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Fan Base: Archived: Stand Your Ground (#6)
Member Since: 3/30/2009
Posts: 79,408
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that better not be pregnancy glow
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Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 32,106
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Originally posted by Duca
that better not be pregnancy glow
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Her fingers got her pregnant!
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Banned
Member Since: 6/25/2011
Posts: 37,192
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Has anyone watched The Following?
It's...interesting.
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Member Since: 11/20/2010
Posts: 29,258
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Originally posted by Nicole
The wait is not surprising. The fact that it actually played in a theatre (a major one at that) is what shocked me. Props to A24 (they also put out Spectacular now FYI).
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There's still no release for Germany in sight ugh
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Originally posted by rihannafan
I have no pb! Is it too explicit?
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No, not at all.
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Banned
Member Since: 11/24/2009
Posts: 61,404
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Poor Beyonce her safe brand of feminism!
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Jonathan Glazer’s new film Under the Skin is one of the most profoundly weird feminist statements you’ll ever see. In conventional summer-movie terms, this thing has almost nothing going for it: There’s almost no dialogue. The cast is largely unknown, and often amateur. Chunks of the movie were shot using the “disguised actor engages with unwitting civilians” method. The plot ranges from “obscure” to “impenetrable.” None of the characters has a name. We are asked to root for a protagonist who kills a baby. There’s a downer ending. Just about the only thing Under the Skin has in common with the current #1 movie at the box office—Captain America: The Winter Soldier—is the presence of Scarlett Johansson. And the only traditional selling point, when it comes to choosing the former over the latter, is that in this one, Scarlett Johansson gets naked.
Of course, the first time we see Scarlett naked, she’s stripping down the corpse of one of her victims, so that she can wear its clothes. Also, she’s doing so in a glowing, white, featureless void that may or may not be meant to represent an alien spacecraft. Also, and despite the plentiful presence of Full Frontal Scarlett, we actually get far more of nude men and their exposed penises—in terms of both quantity and screen time—than we ever do of naked breasts.
So, you know. It’s not a popcorn movie. But it is one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see in a theater: That impenetrable plot moves at a stately pace, guided by a camera that can find terror and beauty in the sight of trees blowing in the breeze, fog and sea-spray spiraling off the coast, or a floating corpse. It’s also got a plot that should please any given gender-studies major: It’s a movie about an alien (that would be Johansson) who learns to be a human woman, and profoundly regrets the lesson. And, before she’s fully internalized that role, she has a bad habit of seducing and destroying men.
It’s hard to summarize the plot of Under the Skin without either giving too much away or forcing a definite interpretation on what is purposefully oblique and ambiguous. But here’s one attempt: Scarlett lands on our planet, does the aforementioned corpse-stripping, and sets out in her van to harvest the men of Scotland. She goes about this process with the frank efficiency of a predator in the wild; she can mimic a human being just well enough to pull over her van, ask for directions, and assess and capture her prey. If they have friends or family nearby, she takes their directions and moves on; if they’re unattached, she offers them a ride and, eventually, sex in her apartment. (The “hidden camera” is used in these scenes, to capture the lascivious and/or baffled reactions of actual Scottish men trying to cope with the fact that they’ve been picked up on the street by a brunette, inexplicably British-sounding Scarlett Johansson.) Her “apartment,” as it turns out, is an infinite black void, which none of these men seem to notice or even really mind. Once there, she slowly walks away from them, they strip and follow her, and the floor turns into black goo and swallows them whole. What happens to the men afterward, I think, is something the viewer should be allowed to discover on his or her own.
Johansson, in these scenes, is the Anti-Feminine: fully in control, wholly unemotional, entirely disconnected from other human beings, and utterly terrifying. After one murder on an isolated beach, she leaves a victim’s baby to be drowned by the rising tide, not out of malice, but because she seemingly doesn’t understand what a baby is or why it matters. When she’s confronted with other women—a group of them hustle her into a club—she shows the same blank incomprehension. She only utilizes human facial expressions or language while she’s chatting up potential victims, and even there, she seems to be stuck using a few useful phrases—“do you have a girlfriend,” “you’re very handsome,” “do you think I’m pretty,” etc.—like a tourist who’s learned them from a guidebook.
It’s clear that the movie wants to say something about gender, even this early on. Just look at those seduction scenes: Johansson talks, the men answer her. Johansson leads, the men follow. The men strip—and are subjected to some very objectifying full-frontal shots—and Johansson keeps her clothes on.
But the real action of the movie, and the truly smart commentary, picks up where all the man-drowning leaves off. One of Johansson's potential victims, a disfigured man, sets something off in her—empathy, pity, or simply common feeling for someone who seems as isolated and ill-at-ease in his body as she is—and she lets him go. Enter Ominous Man With Motorcycle—her alien handler, as per the Internet—and his attempts to track her down. Scarlett abandons her apartment of doom and goes on the run, eventually shacking up with a relatively kindly gentleman. It’s at this point that she becomes an entirely different creature, less predatory Alien than stranded E.T. Her bafflement as she attempts to eat human food, or watch television, isn’t cute, precisely. She stays chilly and off-puttingly blank throughout. But it’s hard not to sympathize with her newfound powerlessness and her total incomprehension of the world around her. In this half of the movie, everything shifts, and reverses itself: Men talk, and Johansson stays quiet. Men lead, and Johansson follows them. Johansson gets an objectifying full-frontal shot, and the men keep their clothes on. And, yes, eventually, she learns that there is more than one way to be a predator, and more than one way to become prey.
There’s a lot to praise in Under the Skin: It is just unspeakably beautiful, and deeply scary, and it often manages to be both at the same time. It’s profoundly original and daring. It’s the rare sci-fi film about aliens that forsakes cool spacecraft and explosions, and gives us something that truly feels alien, wholly other than human and quite possibly beyond human understanding. And, most importantly, it manages to put us in the shoes of that Other: By giving us a movie that doesn’t work like any other movie, it forces us to see the world through the eyes of something that doesn’t think like humans think. That it actually manages to create sympathy for that creature, after we’ve seen it do several unspeakably gory and baby-endangering things, is nothing short of miraculous.
But, then: There’s another segment of the population that we’re taught to see as Other, to dis-identify with, and those people often do quite a lot of talking about how they feel they’ve been stuck on a planet that’s not made with them in mind. Under the Skin doesn’t just try to make us see the world through the eyes of a human-devouring, baby-drowning alien invader. It tries to make us understand what it feels like to be a girl.
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Member Since: 3/30/2009
Posts: 79,408
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Quote:
Originally posted by Jameson Teqkilla
Has anyone watched The Following?
It's...interesting.
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It's very good. You never know what's gonna happen next + everything moves so fast.
Season 2 has been pretty good so far.
I told Damien to watch the pilot the other day. 
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Member Since: 3/21/2012
Posts: 55,134
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Quote:
Originally posted by Jameson Teqkilla
Has anyone watched The Following?
It's...interesting.
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I have heard that
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Member Since: 9/1/2013
Posts: 15,765
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Even if Jessica dosen't deserve Justin, I'm here for him to have a kid
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Member Since: 3/30/2009
Posts: 79,408
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Quote:
Originally posted by Damien M
You can't rip Orphan Black for being unrealistic then praise Dollhouse, a show literally about braindead people with flashdisks as brains (no wonder it was cancelled).  |
!!!!
Orphan Black is much MUCH better. Dollhouse was panned for a reason!
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Member Since: 5/25/2010
Posts: 23,013
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Quote:
Originally posted by BobBertran1992
You can because, you know dearie, human beings aren't perfect and we tend to make the worst decisions ever
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Jesus.
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Originally posted by Braz
That's called Deus Ex Machina and Dollhouse is so much guiltier of that.
The scope of one show is much bigger than the other but that's also a flaw cause Fox executives asked for an overhaul for a second season that practically undid everything the strong end of season 1 accomplished. And even if Alan Tudyk was amazing as Alpha that character was the definition of show killer.
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You're reminding me of how amazing "Dollhouse" is. I'm definitely going to rewatch it after I finish "Orphan Black." "Dollhouse" just always had that epic feel to it. That one episode in season two that took place all in the mind was SO good (and scary).
...Vin
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Member Since: 3/30/2009
Posts: 79,408
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she always looks good without makeup 
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Member Since: 11/29/2010
Posts: 19,102
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Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 32,106
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Quote:
Originally posted by Vin
Jesus.
You're reminding me of how amazing "Dollhouse" is. I'm definitely going to rewatch it after I finish "Orphan Black." "Dollhouse" just always had that epic feel to it. That one episode in season two that took place all in the mind was SO good (and scary).
...Vin |
What?
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Member Since: 9/1/2012
Posts: 13,195
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Quote:
Originally posted by BobBertran1992
Nope, Deus Ex Machina is a big problem being solved by some sudden and unexpected event, it would be for example if the US administration forced every gay in the country to buy G.U.Y
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But my point still stands.
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 11,174
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Quote:
Originally posted by CloseMyEyes
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Who said that ? Azelia?
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 9/3/2012
Posts: 29,405
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Quote:
Originally posted by Duca
she always looks good without makeup
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I thought this was Evangeline Lily 
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 11,174
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Member Since: 5/24/2011
Posts: 29,233
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Quote:
Originally posted by Lipton
I really like Bed Peace.
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I knew you were a Jhene stan.
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Member Since: 9/1/2012
Posts: 13,195
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The Following is horrible. It's sadistic stupid and features the worst police ever and the most convoluted villain of all times.
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Member Since: 10/14/2011
Posts: 15,451
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1 Kiesza - Hideaway 1.0000
5 Meridian Dan - German Whip (feat. Big H & JME) 0.1890
8 Elyar Fox - A Billion Girls 0.1675
9 Shift K3Y - Touch (Radio Edit) 0.1671
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Our charts get weirder every week. I don't know any of these.
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