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Show threadmemfreeOct 29

I watched a set of Marcello Mastroianni movies. He’s been in over 100 flicks and a lot of them are pretty bad, so I tried to pick from the top rated ones I’d not yet seen.

  • The Friend (2024): Many women talk about the dead guy and the live dog. It does a good job of handling conflicting feelings during a time of loss. Recommended.
  • Joyland (جوائے لینڈ) (2022): Quiet film of a patriarchal family whose youngest son joins a burlesque show and falls for a strong-willed transgender woman, further complicating family relations, especially with his wife.
  • Green Book (2018): A bouncer drives African-American classical pianist Dr. Donald Shirley through the South. Great acting from Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen. Forgive it for being “remarkably conventional and shallow in its treatment of racism” as it is based off real-life stories the driver told his son, who has a writing credit for the movie. Their NYC-Italian POV is valid, if shallow.
  • The Big Gay Musical (2009): While working on an off-broadway show, the lives of two men mirror the characters they are playing. Skip it.
  • A Petal (1996) (꽃잎): A fictionalized tale of how a girl reacted to the trauma of the 1980 Gwangju massacre. This film spurred the Korean public to demand the truth behind the incident, and their government eventually opened previously classified files on the massacre. I have issues with the film, but felt the need to watch.
  • A Taxi Driver (택시운전사) 2017 : Lighter than the previous. Based on a real-life story, the film follows a taxi driver from Seoul who unintentionally becomes involved in the events of the Gwangju Uprising in 1980. It draws on the experiences of German journalist Jürgen Hinzpeter and his interactions with driver Kim Man-seob. All of Man-seob’s details are fictional because no one could find him until his son saw the movie and realized it was about his dad.
  • Chamber of Horrors (1966): I guess it is Halloween season. Meh.
  • Manichitrathazhu (1993) (മണിച്ചിത്രത്താഴ്): Hailing from a family that follows tradition and superstitions, Thampi objects to his nephew’s idea of moving into a haunted mansion. The warning ignored, things get spooky. Recommended.
  • I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997): skip.
  • Stalker (1979) (Сталкер): THIS IS STILL THE BEST MOVIE! Filled with despair.

Mastroianni movies:

  • The Organizer (1963) (I compagni): Former teacher-turned-unionist (Mastroianni) tries to organize workers laboring with inhuman conditions at a textile factory. Tense and true. Highly Recommended.
  • Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) (I soliti ignoti): fun heist flick
  • Ginger and Fred (1986): Old dance partners rejoin for TV special and comment on aging, societal change, the entertainment industry and more.
  • Le Notti Bianche (1957) (White Nights): A middle-aged man meets a young woman who is waiting on for her lover’s return after a year apart. Will he sway her? Will the lover return? Highly Recommended.
  • 8½ (1963) : Not my favorite Fellini, but others rate it highly.
  • Divorce Italian Style (1961) (Divorzio all’italiana) : Comedy about a husband who falls for sexy niece, but since Catholics can’t divorce, the only option is murder.
The Friend

New York City writer Iris finds her comfortable, solitary life thrown into disarray after her closest friend and mentor bequeaths her a Great Dane named Apollo. The huge dog immediately creates practical problems for Iris, from furniture destruction to eviction notices, as well as more existential ones. Yet as Iris finds herself unexpectedly bonding with Apollo, she begins to come to terms with her past, and her own creative inner life.

The Movie Database
Show threadmemfreeOct 22
I guess I phrased that badly. The viewer will feel callbacks. The director had not seen a nuclear facility fail, but we’ve since seen an exclusion zone like the one in the movie and it is eerily similar. Obviously the director couldn’t know that in the future (now) we’d have this comparison to make.
memfreeOct 22

Stalker (Сталкер) (1979): Tarkovsky's classic will air on TCM Sunday Oct 29

Andrei Tarkovsky’s haunting classic Stalker (Сталкер) (1979) is a must-see for cinephiles.

If you’ve played the video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R., you already have a sense of the ‘feel’ of this film as both are based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1972 novel Roadside Picnic. Those two also wrote the screen play, which diverges from the book.

Infused with visual callbacks to Soviet gulags and the Chernobyl disaster, the film is about a stalker. For a price, the he will guide interested pilgrims from the crumbling and polluted normal world, past guards and hazards, and into the “Zone” where a wellspring of small life is overtaking the decaying creations of man. A dystopian normality is replaced with aberrant physics, harrowing obstacles both mental and physical, and most importantly with a chance to reach “The Room” where one’s desire might be granted…for a sacrifice. That is the trek, but the story is about the men, specifically, as titled, the Stalker.

The stalker has a family, he’s fresh from jail and is about to risk a return if he isn’t killed, first. His inner journey is more important than the physical one and is described as much with ambient sound and water as with action and dialog. With a writer and professor in tow, the stalker again undertakes the pilgrimage despite concerns from his wife. His desire for the Zone itself and the money he’ll make outweigh his wife’s concerns, but not his love for her and their child. Will it be worth it? Is he doing more harm than good? Does anyone know and can anyone choose a better path? Filled with loaded imagery and motiff from faith and love to war and cynicism, this film slowly reflects on a variety of conflicting ideas without forcing any single principle to be the sole answer (though one could argue that there’s a theme).

The movie is available through various library subscriptions, youtube, HBO, and will air on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) on Sunday Night/Monday Morning October 29 2025 at 2:00am EDT. Find a long block of empty time to give it a try.

https://piefed.social/c/movies/p/1397021/stalker-stalker-1979-tarkovsky-s-classic-will-air-on-tcm-sunday-oct-29

Show threadmemfreeOct 15

This was a heavy Brit week for me with a few from India thrown in.

  • Wicked (2024): Half of a musical needing its ‘part 2’.
  • The Life of Chuck (2024): Thanks to y’a’ll for recommending this. Poignant.
  • Sita Sings the Blues (2008): Animated. Indian tale of Sita, wife to Ramayana, as told by modern people trying to remember the details and interspersed with the 1920s Annette Hanshaw singing.
  • Good Bye, Lenin! (2003): German. East German mom wakes from coma after Berlin wall falls, so son pretends they’re still divided.
  • Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (1970) Zhi qu wei hu shan (智取威虎山): Recommended for historical reasons. Details here.
  • Pyaasa (1957) प्यासा (aka Thirst): Indian. Highly Recommended. Director Guru Dutt also stars in his own most-celebrated film (see also Paper Flowers).
  • Don (1978) डॉन : Bollywood singing/dancing crime thriller with Pauper/Prince motif except with a crime lord instead of a prince. Pretty good for what it is.
  • He Ran All the Way (1951): beautifully shot, tense, but so much melodrama.
  • Any Wednesday (1966): Flick about cheating exec tries for funny but is cringe.
  • Crooks and Coronets (1969) aka Sophie’s Place: Telly Savalas is a crook who likes the Brits he’s supposed to rob. Okay, but skippable.
  • Inside Out (1975): Skippable Comedy/Thriller where crooks try to steal Nazi gold. Telly Savalas, Robert Culp, James Mason, and so on. Yawn.
  • From Beyond the Grave (1974): Brit ghost-y shorts tied together by Peter Cushing’s curio shop. Good for its (now-dated) type.
  • Die! Die! My Darling! (1965): Brit thriller/camp fave. Tallulah Bankhead is a strict religious crone grieving her dead son and so she takes his once-fiancee captive.
  • When The Wind Blows (1986): Animated. Elderly British couple chat and prepare their cottage as nuclear war begins. Well done. Mildly recommended.
Wicked

In the land of Oz, ostracized and misunderstood green-skinned Elphaba is forced to share a room with the popular aristocrat Glinda at Shiz University, and the two's unlikely friendship is tested as they begin to fulfill their respective destinies as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.

The Movie Database
Show threadmemfreeOct 15

Okay, so you’re saying would do evil for a big enough pile of money? If you had enough to get along in relative comfort would you still?

Lots of people who see no other options commit crimes to get money and ‘stuff’, but if we all had a guaranteed income, I wonder which people would be enticed to do evil just to get still more money. The evil wouldn’t be ‘torturing those you love’, but more like letting some company dump lead in the water supply. Personally, I couldn’t allow that for any monetary price.

Show threadmemfreeOct 15

That’s not the line. In KJV it goes:

For the love of money is the root of all evil

It’s not the money itself, it’s the love of money.

Bible Gateway passage: 1 Timothy 6:10 - King James Version

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

Bible Gateway
Show threadmemfreeOct 12

Answer: Law enforcement itself doesn’t have anything in place, but they call people who care.

Baby monkeys are hard, but:

Fischer, contact list at the ready, quickly found the babies a temporary placement at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, which had staff and facilities to do both the quarantine and the baby care. “They were immediately able to jump into action, call that agent back and start communicating,” says Fischer. The park staff even made the six-hour round-trip drive to pick up and triage the babies. “They were rock stars.”

Yay zoo!

Show threadmemfreeOct 12
For others. If I’m staying home, I dress like I’m homeless in whatever grungy dirty things that already need washing. If I’m going out, my hair combed, my threads are fresh and I’m not getting denied entrance to the restaurant. The movie Blast from the Past was pretty stupid, but it did teach me (remind me?) that you dress nice as a courtesy to your friends.
Blast from the Past

Following a bomb scare in the 1960s that locked the Webers into their bomb shelter for 35 years, Adam now ventures forth into Los Angeles to obtain food and supplies for his family, and a non-mutant wife for himself.

The Movie Database
Show threadmemfreeOct 11
They want options. They don’t want to leave now , but maybe later. Maybe when you pull out the vacuum cleaner or when the TV gets too loud. Mostly, it’s nice to have another escape route.
memfreeOct 11

Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (1970)

Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (1970)/ 智取威虎山 / Zhi qu wei hu shan

This film is complete propaganda, but that’s okay. It’s not like the U.S. and other countries didn’t have propaganda movies (I’m looking at you, Private Buckaroo). The possible difference here is that rather than studios ‘choosing’ to support our troops and getting free help from the military, here the government – specifically Mao’s wife, Jiang Qin, who was highly influential in the Cultural Revolution – was explicitly looking to create “eight model operas”. This was the first of the set. Several were shown each year – even in small villages – and attendance may not have been exactly compulsory, but it was easier to go than explain why you did not. Because of the close-to-national attendance, this may be the most watched film of all time with a supposed view count of over seven billion views before the internet expanded its reach.

Based on a novel from the 50s, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy and directed Xie Tieli, the film is basically a filming of the opera with close-ups and a variety of shots and camera work to keep it from becoming overly static. Set during the civil war in 1946, the opera follows a detachment of the People’s Liberation Army in Manchuria searching to eliminate a group of bandits which are hiding in well fortified camps in the mountains. Along the way, we meet bandits, soldiers, and common people who may be suspicious at first, but soon see the correctness of Mao’s plan, and are eager to help the army get rid of the bandits.

The music and action is traditional and as it would be seen on a stage with evocative set design. When the story calls for riding a horse, the dancing denotes riding and horse whinnies are heard in the distance of the orchestra, but no horse is onstage. When there is fighting, the dance become acrobatic with leaps and lifts to connote feints and conflicts. Throughout, the message is how the People’s Army is making things better, and how ready the public is to work hard to make a better tomorrow.

While the spectacle is initially thrilling, viewers are unlikely to stay transfixed as they see the same sort of thing over and over. The beginning is heavy with dialog that may require a quick rewind to read the subtitles, but there are points that the film drags. The resolution is satisfying, but a forgone conclusion. This might not be the greatest film ever made, but since it is probably the most viewed, it is worth seeing if only for historical reference.

https://piefed.social/post/1361487