Film Analysis With Luke

Scientology, Catholics singing, and Tom Cruise - Oh my. Enjoy!   This is a loose follow up to episode 4.7 (massage chairs).

Did prehistoric humans understand color better? Are anti-love movies actually be pro-love? All that and more (like how to use a condom as a metaphor…) The film: Gaspar Noe's Love *The first half of the episode is the sales pitch for the movie. Listen to that, then watch the movie, then listen to the second half of the podcast (the analysis).   **I added nature sounds instead of music because I think it's relaxing. I also slowed my voice down because it makes things easier to process and I sound so manly now.

Supplementary video on website http://www.film-podcast.com/#!blog/ch7d   “Limitations are not constraints, are not necessarily restraining: they are tests. If you can’t write a poem with only words beginning with “b,” you don’t deserve the rest of the alphabet; if you can’t paint with one color of the wind, you don’t deserve the spectrum. Constraints make it so we’re not the only ones in charge (even if we’re the ones that create them). You get a partner, a backboard in your creations.” “The human brain operates on stimulus -- jolts of electricity come and domino as far as they can go. There is the initial zap, the travelling, and where it ends up finding its resting place. A minimalist/slow/ lackalist movie, with its lower number of spider-webbing zaps, forces the viewer to make some of its own thunder storms;” “Maybe watching challengingly static films -- pain with little experientially fun payoff -- is exactly like forcing y

Some teasers...“Prompt: You are given 1 million dollars to direct three five minute films: one thriller, one scary, one horror. What would these films be for you?” “Many films booked as Black-Horror are actually Gray-scary - It Follows, A Girl Walked Home Alone at Night, a bunch of vampire/ghost…” “But Horror, oh man, that’s a completely different apple pie. The hell of horror is a sticky combination of the insurmountable, the torturous, and the unknowable. Getting beat up by Mike Tyson…” “There is a Helplessness in horror and you know it when you feel it.” The “capacity-for-horror scale” or the “how-tough-are-you scale” “Everyone has a sweet spot for pain where the stimulus feels masseusatory (made up word for therapeutic). There’s a type of teasing…” “A good indicator, I’ve found, to show where a person squats on the “capacity-for-horror scale” is how they react to mai

“I mean it completely when I say I loved this movie. On my first viewing which is usually analysis-light and mainly for fun, I enjoyed this movie for a variety of reasons. First: you know those like waterfall or jungle sound recordings people use to fall asleep? Well, the sounds of this movie are earthy and hypnotic…” "I have a friend who’s about 6”4, can do back flips on a snowboard and is really good at urinating, that confessed that no matter how much money he makes or..." “See, our generation is “narrative super saturated.” Put simply, we have so many stories that we don’t know what to do with them. We’ve…” “A good example of this is the initial sexcapade. She is forcibly deflowered by Akin whilst looking for Flowers the cow and this can be seen as a feminine submissiveness. However, it is revealed that this sexual liberation was actually her idea, that she was truly in control…”

I left in some of my “ummms” and screw ups for pacing…to humanize/humble some of the intellectualism. Hope it works and isn’t annoying. Today we talk about “There Will Be Blood,” one of the greatest films ever. Ever, we say. And the podcast turned out pretty well; I think it’s accessible. We talk about D-Plain, his relationship with his son, his self, and about how the elements that allow a man to be great are the same things that allow him to be….quite naughty. We also talk a little bit about metaphor… Enjoy!

This week’s episode is a must listen. No Country for Old Men and… ---Training your kids to do drugs--- I’m going to stop glorifying drugs to point out that I don’t advocate drug use nor do I do much myself (outside my mountain of Diet Pepsi and the occasional addy). But kids. Are gonna. Do them. And they need…   ---My drug knowledge--- My basic understanding is that drug use like finances, accounting, and investing. There is a plus and a minus column, has high value stocks and low, takes planning and calculating. They take energy: there’s that whole “getting drunk is stealing tomorrow’s happiness” concept and that's not…   ---The death of the cowboy ideal--- No Country happens in wild west of Texas, like Kill Bill, Friday Night Lights, and it’s a showdown between good and evil. However, this isn’t Miss Daisy vs gang bangers: there is western sophistication, intelligence, and lethality on both sides. We watch the gods - near p

Atonement. Gingers. Repression. Ideals. Love. Keira Knightley.

Birdman. The soap opera effect. New TVs. Rube Goldberg.

I screwed up a bit on the "Five Languages of Love" idea (dangitall). I think I didn't list the right ones, forgetting "quality time" which probably includes the good communication I was referencing.BUT the episode is still a good one. Alcohol, Love, Communication. Also, J-Law is a supporting character.

In this episode I talk about Fight Club in a way you haven't heard before. How Fight Club its like Star Wars and the Shining. How Fight Club helps me understand why people love Bernie Sanders. How condoms ruin marriages. How growing up sometimes means punching yourself in the face. AND MORE! This episode starts a little lighter than others so as to make it more accessible. The meaty analysis starts round 20 minutes in. Hope you guys enjoy!

A long MEHpisode, but okay if you're into Jung, MBTI/typology stuff.

"Aranofsky’s Black Swan is about a consciousness, Nina, exploring restrictive unconscious beliefs. The beliefs that control Nina are embodied by her mother, Beth, and Lily. To release the Black Swan, she must overcome each of them."

"We start out with Max Fischer - lost, failing almost all classes, but living in the fantasy land that is Rushmore. He attempts to return to roots by reviving Latin, the Romance language, but..."

In this episode, we analyze "Inglourious Basterds" for what it says about duplicitousness, evil, propaganda, and more. I'm quite proud of this episode and it's going to be tough to top.

Easily my favorite episode. Next week is Inglorious Basterds (I think). Hold onto your butts! (There are spoilers so maybe watch the movies first if you haven't) We discuss the ins and outs of “revenge,” the differences between moms and dads, how a samurai sword is like a penis, and the process of becoming powerful.   “Often revenge is not a conscious decision but gravity swinging back the pendulum, getting back to center. Every act of revenge is an attempt to remove instability, to spit in the face of Law 2 of Thermodynamics, to put functions and systems in place to keep the room from continuously getting damned dirty.”   “Now that I’ve dropped the F-bomb a few times, I’ll do my best to give you a more accurate description of what I view as the defining characteristics of the abstract notion of fathering. The closest concept revolves around acceptance: a mother accepts a child for what it is. A father…”   “One thing you gotstuh rea

"If you remember my analysis of Lone Survivor and Wolf of Wall Street, you’ll remember that context is important in judging movie quality, that a movie can be better in one way and worse in another. To follow on this: magazines hire critics who pander to certain sorts of audiences, who have a specific set of tastes, and Roger Ebert is/was no exception." Also: my favorite movies (I forget a few though)Also: actors I'm interested in (I'd put Jake Gyllenhaal & probs a few others in there too)

"...the opening quote asks. And at first we take it tauntingly: a grandpa saying shut up about the nature of war - I mean, where were you when we stormed Normandy. But, through the masterpiece of a movie that follows, we learn that the query is sincere: where were you? Because I promise you were there but where?"