Wow— and he would've been amazingly perfect for it.

Interesting— to me it looked totally hypnotic in the previews. I'll check it out soon.

Yeah, I guess so. Except that, not being around many scenes of heroin overdose myself, I don't know if there is a distinction to be drawn between a guy who overdoses in some conventional way (bad enough) vs. a guy who overdoses so immediately that he is still in the physical act of shooting up. I won't dispute that…

I haven't watched The Master yet. If you can believe it, I haven't seen Boogie Nights yet either (and I call myself a fan). I'm not sure if I can take it emotionally, though. The Master sounds pretty intense in all the right ways, and if I like it like I think I'm going to like it, I'm going to end up crying like a…

I agree with you in some respects. I think the main distinction to be drawn is that there are many factors that contribute to a man's death in a case like Gandolfini— none of them being a sudden tsunami of drug use. We're all on the clock in that respect. We can't point to a plate of half-consumed lasagna at the end…

I loved PSH so much as a performer. One of the few names that would instantly make any movie a must-see. And yet I find myself more than a little exasperated— what a pointless fucking waste.

Maybe I am being insensitive or missing the point, but it seems like it would be difficult and unnatural, from a journalistic perspective, to tiptoe around this, and it's always going to be "relevant," the same way that an artist's past works are always relevant. They're always reflections of self, aren't they? Her…

Cool, thanks for the link.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the limitations of a screenplay (and I haven't read this particular screenplay, so I don't know how specific it is), but wouldn't the camerawork be solely up to the director? I.e. the camera's shyness during the phone call contrasted with its pornographic fixation on the massacre— wouldn't…

Travis torments himself, the film torments Travis— it's been a while since I watched it last, but ever since I cannot recall another instance of having watched something where I felt such embarrassed sympathy for the character. Was he doing it all to himself? I guess that's debatable, and says something about the…

Maybe "gorge" is too strong a word; but you don't think it torments its protagonist a little gleefully at times, or that it pours on the violence to devastating effect? However you want to define it, it isn't "reserved". And yeah, Travis is a sympathetic character when it comes down to it. But it's easy to see how a…

Completely agree with you. I love Tool's music, but I saw them once in Erie and I was sort of bored shitless. To be fair, I wasn't blasted out of my mind on mind-altering substances, which is perhaps the recommended mode of viewing for a Tool performance, so, make of that what you will.

Yeah. That stings.

Haven't seen this yet, but as the article mentions, it's easy to miss the point of a movie that gorges on excesses (like Taxi Driver) when viewed in the wrong light. And with that film, we've got the benefit of almost 40 years of analysis to view it in the "correct" light (I won't bother trying defend whether there's…

Well put, but I wonder if "great" and "art" are truly synonymous— can't a movie be a great film without it being A Great Film?

Sorry! I'll put it on The List (…of HBO shows I'll probably never actually see)

Is it bad that I have never heard of Enlightened before today?

That's funny, that was my exact same experience w/ From Dusk Til Dawn….went to see it with a couple of friends, all of us pretty clueless and just expecting a Reservoir Dogs type of experience. And then it's like WHAT IN THE FUCK IS HAPPENING ARE THERE HALLUCINOGENS IN THIS POPCORN?

Yeah, I think ultimately the movie's explainable, but it's admirable the way it refuses to hold your hand.

I've tried to read that chart before. The chart is 100X more impenetrable than the movie it hopes to explain.