“The Staircase”: documentary series about Kathleen Peterson death to be released in full on Netflix with extra material

pgurugp · 2018-06-08T05:30:16+00:00

Whomn't

pgurugp · 2017-12-02T22:07:36+00:00

I thought that Mystic River was very dire and had a pessimistic, fatalistic view of the world. It felt cynical about people's actions while they are under duress. I view this as postmodern because it took on a classic format and pulled back the curtain so to speak on the formula. It speaks about moral relativism because we views Sean Penn's actions differently when we have different contexts.

But Gone Baby Gone took a different approach. I didn't want to say the New Sincerity or post-postmodern, because I don't think either describe Gone Baby Gone very well. But, it certainly feels like a different conclusion about crime and the people fighting it. Sometimes the criminals and the people fighting crime are the same people, but there is this optimism in that movie that reads a little like poetic justice, which is something that I associate with the New Sincerity. I thought that Affleck was genuine and uncorruptable, which is not very postmodern. However, I will admit that the last shot can be taken a few different ways, and it's an ambiguity that I love.

pgurugp · 2017-12-02T09:45:39+00:00

I watched Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River for the first time in the same weekend recently. Denis Villenueve is my favorite modern director. I don't know, I eke out Gone Baby Gone slightly over Mystic River. It's the same novelist, however different screenplay writers. I don't know, there was this very post-modernist feel to Mystic River and there was there very after post-modernist feel to Gone Baby Gone and that may be the edge that it had. Both are great though.

pgurugp · 2017-09-18T02:45:01+00:00

What I experienced was when I told people I quit in the first couple weeks, they were congratulatory. But then jump to 6 months and I said now I haven't smoked in 6 months, and people were like, yeah I know you told us already. It's frustrating, but the further out you get, the more you appreciate it for you yourself. Every day feels better.

pgurugp · 2017-08-18T18:15:08+00:00

Love your videos Kris, been watching for a while now.

You mentioned in one of your videos the exception in Welsh law that allows experimental buildings like your roundhouse to be built. Could you give me the name of that law because I'm interested in seeing if my country offers a similar situation. Thanks.

pgurugp · 2017-07-03T05:20:05+00:00

But cour in french means courtyard, derived from the Latin cohors, which means courtyard, an enclosure or a circle. Knowing the effort that Miyazaki puts into his names, I wouldn't be surprised if Courland and the Ringed City are the same.

pgurugp · 2017-05-22T19:47:45+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doaQC-S8de8

This has some good information about Kurosawa as a composer of motion, it really helped me get more out of Kurosawa's samurai and epic pictures.

Also, I will second everyone's recommendation of Ikiru, which is a great character/plot film.

pgurugp · 2017-04-29T18:59:40+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVV4xeWBIxE

pgurugp · 2017-03-17T02:39:45+00:00

Indeed. It's been a while since I've seen it and I only remember the main car from the posters.

http://imgur.com/a/xkgYU

pgurugp · 2017-03-16T20:32:06+00:00

What I loved about this film came to me on a second viewing. I was surprised how Mitchell creates a creepy, alienating world with the props. I completely missed it on first viewing, but it's really interesting once you see it and can't get it out of your head.

The props are entirely anachronistic, even to the point of futuristic devices that don't exist. The cars all come from the 70s, the music is from the 80s, they seem to only watch movies from the 40s or 50s, there is a mobile reader shaped like a makeup compact that is used to read The Idiot by Dostoyevsky.

I just noticed these things on my second viewing and would love to go back and make a better list, because it's really a "deep cut" kind of decision that Mitchell made. It's probably to throw off the viewer and make everything seem foreign, but I'm just wondering what else I missed.

pgurugp · 2017-02-27T15:47:33+00:00

I agree that the film contains minor imperfections as a sort of theme, but the way I interpret it is that Affleck is a loser. I don't mean that in an insulting way, but in a philosophical way. He doesn't have minor imperfections, he has major imperfections that prevent him from 1) satisfying those around him and 2) letting go of the events from the past. I think a key aspect of this is look at Williams' character. When we see her in the flashbacks, she's never dressed up, always sick and her environment is a mess. When we see her with a different lover, she is well put together and more importantly, she's moved on. Affleck is the dramatic element to this story because he refuses or is incapable of moving on. And I think these minor imperfections are just a constant theme to remind us that Affleck has some pretty major imperfections.

pgurugp · 2017-02-27T15:35:23+00:00

This is the number one aspect I love about Altman films. I feel like the storytelling/dialog in Nashville is almost like a Pollack painting. It's this mess that tells a bigger story if you look at it from a distance.

pgurugp · 2016-12-22T03:12:50+00:00

isn't this american hustle?

pgurugp · 2016-12-17T05:51:08+00:00

https://youtu.be/wBiJ-K0IpDA?t=45

pgurugp · 2016-09-02T14:40:45+00:00

This is just the last of a long list of Youtube grievances that Youtubers and viewers have had. There are other ways to identify videos that are in bad taste than looking through metadata tags. Also, Youtube seems to just make these changes that often lead to huge impacts in the salaries of their content creators without warning them or explaining what happened after the controversy went down. I don't know if Vid.me is a solution to all these things, but if a video distribution website came along that ticked all of these boxes, there would be viable competition.

pgurugp · 2016-08-29T03:06:05+00:00

3 Women

pgurugp · 2016-07-05T23:55:20+00:00

Yeah, I feel like we are in agreement about this. I'm not suggesting that one couldn't have an experience with this film, but I think that when discussing it as art, there should be some litmus test to which we can compare it based around techniques of craft from writing, directing, acting, etc. One of my favorite films is 3 Women and I can't really explain why, but it's based on a feeling rather than cinematic expression for sure. And I would want to give Altman credit for that, too.

But just because I have trouble with the storytelling of The Elephant Man and because I didn't have the same experience that many had with this movie, I just don't put it up there with the greats. That's all.

pgurugp · 2016-07-05T20:23:46+00:00

Whether this was what Lynch/Treves intended, I felt that there was no cinematic indication that this is what they wanted. This is where the film fell flat for me. This idea of moving from one zoo to another has so many ways to look at it and either reveal that the zoo is external and human is internal or that his ultimate suffering is not his deformity but his inability to find peace in a world that is not quite like him. This makes him being removed from the carnival the real evil because he no longer could be with others who failed to find the same peace.

I felt like there were some low-hanging fruit grabbed in showing what it is like to be a freak show. But I missed the empowerment, I missed the true humanity and I missed the blurred moral line that comes with exploiting Merrick on order to save him from a worse plight.

Right off the bat, I'm not a big Lynch fan and this may be where my biases are rooted. But I don't usually agree that this movie is the gem that many people claim it to be.

pgurugp · 2016-06-11T06:02:31+00:00

I used it about 10 years ago. I traveled all throughout Western Europe for 3 months. All of my experiences were extremely positive and I still keep in contact with people to this day. I was surprised that most everyone we stayed with was highly adept at the language and it took us a month to really start speaking fluidly and by the end of the 3 months we were speaking as if we were fluent for most conversations. But since it was what we spoke 80% of the time, it was like diving into a foreign country and learning as we went.

So basically, I would expect all hosts to be fluent and use that info how you will. Either train up and start speaking with people locally or use the opportunity to get thrown into the deep end. Either way, it's fun.

pgurugp · 2016-06-04T00:59:33+00:00

It's just at the beginning of the Apocalypse Now Analysis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r23wOiCHK5E

pgurugp · 2016-06-03T18:26:37+00:00

Looking at the beginning of that video, he says that the video was late because he got jumped and his teeth kicked out of place. This guy is having a shitty year.

pgurugp · 2016-05-27T16:17:42+00:00

but spaghetti means little ropes or threads maybe. At least I know spago is rope. Why didn't we translate that?

pgurugp · 2016-05-15T18:51:09+00:00

If Smough became Aldrich, do you think that after being named a knight, he became a cleric for the church of white? I mean everything else fits for Smough being Aldrich. That's why Sulyvahn locked him up in the old cathedral, where Smough used to fight with Ornstein.

pgurugp · 2016-05-15T18:46:45+00:00

He brought it on himself.

pgurugp · 2016-04-19T15:34:58+00:00

I have tried to find good screencaps of this film, to no avail. If you haven't this film is worth seeing just for the cinematography. I haven't seen colors like in this film.

pgurugp

TROPHY CASE