Life is too short to not waste time doing this. This should be regular for a while, starting now, but retroactive to a few days ago, when I started posting them on Google+, where I’ll continue to post them, too. Here are those: <\/p>\n
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – <\/p>\n
Rosemary’s Baby<\/strong> [1968, Roman Polanski] (8.4) – I somehow managed not only to avoid this for 25 years, but also to isolate myself from it enough to believe that it was some sort of The Exorcist<\/em> competitor for gore and shock value, when it’s really a way more elegant study of paranoia that keeps the darkest matter offscreen. I was hoping that the reality of Rosemary’s fears would remain ambiguous (as a movie-watcher, of course I think her neighbors and doctors could possibly end up as satanic witches given their behavior, but that they actually are<\/em> moves everything into the supernatural, distinguishing a bit of the severity of Rosemary’s condition – she wasn’t crazy after all, but actually quite justified). A lot of Lynch-isms in here, too (the Castevets have<\/em> to be the source for the grandparents in Mulholland Dr.<\/em> that lead to Betty\/Diane’s ultimate fate; the final scene in the secret room evoked Blue Velvet<\/em>‘s climax in Dorothy’s apartment; not to mention the ominous train noises). I Don’t Want to Be a Man<\/strong> [1918, Ernst Lubitsch] (5.6) – damn is Ossi an irritating brat. I like the way, over time, the gender politics becoming increasingly fickle – going from offensive and belittling representations of female daintiness (Ossi ‘doesn’t want to be a man’ because, well gee, smokin’ cigars, drinkin’ champagne, and gettin’ yer toes stepped on are tough work!) to her empowering, if still short-sighted triumphs over her ambiguously gay guardian (aside: were hetero males in early-twentieth century Germany really that touchy-feely? I mean, they could hardly keep their mouths off each other). Points for being such a prescient representation of drag, even if it’s all never as funny as it tries to be. Il Posto<\/strong> [1961, Ermanno Olmi] (8.7) – a few days ago I made a blanket statement against pretty much all of Italian cinema – excepting Antonioni, of course – but I clearly forgot about the neo-realists, somehow. The push-and-pull of ecstatic human emotions and the de-humanizing machine that is the workforce are balanced with a style that is somehow true to the ‘realist’ label but still expressive and occasionally abstract. Antonietta is one of the most alluring banal female characters I’ve seen; every moment she’s not on the screen in the second half of the film, I miss her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Life is too short to not waste time doing this. This should be regular for a while, starting now, but retroactive to a few days ago, when I started posting them on Google+, where I’ll continue to post them, too. Here are those: – – – – – – – – – – – – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3820"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3833,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3820\/revisions\/3833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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