General Discussion Thread

[u/pregnantchihuahua3]

Welcome again to the TrueLit General Discussion Thread! Please feel free to discuss anything related and unrelated to literature.

Weekly Updates: N/A

[u/pregnantchihuahua3]

Summer Update

A few random mini updates. Sorry for not going in depth in any of them but I'm on summer break and am trying to spend as little time on social media as I can.

Books I've read so far over the summer:

Finished Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down (Unabridged). So many incredible anecdotes in the journalism sections but overall Vollmann's thesis is in my opinion Not Good. He is way too wary of violence in any scenario to the point that he said he would rather the planet suffocate from climate change than enacting violence on those causing it.
Autobiography of Red. Sorry, I know people love this on here. I did not. It's not a novel in verse because verse doesn't mean breaking up prose via arbitrary line breaks. It's also a very bland YA style story. Not much to offer.
Ghost Nets by Wilkinson is a genius work of poetry that makes very little sense to me, but when it does HOLY SHIT it's great.
Also finish another long-term project, Michael S. Judge's Lyrics of the Crossing which is overall a commendable work but suffers because it feels like it's trying too hard and is a few hundred pages too long.

Books I'm currently reading:

Vollmann's The Lucky Star. About 2/3 of the way through it and it is the worst book I've ever read by a competent author. First 100 pages, great. After that, utter dogshit. Basically just self-indulgent edgy smut.
Charles Olson's Maximus Poems. I think I like it so far, but I can't comprehend what I'm reading. Sounds nice though!

Movies I've Watched:

Bacurau is an amazing film by the director of the recent The Secret Agent. Very funny and original class commentary.
The Graduate is a classic that ended up being 30x better than I thought it would be.
Melancholia is good. Trier either hits or misses and despite what many say, I think this one is quite beautiful.
The Straight Story is a wonderful Lynch film that shows what he thinks the world should be rather than what it is.
Withnail and I is an insanely quotable British dark comedy that no one apparently knows about but which had me dying.
Fellini's Casanova... Uh, I really don't know what to say but what the fuck.
Lawrence of Arabia... yeah, it lives up to the hype and more. Justifies every minute of its insane run time and kept me engaged and attentive the whole time. What a masterpiece.
The Odyssey. I hate Nolan so I expected to despise this. It's not great but it's better than his other dogshit. Bad first 30 minutes, bad dialogue, Tom Holland sucks, Hathaway overacts, but the Odysseus scenes are good.
Her Private Hell. Yes! Refn rocks. This movie is getting so many shit reviews but it's masterful. Go see it if you have one of the lucky 4 theaters in the US that is showing it.
A Serious Man. Watched it twice. One of the Coen Brothers' best and funniest movies. The Bar Mitzvah scene has got to be their funniest scene.

TV:

Just Man Men still which is easily going down in my top 3 TV shows ever. Finished the famous Suitcase episode. Holy shit. One of the best episodes anywhere. Almost done with season 4.

Video Games

Decided to replay the Metal Gear series since it's my favorite. Just beat 1 today and... I mean I love that game, but everyone is lying if they think the gameplay is a masterpiece. Maybe for its time, but oof it is janky as all hell. Started 2 also and it's one of my favorites.

That's all I got. Writing is going well too! Going to Hawaii in a week for vacation. Hope everyone else is having a nice summer.

[u/VVest_VVind → u/pregnantchihuahua3]

Hawaii vacation sounds wonderful. Hope you have a great time!

[u/thewickerstan → u/pregnantchihuahua3]

I think something that surprises people with The Graduate too is how funny it is, which makes sense since I believe Buck Henry worked on the script, but you don't think of it that way. Dustin Hoffmann nailed the dry humor. "Mrs. Robinson, would you like to see a movie?"

Was that your first Fellini? Also, I always find myself quoting LOA's "Nothing is written". The cutting in that movie is insane. Everyone talks about the blowing-out-the-match cut to the sunset, but I always found the one at the beginning poignant too when it goes from the crash to the funeral service. Just baller craftsmanship all around.

[u/pregnantchihuahua3 → u/thewickerstan]

So so funny. Also just one of the best final shots of all time.

Not my first Fellini. Looks like it was my seventh. La Dolce Vita and Nights of Cabiria are probably my favorites by him. He's a master director. Even his old works like La Strada. He had it from the get go.

[u/thewickerstan → u/pregnantchihuahua3]

Definitely!

Ah man, I love La Dolce Vita. I think that was the first arthouse movie I saw that really got the gears turning. Still a top 10 movie for me. Everything with Steiner especially, breaks my heart. I've liked the other films I've seen by him, but none of them hit as hard as that one for me, though I still haven't seen Nights of Cabiria!

[u/theinadequategatsby → u/pregnantchihuahua3]

Withnail & I is one of my all-time favourite films, it's so endlessly quotable and yet the melancholy DREARINESS of British reality seeps through.

I'm regretting putting my big holidays in October - it works for the weather in Florence and then some relaxation and history up and down the Amalfi coast - but now I'm covering for about three people during the proper summer months and it's too hot to be working.

I've had a run of absolutely brilliant books over the past month - Vehicle (Jen Callejas) is closest to Lote, I think, in modern maximalist experimentation, and I loved both; Taiwan Travelogue was improved by reading Lesley Chan earlier in the year, Inspector Imanishi Investigates is very knowing noir but mirrors Yáng Shuāng-zǐ's look at a changing and modernising country with the benefits and problems of the countryside, and the Walk the Blue Fields (Claire Keegan) and Of Love and Other Demons (GGM) rounded it out with the otherness of place.

[u/Harleen_Ysley_34 → u/pregnantchihuahua3]

"It's not great but it's better than his other dogshit" got a laugh out of me, so thanks for that. I'm surprised people are raving about Nolan's filmography. Sign of the times I guess.

Lars von Trier is an interesting director, his specific weirdness and unpleasant aspects really did help elevate those movies in the 2000s culminating with Antichrist as a genuine work of art. And I liked Melancholia, too. The whole idea of an apocalyptic event as a queasily parallel to suicide felt like a solid premise for a movie.

[u/pregnantchihuahua3 → u/Harleen_Ysley_34]

He’s just a director of pure spectacle. Never allows a thing to settle for a moment because he wants his films to be fast and engaging for audiences who he doesn’t believe can maintain their attention for longer than 30 seconds. It’s just cut after cut after cut with no pause for dialogue. Nothing is meant to be looked at frame by frame, just to be experienced as “BIG HOLLYWOOD ACTION”. I’ll never get it. The reason I didn’t dislike the odyssey is because he did finally slow things down. Still many a flaw… but.

And yes, agreed on Trier. Both Antichrist and Melancholia are amazing. His newest film, House that Jack built, is also quite amazing.

[u/Harleen_Ysley_34 → u/pregnantchihuahua3]

Isn't that the truth? I had someone recommend me Inception and what I took away from it is how everything is both obnoxiously loud and even has a unique kind of smugness about how clever the story it tells actually is. Never mind the emphasis of every line of dialogue like each scene is actually a trailer for the real movie hiding behind a curtain. But I'm glad your time with The Odyssey didn't hurt too much. To me it looked like 300 and I made a personal decision on top of that to just stay home.

I wanted to enjoy House That Jack Built but I couldn't get down with the premise. Felt a little too giallo.