Brazil is on @Max right now

June 22nd, 2011 / 1:14 am M. Kitchell—

hate this movie
hate terry gilliam
hate dutch angles

no premium movie channel package, but that’s what torrents are for amirite

my day was alright idk my job is soulsuckinglydull

June 22nd, 2011 / 1:58 am postitbreakup—

we get showtime, but i hate them now for cancelling us of tara

i’ve been wanting to see brazil though, it’s on my netflix queue. only movie of his i’ve seen is fear and loathing. well, i tried to watch that heath ledger one but only saw a few minutes of it.

skinemax… i think i watched it once or twice but once i figured out there was no full frontal it seemed silly, with the internet at my fingertips and all

my day was awful, blahblah.

June 22nd, 2011 / 2:19 am M. Kitchell—

idk i spent basically all of my spare time from ages 13-22 watching, reading about, thinking about, and writing about movies, so it’s just something i ‘picked up’ somewhere i guess. i hate them because they’re obnoxious and sort of cater to some idea of ‘wackiness’ or something

June 22nd, 2011 / 2:29 am M. Kitchell—

i do hate darren aronofsky

here’s notes on everything i’ve watched in the last five years or so:
http://murdermystery.livejournal.com/tag/screening%20log

and here’s a top 50 list i made a while back:
http://murdermystery.livejournal.com/465783.html

June 22nd, 2011 / 2:38 am mimi—

my favorite line in ‘brazil’ is ‘my complication had a little complication’
my day was great

June 22nd, 2011 / 2:53 am postitbreakup—

the whole simultaneously enjoying robbe-grillet and ramona & beezus thing is stupidly sexy to me. sigh

June 22nd, 2011 / 3:56 am Mike Meginnis—

I love Brazil. It’s exhausting in the way I can’t describe that all of his movies are exhausting in, but it’s also very funny and sad and frightening and fun.

June 22nd, 2011 / 7:59 am nick—

kitchell, your top 50 list is insane. i love it. two lane blacktop. last year at marienbad. in a year with 13 moons. incredible. don’t ever change.

June 22nd, 2011 / 12:18 pm M. Kitchell—

wait holy fuck you finished all 9 seasons of X-files?
damn son
i have been ‘thinking about that’
but holy fuck
that’s so much time

June 22nd, 2011 / 3:27 pm Victor Schultz—

i have premium movie channels, but only for the boxing.

June 22nd, 2011 / 3:41 pm M. Kitchell—

hey thanks. yeah, some sort of weird combinatory effort between puppet master, planet of the apes, and the x-files fed into a singular entity that can be described as ‘my sexual interests,’ or whatever.

& yeah, years post workshop experience i’m pretty over it, but i still haven’t actually done anything with that story beyond the DC workshop.

i think i am just obsessive w/r/t processing things, idk, i still feel pretty lazy & passive most of the time. just gotta push i guess.

June 22nd, 2011 / 5:23 pm shaun gannon—

i have to leave for work in a few minutes but you can bet yr sweet bippy i’m going to write a massive x-files essay here when i get home (teaser: i disagree with you re: skinner but i can see what you’re saying, and agree with you on the direction the show changed and how it became inferior. another teaser: FUCK kirsch.)

June 22nd, 2011 / 5:45 pm lorian long—

oh man it is ON.

June 22nd, 2011 / 7:16 pm postitbreakup—

I liked X-Files for awhile, I never watched it religiously because I was too young for the first few years, but then I started watching it with my dad and then Fight the Future came out and I thought it was excellent at the time so I watched for a few more eps, but once it seemed to abandon the movie storylines I lost interest and only watched sporadically. I did catch the finale, though.

I loved the mytharc aspect of the show and the idea that it would one day all tie together. Y2k frenzy was happening at the time, and I became obsessed with the idea that the show should do a thing about it, like maybe all the infected bees from the movie could get released in the middle of the Y2k black-out.

I tried to go back and watch just the mytharc episodes (there’s a list on a fan site somewhere in my bookmarks) but lost interest. Not only did seeing the finale kind of make the mytharc lose its luster–super soldiers, wtf? (the black oil stuff was cool, though)–I too felt like I really wanted to be watching Twin Peaks instead. But even when I watch Twin Peaks, I get that same feeling, because I saw the movie first and loved the shit out of it, so on the series, all the parts that aren’t Agent Cooper/Laura/Red Room related directly bore the shit out of me (hate Josie and the inn and all that, and James was terrible, and the curtains lady was only amusing for a few minutes).

(Note: Bobby Briggs is an exception to this, because he’s so fucking hot.)

June 22nd, 2011 / 8:49 pm M. Kitchell—

true story: fox mulder was the first dude i ever realized i was attracted to (in like a severe way at that)

June 22nd, 2011 / 8:55 pm M. Kitchell—

also i posted this to shaun i will repost to you:
http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2011/03/ten-thirteen-saucers-and-secrets-in.html

June 23rd, 2011 / 3:11 am shaun gannon—

this is a reply to both postitbreakup and lorian long, but i’m only going to arbitrarily reply to one comment so as to not post this huge thing twice and to keep all my thoughts in the same section.

i actually came into x-files because i’d watched the first season and a half or so of twin peaks for the umpteenth time (i watch at least half the the show once every two months or so – i don’t intentionally give up, i just start to wane in dedication of time as the show goes from uniquely/charmingly goofy into forced goofy). i thought ‘man i really want to watch something similar’ and i’d heard/ i knew the early x-files would be a perfect fit, and this was correct. the mysteries in the episodes are actual MYSTERIES, rather than laborious investigations. not only do you want to know what exactly is causing these murders (or not murders, in the very rare instance), but you also have the mystery of ‘what evidence of paranormal activity is going to come to light’ and ‘how is scully going to react to this.’ you also had a score by mark snow which in the early episodes is so close to badalamenti’s work (discounting the theme) that i could be looking at something other than the tv and think ‘damn, that’s some TP shit.’ as the show went on, all of these aspects slowly went away. the music gave way to either goofy tunes or more boring orchestral pieces (with the few exceptions that used interesting music, like the cognitively dissonant use of Cher in the Great Mutato episode, which is great, and the Burt Reynolds episode, which is probably the only totally awesome episode in the last season). the mystery of who/whatdunit became more obvious as they revealed more and more of the killer in the cold open. the mystery of ‘what will come to light’ went away because the show hammered on you that the government wasn’t going to let ANYthing come to light, which was cool but after 9 seasons it got old and you knew where everything was going to end up at the end of the episode (under the rug). the mystery of ‘what’s scully gonna say’ was still a little interesting because even after she’s abducted by the government (a “twist” i really liked (twist in that it wasn’t explicitly aliens)) she still denies things, but eventually decides ‘eh i don’t deny them anymore’ although the timing of that didn’t make sense considering she’d seen SO MUCH SHIT including her own quasi-daughter and proof that she was an alien hybrid baby.

because these things went away, we got more of the bureaucratic bullshit storystuff that lorian was talking about. kirsch was the worst character on the show, even worse than kryczek, because at least watching them deal with kryczek was funny. it amazed me how long it took for him to come to his conclusion, and i LOVED watching skinner talk to him, which reminds me, i really liked skinner because he went outside the law often but not until he felt it was necessary, so there were times he would flat-out say ‘my hands are tied’ and not help, and having that sort of conflict was good because it felt like it was coming from a character. with kirsch, he was solely there to stonewall. he embodied antagonism. i was so god damn mad that he never got shot. he would be a total prick to anyone close to the x-files, and i loved how nearly every episode in s8 ended with him telling doggett “LET IT GO JOHN OR I’LL FIRE YOU FOREVER.” if a character exists just to create problems, extend the episode time, and not even remotely resemble a person, you know you have some bad writing on your hands. (also the fact that having a dude who looks like mitch pileggi in what essentially was an action thriller show by that point is hilarious to me. remember the earlier episode where he banged that prostitute? god that was so gross/hilarious)

the smoking man was the opposite of the bureaucratic shittiness. his storyline involved a LOT of the paranormal, but he wasn’t interested in that; he was interested in running a bureaucracy. he did terrible shit to make things run how he saw was right. agent spender was irritating but i did like his last episode as working on the x-files (was that the s7 finale? i don’t remember) and how he threw all the evidence he had in his dad’s face and refused to deal with it or be his dad’s pawn. i didn’t like how the smoking man came back once more to get thrown down the stairs (also known as being Charles Xaviered), and i sure as hell didn’t like him looking like a crazy wino in a wheelchair hiding with one other person in the middle of nowhere in a ruined mexican castle. what was the point of that.

the writers have said (i.e.: imdb says) the super-soldier plotline was made in an attempt to drum up interest in the show again, an attempt to generate a second wind. we’d seen enough of the black oil/abductee plotlines (and yes, they were a lot cooler), and i agree that keeping those going would have been too much. but seriously, super-soldiers? that’s pretty lame. the only good part of it is that john locke was one of them. (i think terry o’quinn is the only person who’s had THREE different roles in the x-files universe, four if you include his role on Millenium. my only complaint is that he did not play 100 roles in every episode (i love terry o’quinn so god damn much).)

the mytharc in the show is downright awesome, but even the earlier episodes have their flaws. everyone should be able to admit that david duchovny is not a believable crier, at least not on the x-files. also, how many god damn Evil Kid episodes do we need? I can think of 5 of them off the top of my head, and that’s 5 too many. It’s a terrible cliche and I hate it even more than the Precocious Child, which I hate a ton.

Watching X-files all the way through just made me wistful for early X-files, but i ended up cutting out the middle-man and just going back to Twin Peaks, which I will rant about in mike’s post on david lynch. awaaaaay~

June 23rd, 2011 / 3:57 am M. Kitchell—

holy shit shaun i love you

June 23rd, 2011 / 5:38 am lorian long—

i just read that whole fucking thing. i drifted in and out of the last 2? 3? seasons, so it was interesting to read what i missed. i had no idea gillian anderson hung around for so long cuz of $$$, but she DID get paid less than duchovny, so who can blame the woman. and all the homoeroticism! i had no idea! you said mulder was yr first male crush, and i think scully was my first, um, ‘taste’ of being queer. i must’ve masturbated like a thousand times to that rolling stone cover where anderson is on top of duchovny in bed and you can see the slightest squish of her tit. i still have that magazine back in ohio with all the other crap (tv guides, xfiles postcards, mark snow CD, xfiles movie soundtracks, I WANT TO BELIEVE poster, etc. christ.). mike we should totes have an x-files marathon viewing week when u get here.

June 23rd, 2011 / 6:15 am lorian long—

i watched the x-files from the time it first aired up until maybe the 6th or 7th season (around the time the whole duchovny battle took place. idk, i guess i was so emotionally involved with the show for so long that i took it personally and actually lost a lot of respect for duchovny as an actor when he pitched a diva fit. i was also young and didn’t realize how splendidly messy and awful shows can become when they fall apart–thanks to mike for that article which pointed out the ‘self-awareness’ inherent to falling apart). yr right on point with the ‘mystery’ vs. ‘investigation’–like every episode was so contained and perfect it created its own little novel, tho some of the early threads were introduced in this graceful, patient way (skinner, mulder’s sister, the lone gunmen). everyone just took their fucking time, and it worked.
happy u mentioned the music, too, cuz i think that gets overlooked. mark snow was fucken genius, and chris carter was genius, and that fucking episode HOME with ‘wonderful wonderful’ playing in almost every scene is still one of the best hours of my tv-watching life. i had nightmares for weeks after that one. god, there was so much attention to detail in every single episode, like the significance of all the numbers on various time clocks throughout each scene, and character names, and town names, and those fucking sunflower seeds mulder was always eating. i think those quirks got left behind once everyone started shooting guns and shuffling papers in boardrooms.
i rlly hope there’s a montage somewhere of every time skinner said ‘my hands are tied.’ if there isn’t, we should make one.
mike’s post on ‘fanaticism’ a few weeks ago made me want to write about the xfiles. i loved that show so much i would cry during the credits because i knew i had to wait another week. it also had a lot to do with my adolescent ‘crisis of faith’ or whatever, cuz i started watching this show around the same time i stopped praying to god because god wasn’t making shit happen but i was so desperate to believe in something bigger greater than me than all of us (this is a couple years before i found literature) that i followed mulder’s faith in aliens and you bet yr ass i plastered my room with UFO sightings and alien posters and omg this is embarrassing. i just really liked the xfiles. goodnight.

June 23rd, 2011 / 3:42 pm M. Kitchell—

we are going to be best friends bb

Brazil is on @Max right now

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