The_Triple_Lindy

OH. I totally didn't get that.

I'm not sure that they're based off of real people. I agree that they probably weren't on the bus, but I took them for ambiguous manifestations of his paranoia, which he refers to constantly in his sessions with Dr. Gibson and shouting matches with Robin Wright. Feds and mobsters are always the most paranoid movie characters, and stylistically they stand so far afield from anything Young DD is familiar with. There is that line on the bus about how LA is just full of gangsters, which of course is how any bumpkin views the Big City, so I figured that was the inception for his noir-style writing a la The Singing Detective.

Pretty sure that beating someone with a wrench that big would just kill them. I read it as the sound-and-fury of white guy rage. I'm sure he's punched a few holes into the walls of the house, too. My question is, after they lived in LA and had to move back, where were they moving back to? Surely they wouldn't go back to Dark Sr., and they don't seem to have anyone else in the town. We never really see that part of his life ... they leave LA, go "back," and the next time we see the mom, she's washed up on shore somewhere after drowning herself.

Jesus, this movie ... I had REEEALLY vivid dreams last night for the first time that I can remember in a while and I think it's because I watched this movie right before I went to bed. They involved lots of long hallways and close-up faces. [shudder]

The only thing better than winning the Nothing Prize for Fucking Douches is getting Paul to do his Jeremy Irons impression.

This feels more like a CW show.

Did anyone else suffer from Emmy Rossum face-blindness? It took me a while to realize that Ridley, the girl in the flashback (where she kills the guy with the train), and the red-eyed girl in the black and purple Sweeney Todd seance dress were all the same people. Then I look up a picture of her IRL and I still don't really recognize her.

I actually wondered about Amma's lineage and heritage. During the ritual where she communicates with some dead relative (when she takes off her shirt and reveals her tattoos), she warns Macon to tread lightly on her people's land. When I first heard it, and given all the Civil War allusions, I assumed she was referring to ancestors who might have been slaves -- they are in deep Georgia, after all. But then, she says that her family had been there acting as guardians for the library for centuries, and I just assumed that must predate American slavery. By the way, that look she gives when she realizes that Ethan's mind has been wiped -- probably the best acting in the movie, even topping Emma Thompson. If there's one thing that's guaranteed to be a hit with the kids, it's jokes about Nancy Reagan.

What was the deal with Uncle Macon's love of Google? I get that he excuses away the crazy unnatural lightning phenomena by saying "Oh, weird things like that happen all the time ... just Google it." That seems to imply that casters have some sort of manipulative control over Google search results. That would be impressive power, but I wonder why whatever ancient force that lies behind their centuries-old powers would account for controlling a digital medium that's only been around for 30 years. I guess they can do anything because magic? Or maybe there's casters in Silicon Valley ... I bet Gilfoyle's a siren.

Too bad the casters were otherwise completely ineffectual during the rest of Sherman's March to the Sea. Their "glorious victory" was one of very few missteps by the Union Army during Sherman's shock-and-awe campaign. Just like us Southerners to celebrate and say "We sure got you Yankees that time!" while everything between Atlanta and Savanna is burning to the ground behind them.

Just seven years older than her supposed "son" in this film ... this is why Hollywood can't have nice things.

Poser Hoser!

Would that it wuuh ... ... so simple

Long answer: I guess it depends on the quality of the ingredients, the skill of the cook, the type of oil, etc ... because a dumbass cook could fry up rancid chicken using diesel two-stroke oil, in which case one might say they preferred Shake n Bake to fried. Short answer:

But I do like the father basically saying, "There's no way you made this -- it's delicious."

Oh yeah. The accents weren't bad -- Lansbury is an accomplished actress and so she can be trusted with accents, and Elvis' accent is basically just his accent. But the difference between them was distracting at times since they're supposed to be mother/son. I TOTALLY get you

Were you raised in the South? I ask because I distinctly remember the moment I decided that I was going to consciously avoid developing a drawl ... the girl who sat behind me in 6th homeroom went from accent-neutral to sounding like the girl from the Shake and Bake commercial over the course of a summer break, which she wore as a badge of baffling pride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB7j3sUWohE I've managed since then to avoid the drawl, mostly ... it sneaks out when I'm mad and shouting, and it's a little noticeable when I'm juxtaposed with non-Southerners. I'm just wondering if you made the same conscious choice.

Fewer Anglophone accents have as much potential for hamming it up as a Southern accent ... maybe cockney British or Italian-American. All Southern drawls are not equal though. At some points, Elvis had an almost cajun accent which, since he was born in Mississippi and reared in Memphis, is probably closer to his actual drawl. But Deep South Georgia Plantation accents are quite distinct from that ... Lansbury's accent wasn't a bingo but it was pretty close. And the difference between the two of them on screen was a bit distracting. Plus, if Elvis was raised in Hawaii, it wouldn't matter that he was born in Georgia -- he'd not have that thick of an accent because he would be pulling his diction and syntax from his school classmates and peers more directly than from his parents. He would have an accent but it would be tempered by his environment and the culture on the island.

God help me, this movie is mental. I'd like to say I hated it but ...

I think that You Only Live Twice is a bit more aggressive in its stereotyping than you might (including Connery's make up and acting, but also the movie's general portrayal of Japanese people and culture), but I'd agree about Othello ... that was Olivier's desire to check off every Shakespearean leading man, although I'd argue he should've just played Iago and gotten someone else to play Othello. Neither of them are a bad as Mr. Yunioshi.

One should only watch this movie in the same vein of academic curiosity in which one watches Birth of a Nation. Which stinks because it's not a bad movie, otherwise. But it's the same thing with Olivier's Othello, or James Bond's "turning Japanese" in You Only Live Twice, and other passable movies ruined by the totally-white attitude of "I can play a person of color just as well as they can, it doesn't look that hard to be a minority!"

I actually thought that the teacher was going to swoop in as a "mother-approved" competitor. The first thing I though when she appeared was, "she practically looks like a younger Angela Lansbury." It's as real as Long Duk Dong.

1. Did anyone else catch the moment where Angela Lansbury tells Elvis something to the effect of "Why would anyone want to go play music with the beach boys?" Wikipedia says that the Beach Boys didn't become a hit until '63, but the joke was prescient. 2. Everyone here should go to Graceland. It's a bizarre shrine to a guy who had a completely crazy life. You can go on one of his two private planes. You can play pool on a table he bought from the Beatles. You can see the TV he shot. He was a pretty wild dude. He gave tons of money to charity and spent all his money just having parties and buying things for his friends. He also acted like he owned everything and could do pretty much anything he wanted without having to ask or answer for it. Also, one of his rooms is T2B mirrors. And there's the "jungle room."

And did they move to Hawaii to run a pineapple farm just because they wanted to run a plantation and boss around some POCs?

Seems pretty clear to me that Elvis is on the "Tony Danza" level of acting ability, where he has to essentially play himself in order to stay in character. Did anyone see how much he was breaking up? During the scene where he gets fired from the tourist guide store and is told the girl ran off in the jeep, he had to turn his head to compose himself.