Comments on Bright Lights After Dark: Political Premonition in La Cinema

I still say it was Beau Geste

2007-06-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

I still say it was Beau Geste

nope...It was in fact Rambo III. A film that has m...

2007-06-15T01:37:00.000-07:00

nope...

It was in fact Rambo III. A film that has many prescient moments, and a film that can now be seen as holding many truths (as well as many lies).

They weren't allowed to say "shit" in 1939, and th...

2007-06-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

They weren't allowed to say "shit" in 1939, and them rooskies hadn't even got there yet.

No, I'm a have to guess "Domino."

Beau Geste (1939)

2007-06-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

Beau Geste (1939)

Try to guess the film:A: This is Afghanistan... Al...

2007-06-14T06:24:00.000-07:00

Try to guess the film:

A: This is Afghanistan... Alexander the Great try to conquer this country... then Genghis Khan, then the British. Now Russia. But Afghan people fight hard, they never be defeated. Ancient enemy make prayer about these people... you wish to hear?
B: Um-hum.
A: Very good. It says, 'May God deliver us from the venom of the Cobra, teeth of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan.' Understand what this means?
B: That you guys don't take any shit?
A: Yes... something like this.

on that note also (though it's not quite true... Y...

2007-06-11T10:22:00.000-07:00

on that note also (though it's not quite true... YET) there's the internment camping of all Arab-Americans in Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis movie THE SEIGE

With its depiction of prison camps and mass trials...

2007-06-10T05:34:00.000-07:00

With its depiction of prison camps and mass trials for native-born American dissidents, Peter Watkins' Punishment Park -- which struck a good many as an outlandishly paranoid vision upon its non-release in 1971 -- has to be the most directly prescient film of its kind; a heated, almost frighteningly accurate glimpse, from thirty years distance, of our present Homeland Security cult (no wonder, despite its having been released on DVD 2 years ago, few have seen it)

How could I have forgotten Starship Troopers?!?!?T...

2007-06-09T00:17:00.000-07:00

How could I have forgotten Starship Troopers?!?!?
That movie gets better with every viewing. I need to watch it again right now... or soon.

Perhaps we as humans have the ability to use art to perceive the future. It makes sense, since the best art comes from the unconscious, which is outside of space and time and can sense major events coming a mile away, like birds do when they know to run.

Oh another one, BRAZIL!

Cool post & comment. Re: STARSHIP TROOPERS: Don't ...

2007-06-08T17:03:00.000-07:00

Cool post & comment. Re: STARSHIP TROOPERS: Don't forget the serendipitous linguistic similarity of "Arachnid" to "Iraqi" in Verhoeven's much-misunderstood masterpiece!

And the pathologically murderous impulses abounding: "Kill them! KILL THEM ALL!"

How 'bout Verhoeven's STARSHIP TROOPERS predicting...

2007-06-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

How 'bout Verhoeven's STARSHIP TROOPERS predicting:

a) The initiation of a war on false pretenses (in a throwaway line we learn that we attacked the "bugs" first);

b) The Afghanistan conflict - deserts and caves;

c) The capture of Saddam in his "spider hole," foreshadowed in this film by capture of the "Brain Bug;" and

d) The U.S.'s tilt toward Nazi-fication following 9/11.