Disqus - Latest Comments for mikerot

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #669: The First Purge

mike rot — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 12:31:42 -0000

You guys should do more segments like you did with Prometheus, where you revisit a movie and see if it aged as well as you spoke about in an older podcast. You have enough of a time span now of podcasting where you can verify whether a film you hated or loved in the moment ended up becoming greater with time. Was relistening to your Killing Them Softly review (as I just rewatched it), something like that. I know there have been movies where one of you (probably Frank) plants his flag in the sand and says this will be a classic in ten years. Find a movie from 2007-8 where there was that debate and revisit it.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #654: 2046

mike rot — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 14:03:34 -0000

Income Tax Junk here we come!

Don't listen to Reed, Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love essential viewing to give a damn about anything in 2046.

Please, please, please do a retro review of Life of Brian, for the KoC, it is truly one of the funniest movies ever made (so much more than the cock joke). One of the most quotable, brilliant comedies, it is shameful you two haven't seen it.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #642: Phantom Thread and Best of 2017

mike rot — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 13:29:11 -0000

Jay was trying to figure out the movie that the ending of Phantom Thread reminds him of, and it's not exactly what he was referring too, because it isn't elliptical, but I get a co-dependent relationship in weird way feeling from Let The Right One In.

Re: CA teksavvy-cable

mike rot — Wed, 10 May 2017 21:12:53 -0000

Last few nights internet has been going slow or not responding, tonight since 6pm. Will get access for 5-10 minutes at a time. Toronto

Re: Arrival Review: Denis Villeneuve's Sci-Fi Drama

mike rot — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 16:16:18 -0000

I've seen the movie, the script they used is the furthest thing from schlock. If anything it is so original and dense it might put off some people just looking for a sci-fi ride experience.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #564: Captain America: Civil War

mike rot — Wed, 11 May 2016 13:39:55 -0000

the new Looney Tunes show is on Canadian Netflix and it is actually great. They CGI Wile E. and Road Runner for some inexplicable reason but the rest of the show is traditional animation. I have only seen first four episodes but what I have seen has been genuinely funny.

Re: Victoria Trailer: A Single-Shot Bank Heist Film

mike rot — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 15:35:04 -0000

forgot to mention it has been selected for TIFF

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #507: Fifty Shades of Grey, Roar and The Jinx

mike rot — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 13:29:40 -0000

Jinx spoilers: I assumed when Durst was talking to himself in the washroom he was looking at the picture of himself he had in his hand on the way out the door, and when he talks about himself in the third person, he means that guy smiling in the photograph.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #485: Gone Girl

mike rot — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 15:21:56 -0000

I recommend the romantic comedy Submarine as one maybe you guys haven't seen.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #483: The Drop

mike rot — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 13:10:50 -0000

Not sure if he has seen any of them, just going on what I have heard him talk about, gaps in westerns for example, and I would think like me he would have avoided rosemary's Baby for fear of what it could be, but I watched it recently and it is an amazing movie, and while unnerving I wouldn't say it is gratuitous horror that Frank dislikes.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #483: The Drop

mike rot — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:05:58 -0000

Ignoring Jay, here is a list of movies I think Frank should try: http://letterboxd.com/rot/l...

Re: Film Junk Bonus Podcast: Movie Organization Manifesto, Part 4

mike rot — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 14:52:54 -0000

The first part of the Manifesto came out in 2011, this is like Boyhood where you can follow along and bear witness to the crumbling of youthful idealism, now run aground the hard facts of the digital future. I'm buying less and less as well.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #463: Transcendence and Enemy

mike rot — Fri, 02 May 2014 09:50:14 -0000

never heard of Stay, will check it out. I offered my interpretation here just because Sean was saying above how unsatisfied he was with it just being a split-personality story, whereas I think it is a bit more ambiguity than the video is letting on. That it is a story in the subconscious does not mean split-personality, but possibly fantasy drawn into the gravitational pull of an external reality, the two versions of his self-identity colliding all inside his head.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #463: Transcendence and Enemy

mike rot — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 09:52:27 -0000

***SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?***
***SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?******SPOILERS?***

I came up with a different interpretation that plays off of the original line "chaos is order yet undeciphered" that still plays into the same thematic points the video brings up. The only difference is the entire movie is a fantasy in Jake's head. The "order" refers to the sequence of events being out of order, with the catalyst to it all buried inside the film, the car crash. What if there was a cheating movie actor Jake and there was a pregnant wife at home and there was a scene where the girlfriend figured out he was married and it all went down like that and Jake found himself dying inside a crashed car beside his mistress, and as he lay dying seeing how he has ruined his life, staring out the window cracked like a spiderweb, he fantasizes about being a better version of himself, the professor Jake. The movie is the manifestation of those two personalities playing out in a dying man's mind. The spider can still play as metaphorical for women with all the clever associations it contains, but it is also a trigger for reality, the reality of his true self, his true situation. When the better version of himself eventually succumbs to the darker passions, the reality hits him full force, the giant spider appears, and he looks defeated realizing what really happened and the fantasy is over.

So I don't see it as split-personality, but more a wish fulfillment fantasy that gets mired by the realities of his true self. The order of events needs to be rearranged to see it, the long lingering shot on the broken window, the exact moment the other Jake has a telepathic connection with the other events and starts crying. The only time they are emotionally in sync.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #444: Oldboy

mike rot — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 13:03:44 -0000

I get that and its true but Morris with this and his more recent JFK short plays smarmy to me... the cinematic equivalent of rolling your eyes, making broad gestures of how people process events, require truth, but in both cases they go against the facts that are not so neatly disposable. In the more recent one, the interviewee says multiple times look at the photographic evidence, it's there, it's pristine. That statement is insane. The last adjective one could ever place on the photographic evidence is pristine, nor is it complete in any satisfying way as some of the evidence has been confiscated (people in photographs taking photographs that claimed officials took their film), and of the fatal headshot there is only the one photograph to cross-examine with Zapruder film, and that is blurry as all hell and a split second before impact. But it makes for a great punchline and a smarmy disdain for research, which yes, does not all agree, but at least relies on evidence-based arguments rather than anecdotal truisms.

I have not seen the Smoking Gun doc Jay mentioned, will track it down. How all of sudden the ballistic trajectory has been changed from the Book Depository to the ground, after countless assertions by experts, seems to beg more questions than it answers.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #444: Oldboy

mike rot — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 11:02:53 -0000

Director that has one great film left in him: Brad Anderson. Been losing faith the last couple but I think if he stops doing jobber work on tv he could make something cool.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #444: Oldboy

mike rot — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 10:17:18 -0000

Here is filmmaker Alex Cox's take on the flawed Errol Morris JFK short

http://boingboing.net/2013/...

Read Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment, the first and best account of how Lee Harvey Oswald was just a patsy and NOT a lone gunman.

Bobby looks like Citizen Kane next to Parkland.

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #432: Blue Jasmine and Kon-Tiki

mike rot — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 14:37:57 -0000

@Sean Highly recommend checking out the 3 hour documentary called Woody Allen. It is on Netflix, just watched it, and if you want to get a grasp of Woody it is pretty amazing. Goes through most of his films, gives you a flavor of them, a lot of Woody in his own words, some surprising stuff (like he hated Manhattan and didn't want to show it).

Re: Film Junk Podcast Episode #431: The World’s End and You’re Next

mike rot — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 15:24:19 -0000

As to Jay's point about the lack of charm in modern starbucked moviemaking, I would strongly recommend watching the films of Joe Swanberg (who is presently on the cusp of hitting it mainstream with his new film Drinking Buddies but is mostly known as one of the main mumblecore directors). A lot of his films are on Netflix, recommend in particular: Nights and Weekends, Uncle Kent, LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs.

Re: Destroy All Monsters: I Think We've Been This Way Before, Mr. Spock

mike rot — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:48:04 -0000

its nerdism, a genre unto itself. the hall of mirrors is your own obsessions playing back to you, and they make billions of bucks because there is a whole micro-autistic culture of film geeks that are archiving cinema rather than experiencing it, and this kind of in-the-know is what made the subtext easter eggs of Lost into front and center text with the future incarnation storytelling.

It is an aesthetic. Tastes can be discerning, but in and of itself it matters how the aesthetic is used and to what effect. If it is just name-dropping, winking, branding, toy-merchandising, source material circle jerk, that it is a vapid application of the aesthetic, the same way one can play with Americana as an aesthetic but saturate it Michael Bay style to something reeking of car commercials.

I don't think Abrams' Star Trek use of nerdism aesthetic is vapid, and in particular with Into Darkness, I don't think he is operating paint-by-number in strict observation of Wrath of Khan... in fact there are so many dissimilarities between the two projects (to the very look and behavior of Kahn) that most people are bitching about why it should even be called a Kahn movie. This story is not just a reboot, or reboquel as you said, it is an alternate universe which allows for in the narrative explicit some unique privilege to the homages that are sprinkled through - there may even be a long-term narrative thrust (akin to Lost) to show how behaviors in different realities may not be coincidental but driven by some yet unseen cosmic force. On that level at least Abrams is doing something new with the concept of homage. I don't think Into Darkness is as slavish to the source material as you let on. There are the same characters because in the alternate universe they exist, and there is a knowing, nerdist re-calibrating of the experience in foreknowledge (like the audience) of what came before (an attitude of storytelling being 'one of us' rather than behaving aloof to that reality of nerdism). But Into Darkness is an original story that just uses the previous for grace notes only.

It plays with geek expectations but it does it to their advantage, what they THINK they know about what will happen, subverting it in points while all the while creating a movie experience that is meant to be fun albeit less goofy than its predecessor. You want to hang out with this crew, you are in a somewhat familiar world, but different, and the dissonance creates a tension that would not be their otherwise had this been your father's Trek. Rather than submerge fully into nostalgia wankery, he uses it as a platform to tell new stories... the cinematic equivalent of what in comic books I believe are called "what ifs".

The point is not how this fits into a neat canon to obsess over... it is to pull the rug from under the fans, use what they know against them, so as to jolt them into an experience. Nerdist as a narrative tactic as much as a nostalgic flourish.

Re: Download (right-click to save): Bonus Episode:... | director's club podcast

mike rot — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:06:13 -0000

Ah Kurt, mangling my point... I am the one that brought up the blue line on both the sampler and thief cups... I was NOT saying that they knew each other (and Carruth also said only that, they were not aware of each other) but there is a difference between not being aware of each and yet being a part of a larger willed process, of which they are two parts being controlled.

Wrote more in-depth elsewhere, but to summarize, I believe there are three tiers to this upstream/downstream system: at the top is that which Thoreau heard, the sound, or could be construed as a divine will, or some kind of will of nature, or primary force... it disseminates... the thief and the sampler are somehow, like Thoreau, enlightened, and like demi-gods are both downstream of the divine will, yet upstream of our protagonists. They both act in unison even if unconscious of one another (this cycle makes no sense as something that organically developed because there would be no intelligible business strategy for the thief - to just leave the infected with the parasite inside of them to go to the hospital and expose his scheme - there needs to be a cleaner, and likewise, the sampler would have no people to lure in had the thief not always been there doing his part - they are co-dependent from day one).

Walden being used by the thief is more than just a means of passing time, that is used over and over with everyone of the infected suggests it is a clue to revelation, it is the bible for this divine will. It is the reciting of it that allows the protagonists to move upstream (on their tier, the same way one could hazard to guess the sampler/thief were able to move up to their position at an earlier date).

on the other point Kurt mangled... having watched the film three times now and specifically verified, when Kris is at the bank, the sampler is sitting right next to her as she is being told her account has been deactivated. You see just a portion of his face but it is clearly him, no crazy conspiracy... especially since you see him doing the same activity seven or eight times in the film with the other victims, and one can just assume logically he will have noticed a pattern with all of them that each had been robbed in the process and their lives ruined. The sampler may not know the exact person that did it, but he is not unaware of the phenomenon that precedes him.

Re: Returning guest Erik Childress of Film Threat,... | director's club podcast

mike rot — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:49:25 -0000

And Patrick you said it yourself, Gump has no agency of his own, he is following orders, he is being a cog in the bigger machine, but the meme of America is not to follow orders (that is just what they surreptitiously WANT you to do). Rather you are supposed to break away and be something special, a Rockefeller, a Ford... the whole American spirit, self-identity is that you are a people that broke free from England, you don't follow orders, you are self-made people, or as Carlin put it, slave owners who wanted to be free! The whole celebrity culture feeds into this same thing, that rags to riches story that you guys eat up, whether it is AMERICAN Idol or electing a President (In Canada we elect a party not a person).

I think you got your memes confused.

a.k.a. Mike Rot (of Row Three)

Re: Returning guest Erik Childress of Film Threat,... | director's club podcast

mike rot — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:38:28 -0000

haven't finished listening so maybe someone says this, but in response to how Forrest Gump is a satire seems pretty self-evident to me: America is obsessed with the Myth of the Self-Made Man, that great heroic character that lifts him/herself up from the bootstraps and gets things done, or that the person that ends up as President must have achieved it from some profound effort, that the virtue of American democracy and capitalism allows this inherent ethic to endure... and EVERYTHING in Forrest Gump is a counteract to that notion. Forrest Gump fumbles his way to the top (I haven't seen it in awhile but I think it is like Hudsucker Proxy in this respect, also a satire). The moral of the story: sometimes it is luck, or accident or something you cannot force a thesis upon, embrace the fuzziness of reality. Intelligence is overrated, and in fact insofar as it claims stakes upon its value, in danger of blinding itself of the actual dangers. People who think they have the answers are punished in the movie, it is hubris.

Re: http://directorsclubpodcast.com/post/14819377800

mike rot — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 09:19:45 -0000

The plan is complicated enough to make it seem like Walter wouldn't have done it, that is the genius of the plan. He took the cigarette not to use, just to plant the seed of doubt that maybe Walter took the ricin and was going to use it in whatever way to poison the kid. In context there was a lot of tension between the characters, fear of one side killing the other already, so this felt more than a coincidence, that the one cigarette that had the ricin in it was taken by the kid. Walter's get out of jail free card was the fact that ricin wasn't used, so long as he could stall Jesse's rage and plant the doubt, Walter would come out looking innocent. Not to mention the ricin in the cigarette was Walter's idea anyway, so even secondhand there was something for Jesse to get angry about and confront Walter.

Re: http://directorsclubpodcast.com/post/14819377800

mike rot — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 09:04:30 -0000

Agree with Key's comment, there is a huge difference between lying on the spot and rehearsing the night before in anticipation for the conflict.