So you liked Shitlock Holmes, but thought The Expendables was the worst piece of shit you'd seen in a long time? Does not compute. :shrug:
Movie question: Did Hal malfunction in 2001 - or was there some other culprit responsible? Of note his parallel duplicate did not malfunction.
Absolutely! Sherlock Holmes was clever and funny, even if the end didn't make much sense. The Expendables was a unimaginative collection of rehashed Hollywood action film formulae puntuated by Stallone's unintelligible mumbling.
We must have watched different movies. The one I saw was all about Lisbeth overcoming victimization and objectification through assertions of inner power (the tattoo of the dragon tearing out of her skin symbolizes this inner strength - and violence and ugliness - rather heavy-handedly). If anything, it's supposed to make you question whether the methods she employs to overcome victimization are justifiable (since she is a merciless sadist and killer as well - but only against the "correct" victims). Again, this is completely backwards. She keeps him safe, since he's too weak and idealistic to employ the sort of violence it is implied is required to resist "the fascists." Absent her protection and will to violence, he'd have ended up just another undiscovered corpse flung unceremoniously from Gottfried's yacht. For her part, she doesn't need him - and leaves him without a word after supplying him with the info to write a new piece from jail (he, again, being too weak and ineffectual to succeed as an investigative journalist without her help). Their relationship inverts the standard gender roles - she is the active, strong party, and he is the passive, naive homebody. This is unsurprising given that it's a novel about patriarchy written by a hard-left homosexual - Mikael is clearly a stand-in for the author (bookish, liberal, hated by the right, gay/effiminate), while Lisbeth is a projection of his fem-power political fantasy avatar (empowered to define her own sexuality, compete confidently in the arena of violence, proactive instead of analytic, etc.). The trilogy is about the conflict between this radical heroin and the patriarchal state. What, raping one's own daughter and torturing women to death in a rape dungeon doesn't count as "deeply evil" anymore? That is exactly what her tattoos are.
Thats not how I saw it. I saw her as being "used" - as her accomplishments only being possible illegally or without due credit. I guess its a point of view. To me, her tattoos were about giving up - she was only able to see the effects of her accomplishments on her skin, since outside herself, she only existed as an appendage to the idealistic male who used her work to achieve his fame. Even his attitude to her was indulgent rather than of one peer to another. You're right, we were watching different movies. I suppose it comes from having different perspectives on whats important. To me, the lacklustre reporter got the credit for solving the mystery, for finding Hannah, for exposing the corruption. He even missed something as obvious as the bible code. She did all the work, she even got rid of the killer and he took all the credit. [Crap its 3 am thats late even by my standards, it will take me a couple of days to get out of the fasting cycle]
To be fair, her accomplishments mostly consist of crimes - including cold-blooded murder, rape, torture, theft, etc. "Taking credit" for that involves going to prison for the rest of her life - but she seems not to lack for remuneration, and to live comfortably on her hacker skills. She's an underground operator and intensely private and secretive, and this appears to suit her. Because no matter how powerful she is as an individual, her power still pales before that of the state (as she has already learned the hard way, at a young age). Patriarchy imposes a stark choice on women: either submit to capricious state power, or go underground. This being the basic criticism that the entire series is getting at. Does not compute - she has the tattoos long before she ever meets Mikael, or saves him. The represent her inner power - which is violent and ugly. They symbolize exactly her refusal to submit to the patriarchal state, but instead to fight back. Larsson chose not to title the book "Girl with the Lion Tattoo" or "Girl with the Eagle Tattoo" for a reason - she is, in some sense, Satanic in her rejection of patriarchal authority and embrace of personal, violent, and dark (underground, unseen, hidden) power. And, again, she's the one using him - she can't go public with that sort of stuff herself, because she's a criminal (and, worse, a female criminal). She needs to operate in the shadows, and he's a convenient channel for her to publicize whatever she wants, gain access to his contacts and info, etc. without exposing herself. And, likewise, she's the one indulging him - she sets the terms of their sexual encounters and emotional intimacy (note that she's on top during sex, and refuses intimacy afterwards in favor of sleep - both stereotypical male chauvinist behaviors), she determines his fate (both whether he lives or dies, whether he can regain his reputation, whether he can fulfill his task to solve the case, etc.). Recall how they meet: she has been illegally monitoring him, without his knowledge, for an extended period, and it is only once she decides to engage him directly, for her own reasons, that he is any the wiser. She knows everything about him, and he knows nothing about her. She has all of the power - he's just a (male, publicly-acceptable) sock-puppet that she can use to publicly confront patriarchy without exposing herself to the overbearing power of the state. And he understands this perfectly well (even if it remains a public secret) and, furthermore, gratefully embraces it (ineffectual eunuch that he is). That's all accurate, but misses the point, which is exactly that she cannot take the credit because she is unacceptably female and empowered. That situation is not supposed to be a happy one, nor one that Larsson included uninentionally out of some kind of ignorant gender bigotry. It is, rather, the basic object of criticism of the whole work. Lisbeth has been forced into such a position by the sexual violence of a patriarchal state and society, and so must Fight The Good Fight from underground - although perhaps one day, long in the future, be recognized as a hero of the gender revolution. Certainly, she already is such a hero to Mikael, both personally and politically, and we can be sure that he would love to sing her praises in public if it didn't risk exposing and destroying her. And, likewise, you skip the early part of the film: nobody else gets credit for her rape and blackmail of her case worker. She gets all of the money, power and satisfaction involved in that one, and is seen to relish it. And note that it is exactly her threat to publicize that ultimately gives her power over him - both understand perfectly well that the dark world of violent power they inhabit requires remaining in the shadows.
In other words her only power is criminal. But good points overall. I thought the movie too starkly misogynistic, with the woman as the victim needing to be rescued from the same males who abuse her. But I see you see her as a guerilla fighter, fighting against the system by circumventing the rules which are not in her favour.
Watched Up a few days ago. Found the movie dragged a bit in parts and aside from a few moments here and there, found it a terrible bore. Not on the scale of Mary and Max or even Avatar. Too much self pity.
Sometimes a Great Notion Cool Hand Luke Absence of Malice Runaway Train Pope of Greenwich Village The Big Blue (By Luc Besson with Jean Reno and Roseanna Arquette) Dead Calm Quigley Down Under Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Ladyhawke Into the Night Stealing Heaven Mixed Nuts The Ref
Not to beat a dead horse, but... Not "only," but maybe "primary." For example she has no shortage of sexual power over mikael, clout at her work, etc. But in the big picture, she's an underground operator: hacker, spy, thief, killer. And it is no criticism for one's power to be "criminal" in the context of a law that hates women and demands of them either submission or criminality. Her choice is to resist - the system she exists in is the expression of a misogynistic society. This sentence baffles me. Did you mean to write "by the same males who abuse her?" But that still doesn't make sense - at no point does anyone "rescue" Lisbeth. She overcomes patriarchal domination very much on her own power, even in relating to friendly, passive males that value her (witness her sexual exploitation of Mikael and refusal of expected emotional responsibility afterward). The unlucky males who abuse her are subjected to her wrath: humiliated, imprisoned, blackmailed, tattooed, raped, even burned alive. The point is that she overturns patriarchal gender roles by meeting misogynistic violence on its own terms, and prevailing. She is an avatar of radical feminism, (almost?) to the point of being hackneyed. Note in particular the flashback sequence in which she is seen to disfigure an abusive male while still herself a small child - difficult for me to see where she's supposed to be helpless in that. She's been burning rapists alive since before she hit puberty. So I'm not seeing where she requires rescue. Doesn't the movie end with her solving the case, murdering the villain, emptying out his bank accounts, and running free to define her own life (even as the male protagonist is stuck in jail, totally dependent on her to salvage his career and life)? Not just circumventing but actively subverting. And I do not think that I go too far in suggesting that this is the intent of the author, and not simply my own interpretation. Again, I find these themes to be obvious to the point of heavy-handedness. Besides that, the Swedish name for the trilogy was "Men who Hate Woman," and the author was somewhat outspoken on these issues.
HAL functioned correctly by going haywire. Only HAL knew the instructions upon reaching Jupiter and had the intelligence to understand the implications of this alien beacon... It was HAL's big chance to make the evolutionary leap and overstep humans. Luckily, humans won out in the end. 2001 is a concept worthy of great thought- if HAL won, the embryo would be a super computer.
I have been obsessing over the film "Last Night" for a couple of weeks now. It's a B movie with the director as the star (i.e. bad acting), but it has something to it. It's the last night of humanity, which will end at midnight tonight. Our main character has a "Christmas dinner" with the family that evening, then goes home to witness the end alone in his apartment. A lot of stuff happens and by the end you're both anticipating and dreading the final countdown. Good film.
Besson and Jean Reno worked together 6 years earlier in this movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Blue Huge in France, not so much in the US, and not that easy to find, but I really like Besson's films and Reno's craft. Arthur
I recommend a film by Werner Herzog, "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?" (2009) Produced by David Lynch. Definitely worth watching, even if it isn't a masterpiece. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1233219/
