catapult magazine

Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE comes out on DVD and to rent on VHS on Tuesday. The Coen’s THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE comes out on the 16th. I’d be very eager to discuss either of those. Or would Mulholland Drive be biting off more than we can chew?

As seconded nominee to choose a film, I’d like to put THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE on the list for April 16, as it was my favorite movie of last year. I don’t think I can find HAPPINESS around here, though I have seen it and it is a good choice for now.

Other movies from last year I would highly recommend, but that we can get to later:

SEXY BEAST (L-O-V-E-D it!)
AMORES PERROS
A.I.
GHOST WORLD

Let’s start with HAPPINESS… Watch it ASAP, if you’d like to participate.

I don’t know why I’m always so forgiving with Spielberg. He just has such a great heart and I’m never afraid he’ll go too far and make me really uncomfortable (not that being uncomfortable is a bad thing, but I just trust Spielberg’s going to wrap it up in a tidy package so it goes down easy, you know?).

For those who have seen “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (one of my all time favorite movies), didn’t this recent Spielberg film seem so far away from the message of “Close Encounters”? In fact, they’re almost exact opposites.

Oh, and the thing I just couldn’t believe about “Minority Report” (though I also was thrilled by it) was that, despite all the technological advances of the future, the perpetrator and victim had to be revealed as impressions stamped onto wooden(?) balls that rolled down plastic tubes like the numbers on Sesame Street’s “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,twe-e-e-e-elve”. Would it be impossible for the machine to store the information on one of those transparent discs that seemed to function so well for other tasks throughout the movie?

But Grant, surely you remember the part in the film where they explain the wooden balls and the reasoning behind them. Since each has a unique grain and can’t be duplicatedit prevents people from tampering with the system. It has to do with the infallibility of pre-crime and people not forging the pre-cogs’ premonitions. Seriously, it’s in there…how could you miss it!?

Now, back to my game of dungeons and dragons…

Double post. Sorry.

well, there’s also the fact that this is way in the future and yet their computers aren’t even networked. They had to take the transparent “floppies” from one machine and plug it into the other. And about the wooden balls— yes they may have been used because the grain on each ball is unique, but did they have to use the cheesy spiral plastic tube to send it down in? Don’t get me wrong. I am just as tickled by spielberg’s little treats as the next person, but I feel like he could have cut some of that out to add in some scenes with greater substance.

Speilberg said in a recent interview that he loves Science fiction because he can pull out all the stops. He doesn’t have to serve realism.

Minority Report tastes good. I especially like the part where the cars come flying down the building. Its like a dinky car track.

Some writer tried working with Speilberg early in his career and gave up because all he’d do is play with his toy helicopter and yell out ideas once in a while.

As long as we’re bitching about things in the movie, why is Tom Cruise’s character able to see with his left eye after Mr. Little Spider Robot pulled the bandage away to do the retina scan. He was told A MILLION TIMES by Mr. Nasty Swedish Doctor that if he took it off to early he’d go blind.

Also, why can he get into the big precrime complex using his old eyeball for the retina scan? Wouldn’t they make it so he would trigger an alarm or something?

I know, I can get by it…I’m just saying.

And yes, the spiral tube for the wooden ball was pretty superfluous. But the wooden ball — TOTALLY justified.

I’m going to try to justify the long tube now (as a return favor to Jason for calling my attention to the necessity for the wooden balls). I think the long tube was necessary in order for Tom Cruise’s character to be able to get to the other side of the room in time to grab the self-incriminating ball away from his colleague. I also think the tube and balls added to the sense I got that the precogs were laying eggs in a “hatchery of justice”, so to speak (did you see the way they’d thrust up and out in a manner characteristic of birthing?). In another matter, I also loved the car scenes and wondered about the damaged eye scenario (that eye scene made the whole “cut-to-glowing-timer” bit kind of superfluous in the end).

By the way, did anyone catch what the precogs were reading in the final scene? I’d really like to know. I assume what the narrator meant by saying that the precogs were put to good use in the end is that they began their own book club to turn people on to reading again.

They were reading Minority Report by Philip K. Dick…

Not really, but what a mindblower that’d be, huh!!!? Huh?!! Whew!

Also, Grant is hereafter forbidden from using the phrase tube and balls.

You must not take that phrase away from me. I was hoping to use it as a replacement for the “birds and bees” scenario whenever I have to teach young ones about the realities of life. “You see, little Jimmy, the ball comes down the tube after the precog has a particularly stimulating dream and then…etc.”

Anyway, not to change the subject, but has anyone seen Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits”. I just wanted to say that the Robin Hood scene with John Cleese is perhaps one of THE funniest scenes in the history of film! But I haven’t seen “Mr. Deeds” yet.

Here here for the Gilliam! Anything those guys do is an absolute riot. Even Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas had it’s moments. Have you tackled Brazil, Grant?