I can't guarantee the same results at home (different players/timing) I use a VLC
If you find somebody and I don't, you know, that's totally cool. But if I find somebody and--and you don't, that's a deal breaker for me. I can't do that
Friday, October 19, 2007
20:07 (Open Relationship)
screenshots from the 20th minute and 7th second of a movie
I can't guarantee the same results at home (different players/timing) I use a VLC
I can't guarantee the same results at home (different players/timing) I use a VLC
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15 comments:
I love that you can see his stalker in the background.
groan,one of my worst films of 06,new york life in films seems to be samey to us brit esp gay n y life,angst and boring navel gazing!!!! could you not pick something with more relevance.
JA I hadn't even noticed that. how funny
anon yeah that's SHORTBUS all right. so "samey" ... just a totally generic movie. seen it a million times. we get so films like it in the US i can't even count. [*scratches head* -say what?]
I love that you can see his stalker in the background.
Haha. I'm re-watching the film right now, and I've been noticing how you can see him in the background of every single scene that features Jamie and James...
i meant it's queeny navel gazing new yorker angst,like a gay sex and the city,oohh let's put in real sex that'll shock 'em,michael winterbottom did it with 9 songs and it was boring then,the lead actres was woeful all big eyes and aren't i cute looks,i was not saying it's die hard 4,it's a polarising film and i ahve seen it minus the sex done on lots of obscure gay themed n.y. usa based movies and tv shows,i am gay from the uk and the way gay americans go on about there gayness esp in films as lacking as this one was is nauseating to uk folk but hey if you like that sort of thing,i myself prefer better well acted films like atonement and capote or even fluff like steel magnolias or a film with with something to say this only told me what i already knew sex/orgasms are good and so is having a b/f !!!!!
Hey,that's actually the same shot I got of it!
I'm not saying it's as bland and uninspired as all other queer films but if you take out the sex scenes... well, it is.
maybe i went in with too high expectations, maybe if i watch it again... but just looking at those two angsty, wooden, self-involved faces makes me not want to do that. (i did think the female lead was really lovely though - her strand of the story was the only one i was interested in - and even that reeked of Scriptwriting 101... y'know, the sex therapist who hates sex and has never had an orgasm... it's like a twisted version of a Paul Haggis concept)
I thought Shortbus was lovely.
What I particularly appreciated about it was it's optimism. Anyone who's interested in how films use/shoot sex will discover that sex, generally, is miserablist and angsty. Romance (or anything by Breillat), Intimacy, Base-Moi, Nine Songs etc). Yes, Shortbus is a bit schematic, but it's vision of New York as a haven was moving, and the conclusion is one of the best movie moments of recent years. The acting ranged, but I found Sook-Yun Li absolutely wonderful (and the woman she makes out with "In the End" has a remarkable combination of feral eroticism and tenderness that I find incredibly beguiling).
Sure, we may have seen it before and all it added was real sex but you know what? it probably hasn't been done that well in ages. Cry me a river.
y kant goran rite: Now that you've mentioned it, Shortbus is the most successful of the Haggis-ean films I've seen thus far. Sure, they all have sexual neuroticisms, but Mitchell doesn't make it seem like this applies to all of New York. It seemed natural to me that these characters would meet this way, since Shortbus is a community-home that they would gravitate towards. (Granted, the addition of the well-meaning stalker seems like a stretch. It might have seemed like less of one if Mitchell had made her female.)
Conversely, I thought the sex parts were the most boring - apart from the stirring poetic moment when Sofia watches her to-be orgasmic savior receive one of her own in the Sex-not-Bombs room, as Scott Matthews croons "Oh, we wished for heaven" in the background. It was the natural comedy of the myriad Shortbus neurotics conversing that I truly loved.
i love the film as you all know but i can see why it has detractors. However to say that it's as uninspired as other queer films if you take out the sex is, quite frankly, ludicrous.
I've seen a lot of queer films and most of them aren't even trying to be anything other than light and mediocre (i'm talking post-early 90s new queer cinema which like John Cameron Mitchell's work, was confrontational and daring) if Shortbus fails, it fails but it's far from unambitious or generic.
and i don't understand the comment about gays going on about their gayness --yes a lot of bad queer movies are about the coming out process (the time when gay people talk about it the most frequently) but shortbus isn't about that and for the most part what they're talking about is their unhappiness or their troubled relationships.
It's almost like you're talking about other films and using them to condemn shortbus?
Anyway the movie has terrific music, amazing soul, and a genuine search for something emotionally true plus an understanding that sex is important to happiness but not the panacea...which is a really mature attitude even if the characters themselves are immature
all that plus it's REALLY funny
and more than anything else it's an ideal time capsule of a certain time period and subculture in NY (the handling of post 9/11 despair and the weirdly optimistic/warm reaction to the blackout)
I can only speak for myself but I've never seen any movie that felt as much like a true snapshot of NYC in these years
just like i said new yorkers navel gazing but with sex.
i like it when a film polarises opinion.
my best friend and I walked past the stalker actor last night on 8th avenue ;) -weird coincidence.
after that and last week when i walked by Christine Vachon merely a couple hours after the post that mentioned her I'm thinking I should start typing about the people i most want to meet and then running out my door to wander the streets after them ;) ha ha
delusions of an OCD film blogger
The stalker actor (name: Peter Stickles) was standing outside of Sunshine (the theater) when I saw Shortbus the first time, Nat. He'd just come out of the previous screening, and he and his friends were loitering, and this old guy was standing at the Shortbus poster and turned to them and asked what it was about. One of stalker-boy's friends pointed at him and, laughing, screamed "HE'S IN IT, AND WE ALL SAW HIM FUCKING!"
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