SORRY TO BOTHER YOU (dir. Boots Riley, 2018)

"maybe the artist is being literal"

Tonally it's a mess isn't even criticism anymore -- it's description. The social protest scenes were written, not felt too. Armie Hammer was simultaneously perfectly cast and too on-the-nose, although his nose was perfect for the coke sequence (directed too broadly too; many of the performances could've benefited from hitting the obvious notes). Didn't care for the early office politics scenes: too familiar, especially the De Bauchery joke, har har.

But the connections between telemarketing and an plutocratic global Octopus made sense, and the fantasy stuff >>> realist scenes.

should have put "tonally it's a mess" in scare quotes

yknow I liked STBY but I'm mostly excited about the fact that it seems to have done well enough that Boots and maybe some other filmmakers of the far left will actually manage to get shit funded a little more often. ultimately I found the politics more resonant than the filmmaking, though it's not totally graceless or anything

i loved this

this was really good.

the equisapiens freaked me out

it needed more wildcard moves like the equisapiens, instead of the umpteenth parody of performance art.

the performance art is significant for the contrast with direct action also carried out by Detroit, and each one's potential for changing minds (in various directions)

the union/labor stuff was the most banal and should've been excised or tackled differently

How much time/money was spent on the Michel Dongry short? That was great.

A beautiful mess of a movie, probably my favorite thing I've seen this year. I even kind of like how unfocused and underdeveloped some of the ideas are

Anybody else catch “Both Sides Convenience Store”?

― devops mom (silby), Tuesday, July 17, 2018 9:17 AM (three months ago

That is actually the name of the store. It is called that because it has entrances on two streets. I bought cigarettes there on the reg at my old job

oh that's awesome, I assumed it was a Repo Man style world-building detail

Lol no. Inconveniently, it doesn't sell alcohol, but I think it's partly due to licensing issues and also the people who run it are Muslim

A while back (like 10-15 yrs ago iirc) there was a series of incidents where Black Muslims would go into Arab Muslim-owned convenience stores that sold liquor and like threaten them and criticize them for selling alcohol and poisoning the local black community

How much time/money was spent on the Michel Dongry short? That was great.

It was, but it completely horrified me! That part where the view pans up and you get a Simpsons-esque view of between the floors, and it just looks like flesh and bone...ugh. Such a little detail but important. The whole film seems to be about flesh in one way or another, pretty obvious given it’s about capitalism. The most popular tv show is about people being subjected to horrific physical abuse, the Worryfree system is buying whole families of people to farm out for labour, Detroit’s piece involves her exposing her body while the audience injure and stain it. The equisapiens are designed to improve on the inherent weakness of human flesh etc.

I’m going to feel really silly if I get this on Blu-ray and find out that’s not what it was meant to be at all!

Other things I liked:
- obvious but still funny shot of Lift with both republicans and democrats, just to rub it in
- the worryfree ads increase in scale and frequency to where they’re telling people to sign their whole families up. Maybe children are better at putting together high end electronics? It reminded me of that black mirror episode about the bike farms where families are separated.
- lift says worryfree isn’t slavery because there’s no coercion or violence but cassius’s uncle is considering signing up in desperation he’s going to be made homeless and his diabetes is playing up.
- the cribs parody with the dead-eyed workers was great and reminded me of those creepy fake amazon worker twitter accounts
- whole film looked amazing

Anyway this comes out this week in the UK I think?

Looks like it. Kermode loved it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQkloGDZjSY

Liked this a lot.

Kermode's review is so plodding, drawn-out, obvious and lifeless. Was he always like this?

Blindspotting is the fleshed out sociopolitical realism that STBY veers into in between the heavily stylized genre stuff

Really? Including the magical-realist ending of rapping at a killer cop while you're holding a gun on him?

Well not that part lol.

I was too charitable to Blindspotting, which no one will remember... it is milquetoast in comparison to STBY, which remains a mess, but a memorable one, and it hits highs that Blindspotting never does.

"I'm a Virgo" out on Prime today - looks weird!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSyKhFwEo7c

Watched the first episode. The attention to detail in the little burger boxes, Cootie's stitched-together clothes, the innocent, Ted-Theodore-Logan way he talks, it's all great. The only thing giving me pause is that I'm sure something terrible is going to happen and I don't want it to.

Weird, I was just watching Carmen Ejogo in True Detective (s3) so looked her up seeing her in this trailer - had no idea she was British and previously married to Tricky!