re: The Cabin in the Woods. TulaneLSU's 2011-12 movie review thread

Here's a really great review of The Vow

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was going to discuss the human tendency to focus on the negative instead of what is good as well as compare the rise and fall of Thatcher to that of King David and to the book of Judges

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Of course you were. I'm sure it would've been quite the homily.

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The movie itself was boring, even with Streep's best and stoic attempts to salvage something unsalvageable.

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Yeah Streep is Streep...but I've heard even she couldn't save this picture.

For the first time, I believe your review.

The Secret World of Arrietty In the online world, where many attempt to puff up their intellectual standing emblazoning their messages with witty, thoughtful quotes of giants of the past, often people they've never read themselves, I have noticed that many people on Facebook have keyed on a quote attributed to Plato. "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." Forget that Plato never said anything like it and that it was a 20th century Scottish minister who first used the phrase; it is still an important concept. Who does not, as the accused felon and recent cancer diagnose', Aaron Broussard, said, have a cross or two to bear? That religious phrase, by the way, has come to have much political currency in Louisiana, after John Maginnis' Cross to Bear, a fabulous look at the Edwin Edwards and David Duke gubernatorial election.

Whether we recognize it or not, who is not fighting a hard battle? Even in the best of times, something besets us and separates us from our Elysium. Many suffer their battles silently and we never know about them. Others are proud of their battles and will tell anyone within earshot. The Secret World is a delightful little tale about two adolescents on the brink of a new life learning that in our shared suffering, we can find common ground.

As most of you know, I am an avid reader of Simone Weil, and I have grown to love what she says about the purpose of suffering. Reading Weil led me to read Edith Stein, the nun who was born a Jew but became a Roman Catholic. She was nonetheless murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. One idea that is so beautiful in her writing is the idea that love is stronger than hate, and that through hate, we may come to know love better. She describes love as analogous to the resurrection and hate as analogous to the crucifixion, and in this juxtaposition, there is almost a necessity of hate before love. That is to say, that when we are surrounded by hate, that hate is not merely a random, ineffectual piece of chaos, but rather, it exists so to bring us a point of contact with the hated Christ who was nailed to a cross.

Those who share their sufferings with one another can often become the most intimate of friends because suffering reveals something more intimate than happiness and leisure ever will. The two protagonists in this film share their sufferings and begin to establish something that is eternal, something that will never die: their friendship. It is a friendship of tears and sacrifice. It is a friendship that involves one conversion. When we learn of the young lad's lachrymose condition in his Clint Eastwoodesque tone, we see two philosophies at play: first, his, which is a blend of Marcus Aurelius and Mahayana Buddhist thought. And second, a sort of chipper, pull-your-boots-up and do something about it American Republicangical toughness. Action rather than willful acceptance wins out in this clash -- the movie, after all, is intended for American audiences.

The ending of this beautifully painted and scored film is enough to move my fin de siecle emotions, nearly to the point of shared tears. Friendship is eternal, and children and adults alike would do well to remember this truth. When so few movies have new messages and messages that are creatively told, there is no excuse accepted in my book for you to see any other movie at the theater right now. 7/10

There was a thread a couple days ago about it. There are many Studio Ghibli fans here. The fact that the search sucks and you were busy trolling the O-T as charles357 or whatever is probably why you missed it.

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In the online world, where many attempt to puff up their intellectual standing emblazoning their messages with witty, thoughtful quotes of giants of the past, often people they've never read themselves,

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Thought this was funny

Pina "What are we longing for? Where does all this yearning come from?" Think seriously about this question for a moment before proceeding, both with this review and with your life. The 20th century gave rise to the obnoxious belief that even to ask such a question was a sacrificium intellectus, but we here know better. We know that to ask such a question is indeed the pinnacle of the function of nous.

For Kierkegaard, we are longing for "infinite happiness," a yearning that comes from the Infinite, as understood in Kantian terms rather than Thomistic. The yearning is what helps us ascend from the ethical realm to the religious realm. But the yearning is not what gets us over the hump. The yearning just reminds us how dissatisfied we are with both the aesthetic and ethical realms, and thus, pushes us to the precipice of faith.

When Pina Bausch asked this question to her students at the Tanztheater Wuppertal, I do not know if she had an answer in mind or if she asked to get her students to think or if she wanted her students to answer the question for her. After watching her students' mesmerizing and felicitious film lamentation and encomium to her I wonder if the answer to the first question is "to communicate." Communication appears to be at the heart of all of Pina's work. Her métier was movement, not words. Dance became a language of first resort under her. I confess that I do not appreciate interpretative dance as much as others and that I think it can be bedaubed with immaterial confusion and incoherence cloaked in golden raiments. But it's hard to deny that Pina was a cognoscente, able to penetrate the world, see what we lack in language, and develop a new way to communicate.

There are so many scenes in the movie that watching it can feel like a burden. I admit I fell asleep in a movie for only the second time in the last year. The other, if you've forgotten, was during the 0/10 Winnie the Pooh. I blame my somnolence on my ignorance for understanding better the movements of this dance, but I also blame the dancers, who shifted and gave far too much for most dance neophytes to swallow in one sitting. I will mention two scenes that I found most meaningful: the teacher who enters the picture and provides muscle memory, or is it spiritual memory?, to two lovers who only want to hold each other. That scene captures so much of what I see God being in the Old Testament. The cyclical movements of the lovers show Israel and the loving teacher quick to return to reprove and instruct show a God who finally leaves the stage once satisfied that his children have learned their roles. The other scene I found fascinating was the one with the woman tethered to an unseen anchor yearning for freedom, getting ever so close, but never completing her Sisyphean struggle. As with Pina's own philosophy, there is little speaking in this movie, so it likely will have a limited audience to which it appeals. However, if you can learn to speak a new language, learn to communicate without words, you may find this movie a highly rewarding two hours.

I will end by answering the question with which we began, using a quote from the most recently departed Roman bishop of the Church. “It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.” 7/10

Do you perform interpretative dance?

One cannot dance while drunk. One can decreate himself by becoming drunk, cowardly casting off his own persona. Without his own person at the fore, he puts on a mask of another, which enables him to humiliate himself by making ridiculous motions at brothels of despair where loud noise is played and other cowards are happy to partake in a shared communion of misanthropy.

I gather you were trying to be witty.