Be Blood,” one of the greatest films ever. Ever, we say. And the podcast turned out pretty well; I think it’s accessible. We talk about D-Plain, his relationship with his son, his self, and about how the elements that allow a man to be great are the same things that allow him to be….quite naughty. We also talk a little bit about metaphor… Enjoy!

This week’s episode is a must listen. No Country for Old Men and… ---Training your kids to do drugs--- I’m going to stop glorifying drugs to point out that I don’t advocate drug use nor do I do much myself (outside my mountain of Diet Pepsi and the occasional addy). But kids. Are gonna. Do them. And they need…   ---My drug knowledge--- My basic understanding is that drug use like finances, accounting, and investing. There is a plus and a minus column, has high value stocks and low, takes planning and calculating. They take energy: there’s that whole “getting drunk is stealing tomorrow’s happiness” concept and that's not…   ---The death of the cowboy ideal--- No Country happens in wild west of Texas, like Kill Bill, Friday Night Lights, and it’s a showdown between good and evil. However, this isn’t Miss Daisy vs gang bangers: there is western sophistication, intelligence, and lethality on both sides. We watch the gods - near perfect and near inhuman - dance… Lewelln - our reprentation of a cowboy, moral, gritty Texan ideal - slowly but surely, has his soul destroyed. Bit by bit, Lewelln’s…   ----Why grumpy old men are grumpy old men--- There is a point of embracing pain, of going past this where it become s destructive and you cant function in the world - you simply must bury some of this pain and self awareness. Great writers are often great afterwards because…

Atonement. Gingers. Repression. Ideals. Love. Keira Knightley.

Birdman. The soap opera effect. New TVs. Rube Goldberg.

I screwed up a bit on the "Five Languages of Love" idea (dangitall). I think I didn't list the right ones, forgetting "quality time" which probably includes the good communication I was referencing.BUT the episode is still a good one. Alcohol, Love, Communication. Also, J-Law is a supporting character.

In this episode I talk about Fight Club in a way you haven't heard before. How Fight Club its like Star Wars and the Shining. How Fight Club helps me understand why people love Bernie Sanders. How condoms ruin marriages. How growing up sometimes means punching yourself in the face. AND MORE! This episode starts a little lighter than others so as to make it more accessible. The meaty analysis starts round 20 minutes in. Hope you guys enjoy!

A long MEHpisode, but okay if you're into Jung, MBTI/typology stuff.

"Aranofsky’s Black Swan is about a consciousness, Nina, exploring restrictive unconscious beliefs. The beliefs that control Nina are embodied by her mother, Beth, and Lily. To release the Black Swan, she must overcome each of them."

"We start out with Max Fischer - lost, failing almost all classes, but living in the fantasy land that is Rushmore. He attempts to return to roots by reviving Latin, the Romance language, but..."

In this episode, we analyze "Inglourious Basterds" for what it says about duplicitousness, evil, propaganda, and more. I'm quite proud of this episode and it's going to be tough to top.

Easily my favorite episode. Next week is Inglorious Basterds (I think). Hold onto your butts! (There are spoilers so maybe watch the movies first if you haven't) We discuss the ins and outs of “revenge,” the differences between moms and dads, how a samurai sword is like a penis, and the process of becoming powerful.   “Often revenge is not a conscious decision but gravity swinging back the pendulum, getting back to center. Every act of revenge is an attempt to remove instability, to spit in the face of Law 2 of Thermodynamics, to put functions and systems in place to keep the room from continuously getting damned dirty.”   “Now that I’ve dropped the F-bomb a few times, I’ll do my best to give you a more accurate description of what I view as the defining characteristics of the abstract notion of fathering. The closest concept revolves around acceptance: a mother accepts a child for what it is. A father…”   “One thing you gotstuh realize is that a samurai sword is the ultimate Asian penis metaphor. Seriously: nothing comes close except maybe those dragon costumes. KB volume 1 is all about Uma getting her peepee back. She goes from…”   “Bret Easton Ellis, whom ya’ll know I have a mainly hate-hate relationship, recently said that, quote, ‘Democratization, this demand of inclusivity regardless or skill or talent (especially of the younger generation) is a virus.’ The quote is essentially…”   “Females are the reason humanity has yet to destroy itself, not only duh b/c men can’t switch genders like Nemos and squirt out mini-squidwards of their own, but the psychological/ physiological effects of caring for something both not you and you completely changes….”

"If you remember my analysis of Lone Survivor and Wolf of Wall Street, you’ll remember that context is important in judging movie quality, that a movie can be better in one way and worse in another. To follow on this: magazines hire critics who pander to certain sorts of audiences, who have a specific set of tastes, and Roger Ebert is/was no exception." Also: my favorite movies (I forget a few though)Also: actors I'm interested in (I'd put Jake Gyllenhaal & probs a few others in there too)

"...the opening quote asks. And at first we take it tauntingly: a grandpa saying shut up about the nature of war - I mean, where were you when we stormed Normandy. But, through the masterpiece of a movie that follows, we learn that the query is sincere: where were you? Because I promise you were there but where?"

"I’m trying out a new defensive strategy for movie watching: I’ve started watching movies while playing Destiny or games on my cell phone a rough draft viewing. Neither of us get hurt this way.   Movies and humans cause me pain and I’ve never much enjoyed it. Why can’t all pain be like watching a scary movie? In Armageddon, Owen Wilson says prior to lift off:        'I got that "excited/scared" feeling. Like 98% excited, 2% scared. Or maybe      it's...' x "Sarah once asked “which characters/story does the author not care about? Can you tell sometimes?” Impressionism, with all its cutting, allows constant caring (Vines and 5second movies are semi-good examples of impressionistic media)."  

“Most AI movies occur at a special moment, a transitional period where the AI switches from the dominated to the dominator, slave to master, or at least at the conflict point. Ex Machina is quite explicitly about this moment...”

“The first Jurassic Park worked because you respect both sides: Dr. Grant, Goldblum, Hammond (heck even Newman) all have interesting personality. The dinosaurs as well: the feigned cuteness of the black spitty one, the clever hunting of the raptors, the gargantuan ferocity of the T-Rex. Each was memorable in its own way. Jurassic Park was nature trying to escape the control of man, with respectable gents on both teams. But Jurassic World didn’t have this because…”

" You’re 17-24, you have no clue what’s what in life, you see Leo’s great adventure and you will be all but forced to say “I want that, that seems wayyyyy better than anything I’m experiencing or probably will experience” and so, in an existential act of emulation, you..."

  "Spike: he did “Being John Malkovich” so he’s got some street cred, but Charlie Kaufman wrote that and Spike wrote “Her” so you can definitely feel the difference: “Her” is sloppy and the non-protagonist characters are pretty 1D. I’m being harsh on this movie for a variety of reasons that mostly stem from Spike expecting the viewer not to think."  

"My grandfather was a part time political analyst, part time alcoholic janitor, and  every once in a while he had something insightful to say. One gray summer, day he explained his “Political Complication Theory (PCT).” What follows is my best attempt at explaining said theory using my own words."

"When you’re 16, figuring out where to take a girl on a date or how to properly hold her hand can cause Noah’s-Ark-levels of anxious pit-sweat. But you grow (or at least most people do) and learn and move onto other things. The “other things” that you focus on can be seen as a sort of “skill tree,”...

"Here’s something that feels wrong to say: introverts may be biologically more evolved than extroverts. A 2012 study by Harvard’s Randy Buckner(1) found that introverts typically have a thicker prefrontal cortex, the magical part of the human brain that..."

"One of art’s primary concerns is communicating with the viewer because otherwise it ends up as mostly masturbation with a paintbrush. Some movies bang you over the head with concepts and morals and cheap jokes- they are the obnoxious people that yell when you’re only three feet away. Then there are movies like “The Master” that..."

“On the surface, “The Prestige” is about a competition between two rival magicians. This is what 99% of people see when they watch this movie. What it’s really about is man’s dual nature of work/ego/Yang/Prestige self and the family-man/vulnerable/Yin/caring self. Nolan uses Hugh and Bale to…”

"Communication - a sort of spiritual connection between Object A and B - depends on both objects and, hence, being a good reader of difficult texts takes a rather intensive reshaping of the way one thinks and processes information. Over time..."