Rents

I can imagine. Hopefully your trains will be running.Ours gave up.
I'm off Mon, Tues unless something disasterous happens at work. My staff are pretty good though. So here's hoping.
Your profile pic is down, are you changing it? Liked the last one.

Yup it was. My car looked like an igloo. I drive a Hyudai (spelling?) coupe Auto. AKA sledge.... No way was even going to attempt it after 1st experience. Lost count of the amount of times had to pull it out of a spin. 20 min journey took 2 hours. Sign on motorway said 'Snow forcast Drive with care' 'No shit sherlock' was my loud response, with a few expletives thrown in there for good measure as was looking at complete white out. Couldn't even see central reservation. Not funny. Never again. Hubby's car is good but then he can drive better.

Hope your white stuff disapears soon. Its very pretty but it can be a royal pain in the butt ......... Anyway, sleep time. Xxx

You pulled...... :-D .....lucky you :-D..... You don't say where you stay but when we had snow here in November the whole country pretty much came to a stand still. Rediculous really. Folks were trapped in their cars overnight on the motorway. Did the authorities think to treat the opposite carriageway and take down the central barriers.. No. Crazy. Lost a rediculous amount of work because of it. Managed to get some Stunning photo's though.

Where the thread was concerned. I had concerns about it before I even went into it. There is no telling personal histories of folks here. It could all to easily have opened up some serious wounds, can's of worms etc. with no support back up.....Not good. Glad it has died.
Got a few days left of heavy work. Looking forward to Monday. Time to chill.

Being John Malkovich was fantastic, though I found the ending to be awfully sad (for John Cusack's character). It's probably the most depressing ending I can think of where nobody actually dies. I haven't seen Where The Wild Things are, though I picked up the DVD in the January sales, so I'll get round to watching it soon.

Good luck with your creative endeavours - what kind of artist are you hoping to be? I am hoping that, whatever I do in life, I'll get to be a novelist on the side, since I really enjoy creative writing.

Hi Rents. Hope you are well. Had a quick look at the thread we effectively met on. Did you notice that it went dead one post after, with someone pretty much reiterating part of what you said? But in simpler terms....found that very interesting. Xxx

And wow, you are well-travelled. I have an odd hybrid accent which often leads people to presume to that I'm from a far more exotic background than I really am. I've lived in the UK pretty much my whole life - the longest I've been away was a summer I spent in Australia (winter over there) several years ago.

From the sounds of it, you're also very well-read. I'm hoping to do a PhD some time in the future (maybe get a career in academia), so hopefully there's still plenty more of this stuff for me to come.

Have you seen The French Lieutenant's Woman (screenplay by Harold Pinter)? I'd recommend reading the original novel by John Fowles first if you haven't already done so. The book does tell a story, but it's so abstract and self-referential in the way it does it that it doesn't lend itself very easily to film adaptation. Critics had mixed reactions about Pinter's solution to the problem, but I think it's quite well-done. For a smaller paper I did for my degree, I contrasted that film with Adaptation./The Orchid Thief (by coincidence they both star Meryl Streep).

My dissertation was on Harold Pinter, who is my favourite playwright, so it was great to be able to study him in depth like that (not that it wasn't a stressful process, though). Of course, this was 2008, and he actually died at the very end of the year in question. It was no surprise, since he had been very ill for a long time, but given that the past twelve months of my life had pretty much revolved around him, it felt so surreal. What were your papers on?

Where were you from originally, if you don't mind me asking?

Yay! How nice to meet someone with the same appreciation for The Hudsucker Proxy (it doesn't get as much love as a lot of the other Coen Bros films). It made me want to seek out and watch more of the old classics that influenced it, including His Girl Friday.

A Serious Man is really good, a definitely recommend it. I remember spending ages puzzling over the meaning of that one, but I think I came to a pretty satisfying conclusion. Unfortunately, I don't think True Grit is due to be released here unil mid-February, but I keep hearing great things, which is getting me hyped.

I still need to finish the original book of Naked Lunch. I borrowed it from the library two years ago and read the first couple of chapters, but unfortunately I had to return it because I needed the extra space on my library card for this dissertation I was writing.

No worries. A topic like that is incredibly sensitive. I know from past experience of that type of thing that it takes alot of thought not to jump on a band wagon. And you got it bang on.....I had read the previous posts and was ready to go on a rant :-D. You saved me alot of time. It takes ages for me to write out these posts (I'm dyslexic) :-D. Good to meet you.

Loved your post in oral sex charges thread.... Best response to a thread that I've seen. IMO.

Oh man, I loooove the Coen Brothers. As well as Barton Fink, I'm a huge fan of the criminally underappreciated The Hudsucker Proxy, a really delightful and really affectionate send-up of the fast-talking flicks of the 1940s, and which gave rise to phrase "You know, for kids!" (I must admit, I throw a little internal tantrum every time I encounter someone who thinks that self-congratulatory poser Doug Walker invented it).

Blood Simple is another really great one, you can see how it would serve as a blueprint for a lot of their works to come (plus, for my money it contains just about the visually disturbing scene in a Coen Bros film, when Frances McDormand sticks that knife through M. Emmet Walsh's hand).

I actually gave my housemate Naked Lunch for Xmas, since he's a huge Cronenberg fan. It confused him, but I think he liked it.

Hey, fellow bitter cynic with common sense are hard to find these days.

I just watched that Rubber Johnny video. God, that was terrifing. I can see the thematic Eraserhead connection, though.

How about the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink? While not exactly Lynchian, of all their films it is the one that feels most like a surrealist nightmare. It's another film I've watched and studied quite obsessively, perhaps even more so than Mulholland Dr.

Not seen Irreversible, but thanks for the recommendations. I went straight to my Lovefilm account to add it, only it seems to be out of print in Region 2 right now. Ah well, maybe I can find other means of seeing it, it sounds interesting.

I've studied Mulholland Dr and the various theories very closely over the past eight years or so. I've seen The Lost Highway and Eraserhead a few times, though by comparison I've only just begun to scratch the surface with those. The most convincing interpretation I've heard regarding Eraserhead so far is that it's about a fear of parenthood, though there's probably a whole lot more to it than that.

Mulholland Dr: There's a lot of debate as to which of the two worlds is "real" and which is the "dream" (most people of course lean toward the first being the dream, since it presents a more idealised version of Betty/Diane's situation). Personally I don't regard either to be any more real than the other, since they are both, in essence, fictional worlds within a movie, both of which are governed by a rather sinister undercurrent. I see the film as, among other things, a commentary upon the fantasy view of Hollywood versus the stark reality, the effects of which can be felt in both worlds. The abrupt switch-up demonstrates just how interchangable these "roles" are, in the movies themselves, in Hollywood, and in life on a much wider scale. That's just one theory, any way. I've dabbled with many, but that's the one that comes closest to satisfying me.

Well, I scoured the internet, but unfortunately I couldn't find the rearranged Rabbits script I mentioned. I wish I'd bookmarked it at the time. Oh well, if it ever shows up, I'll send you the link.

I think that you're onto something when you say that David Lynch enjoys fucking with our heads, which is why it's utimately futile to attempt to interpret any entirely coherent narratives from things like Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr (I tend to think of the latter as more of an abstract commentary upon the nature of cinema, particularly Hollywood and its relationship to fantasy/reality, rather than a concrete story as such). Though it's still quite fun to try.

I remember once finding a website which had rearranged all of the dialogue in Rabbits, so that the rabbits were responding to each other's statements more directly, to see if that made any more sense. It didn't, really, though it was still pretty interesting.

Well, I've watched Lady Blue Shanghai. It was...strange to say the least, but really, really beautiful. I definitely need to rewatch it tomorrow to get my own analysis going...in the meantime, I wouldn't mind hearing some of yours.

Thanks for the friend invite! I've found Lady Blue Shanghai on youtube, so I'm going to watch it this afternoon.