It starts off with the view of an unknown individual watching an expensive loft-style apartment in a large city. You assume that it could be the Batman (for just a moment) viewing criminals meeting in person or surveying a violent crime about to occur. But just as you're to get comfortable, being vicarious as your favorite superhero is about to kick some butt, you're introduced to the voyeuristic individual's horrific yet slightly sexual rapid breathing. Then the title credits do a smash cut in blood red. "The Batman," it reads in an aggressive and overwhelming font.

It gets formulaic later on in the film but the visuals are still striking. I would have loved to read the original, R-rated version of the script. However, the film doesn't have its own identity. At times I felt I was watching a Darren Aronofsky film. Some scenes I felt had been shot by an early-years David Fincher. The first scene before the title smashes into your view that feels like early 90's Coppola. I bet Gary Oldman wishes he chose this Batman. Now he's voicing a character in Star Citizen. Oh how the mighty have fallen! Mr. "Oh I have to read scripts on my kitchen counter" went from being the man of many faces, to being on the same level as Kevin Spacey: a video game character. Refuse to read my screenplay that I gave you at the Tinker, Taylor, Soldiier, Spy Q&A? Then you meet my wife at an event, not even a month later and you knowingly frick her??? You could have slept with any of the women there but instead, you had to choose the married mother of two children. Because why not? You're Gary Fricking OLD-MAN!!!

So that's why, no offense, I like this version of Batman. The guy who plays your commissioner role is really good in West World.

5/5 for comic book films

NE PAS TRADUIRE CE MESSAGE

This is reality. Hear that? Reality.

Ok so first is JEJ, and the son seems to be playing it like he’s neurodivergent, this is from the 80s I think, so I was a child then and didn’t see the whole thing, but his performance is wonderful: Play - he is angry and delivers the lines so well you feel the weight of his responsibility

Second is Denzel with, if you’ll excuse me, a much better co star but it is interesting to me how callous he plays it, despite, or obv because it was filmed and he gets time to figure it and more from his “son” : Play

What I think is interesting in this is, as far as black cinema or plays go, fences is as high as it goes and it seems that even when you cut live from taped they were approaching the character from two very different and generational positions. James plays it weary and almost a warning for his son, while Denzel plays it more confrontational and daring, and I imagine that can only be driven by what they personally drew from.

It’s just a neat thing to consider, but perhaps there are other, more corporate things involved, I dunno. Thought this was interesting how they each played it.

Full Trailer: Play (It gives away too much so don't watch it.)

Season 1 Recap: Play (You should probably watch this so you can catch up on the complex character arcs. This isn't television, it's HBOMAX.)

Season 2, Episode 1 Recap: https://www.vulture.com/article/los-espookys-season-two-premiere-recap.html (They say it's good.)

TL;DR: A Spanish soap opera starring goth teens/adults(?), a demonic blue-haired twink/neurodivergent, an r-slur, a lady in the water, and Fred Armisen.

If you like to laugh (en Espanol) then you will amor this.

@Goomble, this is one of my posts. You are now allowed to enjoy it.

These guys run a youtube channel fricking with car sellers on craigslist and turned it into a podcast.

Original video with the Tesla guy

What did they mean by this? Vince is so deliberate about imagery there has to be a deeper meaning, something I missed. But what? What could it mean??

Strong props for Animal Mother tho

We are truly blessed Under the Seethe on rDrama as Woke Seethe becomes more entertaining than Chud Seethe.

"I’ve not seen a single comment where someone had an issue with her being black"

Err, that doesn't quite sound right to me?

"Same thing that happened with rings of power. Cast a black person and get called woke and piss off the neck beards"

Gee I hope that demographic wasn't significant in Tolkien's fanbase?

"Her eyes seem way to far from each other"

True.

"The real reason her being black is bullshit, is that if a mermaid lived under water, her skin would be pale butt white, because of the lack of light. The body wouldn't produce melatonin to color the skin because of her surroundings. So there."

Trust the Science.

"I don't give two shits about this, but my 7 year old daughter says "that isn't Ariel" and then gets upset, she has no interest in it. She had the same reaction to the Cinderella film on Amazon. Little girls identify these princesses right down to the dress... if she's not wearing a yellow dress, she's not Belle... etc. You'd think Disney would understand things like this about their characters."

Racist white b-word.

https://old.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/xdffkf/the_backlash_against_halle_baileys_little_mermaid/?sort=controversial

Play

Hey dramacels. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about one of my favorite extremely obscure kino's. I'm not even quite sure if it could be classified as a movie or TV at all.

It's a webseries, so I guess that wouldn't usually fit the bill, but this one does. It's art.

The show I'm speaking of, and you're going to role your eyes at this one, is The Onions S*x House.

For those of you who just woke up from a 15 year coma, The Onion is a... Media outlet, that's main niche is news satire, but there's a lot more to the show than Onion-esque humor.

But what is S*x House?

S*x house is a mock reality TV show, the premise being, “six sexy Americans, alone in a house with nothing to do except get nasty.” Basically it's like Big Brother, except without the banishment or the gimmicks. Instead, the end goal of the show is for everyone to have s*x, or have s*x with as many other contestants as possible, or something along those lines.

It's never really clarified, but it also doesn't really matter, since the show quickly diverges from the cliche, overdramatic content format of reality TV. The series quickly devolves, becoming a twisted, existential horror-esque parody of it's former self.

The term parody doesn't really do it justice.

Meta might be the best descriptor for it, actually. The format slowly changes from spoof reality TV show to a series about this degenerate satirical reality TV show. As the show progresses it transcends it's premise and becomes a scathing critique of reality TV and more importantly of the culture in which it thrives.

The idea of show is already inherently fricked up, and the sexy encounters between contestants, specifically between a married man and an 18 year old Mormon Virgin, quickly immerse the characters into a world of emotional trauma.

Everything gets worse as the show progresses. Food supplies for the contestants start running low and rotting, and there are no frequent deliveries. Instead of food, the cabinets are filled with alcohol to encourage s*x, a result of a production team, and a culture, that values spectacle and entertainment over human dignity and well-being.

What's more, without anywhere to store the trash, the s*x house quickly becomes infested with mold. Appliances around the house start breaking down catastrophically too, and the s*x house slowly transforms into a deathtrap.

Conflict arises between the show runners and contestants, who become increasingly angry at their lack of privacy or autonomy, and aware that the show and it's audience values them having s*x over their dignity.

The contestants start rebelling against the show. One by one they begin refusing to have s*x, leading to the network clamping down on them. They restrict food supplies, and refuse to fix appliances unless everyone starts having s*x, and turn the whole horrific thing into a combination of Saw and The Truman Show.

There's an element of clueless apathy in the show runners responses, as if they're so used to making a circus out of peoples lives that they genuinely don't understand where the contestants are coming from.

As one of the contestants puts it. “To call this place evil implies a clarity of purpose I do not want to attribute to anyone involved”. That quote isn't just a critique of the S*x House show.

It, like the entire show, speaks of a culture of reality TV, a culture that makes entertainment out of chaos and a spectacle out of human suffering, a culture that rDrama is a prime example of.

The whole thing gets really philosophical towards the end, and the climax is a pretty blatant allusion to Plato's allegory of the cave, but I don't want to spoil more than that.

Just go watch it, it's unironically really good.

Goat quote:

>I was wondering, just, in your view do you think it's possible to sue a person, a grandparent for example, in a way which is like… like in an affectionate way? That might convey, like, “I love you and I'm glad you're a part of my life, but I am taking legal action against you”?

Scene from "The Wedding Banquet", where a chingchong is in a homo relationship with a mayo but has a fake wedding with another chingchong who wants a green card to deceive his parents

It has some anime wonkiness (odd dialogue choices) and the captions are terrible lmao but I like it.

The RLM guys liked it and I was eager to see Ben Sinclair ('Guy') in a full length movie, since I've followed High Maintenance from the beginning as a little independent web series on Vimeo. Not bad. They almost went overboard with the cringe humor but held it back. The second act had me wondering where it would lead so it kept my interest.

IMDB

RLM review with spoilers

From the moment Disney announced that Halle Bailey would star in a live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, racists have bitterly complained that a Black girl might play a fictional magic fish person on film. Because of course they have.

There are good reasons to be mad at this film, another in a series of unnecessary and by definition unoriginal remakes, about the virtues of a woman giving up her family and the very core of her being in order to land a man.

But casting isn’t one of them.

Alas, they wanna be where the white people are, and they’ve found an answer to their woes.

Multiple folks on Twitter immediately focused on the poster boiling down “woke” to just be a synonym for “Black,” a rare moment of pure honesty about what these folks really mean when they complain about it.

Sadly, my brain is permanently fried by years of legal practice so my takeaway was this:

You know, the lawyers who so zealously guard the company’s intellectual property they pretty much single-handedly broke the whole copyright regime to suit their own interests and who historically run to court against companies marketing altered versions of their films? Those folks.

You want thingamabobs? They’ve got 20! And in this sentence thingamabobs are causes of action for copyright and trademark infringement.

Even these live action remakes that no one asked for seem like a Hail Mary legal play to set up some backdoor claim that the substantially similar scripts used in the NEW movie — which gets a new copyright — might give them some limited leverage against future creators trying to work with the original story when it enters the public domain. It’s hard to shake the feeling that this is all part of a far-flung future brief that says, “We grant that Dumbo the 1941 film is public domain… but when the defendant’s work features this scene it is actually infringing our 2019 version of Dumbo.” This shouldn’t work and would make a mockery of the whole purpose behind keeping copyright protection limited, but… can’t fault them if they try.

Anyway, by all means try to sell a digitally altered version of a Disney movie and see what happens! They may just send Chip & Dale after overseas pirates, but trying to take the exact same movie, edit it for the benefit of the most insecure bigots on the planet, and then sell it back?

Disney will undoubtedly be watching the boards and waiting to bring the real legal firepower for that one.

The Christian Science Monitor, August 1994

JEAN-LUC GODARD has an obligatory place on any list of Europe's greatest filmmakers.

A founding member of the New Wave movement in France, where he directed such groundbreaking classics as 'Breathless' and 'Alphaville,' he sparked radical new views of narrative form, film editing, and even movie criticism during the 1960s and '70s.

Today he still marches to a drummer very much his own, directing such unconventional works as 'JLG by JLG,' a cinematic self-portrait, and 'Histoire(s) du Cinema,' an expressionistic video series on the history of world film.

Once a familiar face on the international film-festival circuit, Mr. Godard has become a somewhat elusive figure of late, keeping a low profile even when his visually stunning 'Nouvelle Vague' was featured at the New York filmfest a few seasons ago.

He continues to generate a good deal of film and video work, however. His three latest productions are included in a touring program celebrating France's venerable Gaumont studio. To support this, he dropped into Manhattan recently for a few interviews with interested critics. I took advantage of his visit to renew acquaintance after a long gap, and found him as modest, thoughtful, and passionate about cinema as the first time we met nearly 15 years ago.

A key characteristic of many Godard films is their great complexity, as if he were trying to pack entire worlds of thought, feeling, and imagination into every scene. I began our talk by asking if he expects moviegoers to grasp everything in a single viewing, or if he wants us to view the films repeatedly and gradually tease out their meanings.

"Most of the films won't be seen more than once,'' he answered ruefully, "because the distribution system doesn't make them available. So people miss half the things that are there. But it's like music: You don't understand all the notes, yet there is still enough to make it worthwhile.''

Musing further about the density of his style, Godard says his works are "complex in a scientific sense.'' A century ago, he notes, "scientists believed the atom was the ultimate matter. Then they discovered that in one atom there are many things, and in one of those there are many more things, and so forth... In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and 'get' everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don't understand each atom of the potato!''

Few critics would think of a Godard film as a potato, but sometimes it's difficult to put a precise label on his extremely innovative approach to style and content. While he often seems interested in constructing a sort of cinematic essay, he rarely leaves storytelling completely behind, merging his innovative formal experiments with the traditional devices of narrative fiction.

Asked for his comments on this, Godard answers thoughtfully. "I think I am making more-or-less documentaries,'' he says in lightly accented English, "but I don't see much difference between these categories. Maybe it's my education. I'm very classical in a sense. I'm a great admirer of the novel, mainly of the 19th century... There can be different kinds of narrative - in a novel, or a painting, or a piece of music.''

Motion pictures, he continues, "were invented to look, tell, and study things. They were mainly a scientific tool ... for seeing life in a different way. To be only spectacular should be 5 or 10 percent of cinema. All the rest should be documentary study ... in a broad sense [meaning] research and essays. I'm half a novelist and half an essayist - which is not admitted in the motion-picture world, and is very awkward.''

In any case, Godard says, his approach to cinema calls more for exploring themes than spinning out plots as commercial movies do. "I'm not able to write a good script,'' he says with one of his ironic smiles. "I would do it if I could ... but I'm not able to put a beginning and end together, to build it, to shoot it.''

Instead, he continues, "I must have an idea and then discover it. It's like painting ... but it's also different from painting, because you use not just space but time ... imagining what comes before and what comes afterward. I start with an idea, but I don't know if it's the beginning of a story. It's what [sculptor Alberto] Giacometti called an opening.''

Godard is emphatic about his preference for interesting ideas over clever plots. "To have a good script is very rare,'' he insists. "To have this is not only to have a story, but to have a subject - a meaning, a belief in something. American pictures usually have no subject, only a story... A pretty woman is not a subject. Julia Roberts doing this and that is not a subject. JFK is not a subject - the relationship between a Kennedy and the American people may be a subject, but 'JFK' does not deal with that. I call it a good script when you know the subject and try to [explore] it.''

Is this primarily an intellectual process, or an intuitive one?

"I don't see any difference,'' Godard replies. "Intelligence and sensibility are the same. You have to be logical, like a novelist, because if [a character] is doing this he can't be doing that. But you may also work [instinctively] like a painter, and then discover at the end that [what you did] was logical. Things may be done unconsciously, and in the final editing you realize they were OK - or were not!''

Godard labored hard in the 1950s and '60s to promote the idea that some Hollywood directors, such as Alfred Hitchpeepee and Howard Hawks, were creative auteurs with profound artistic abilities. His view of American film today is less enthusiastic, however. "Movies in Hollywood now, for the past 20 or 30 years, are made mainly by lawyers or agents,'' he says.

This notion is connected with a historical misuse of film and video that Godard traces in his "Histoire(s) du Cinema'' series. "Movies were invented to show reality,'' he says, "but they have not been used that way. They have been used to show dancing girls, killers, machine guns, lovers... Television discovers nothing, even though it could, it should. I think I'm the only one interested in film and video this way - to sometimes make a show, but other times an experimentation.''

Taking full advantage of the opportunities for choice allowed by the film medium, Godard frequently uses a highly artificial approach to image and sound, rejecting the view that cinema is a direct reflection of the world.

"Why not?'' he asks. "It's like [conducting] an orchestra - you put a violin here, a piano there. I like to separate the sound from the image sometimes, or let the screen go silent, or use an intimate piano for an intimate feeling - which is the exact opposite of what the Americans do. They want to surround you, to make a 'surrounding effect' so you are lost. I don't want people to be lost! I think they should find things about themselves.''

Every stop he makes a new friend!

Shit's gonna be lit

Trailer breakdown:

Looks like it's from a VHS tape so it's likely a found footage porno film.