Tag Archives: Pedro Almodóvar

Tie Me Up Tie Me Down + The Witch Who Came From the Sea

Tie Me Up Tie Me Down + The Witch Who Came From the Sea

Find two movies fucked up enough for each other. An interdisciplinary approach to subverting the issues of equality? Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! or Pedro Almodóvar’s ¡Átame! Representing the world as it is vs as we wish it was. Almodóvar’s observations on the nature of machismo. The storyteller’s lack of moral obligation in observing the world as it is. A mental patient representing himself as pretty normal but also sometimes having a fake mustache. A conversation about the importance of tone vs narrative via The Witch Who Came From the Sea. A cursed film. The very strange ways people come to the film and the eerie sense of mystery it ads. What (still) lurks on channel X? Lowercase double features have returned to the physical world! What difference does watching a beaten 35mm print actually make on the viewing experience?

Matador + The Apartment

Matador + The Apartment

Problematic sex gets more problematic. First up is Pedro Almodovar’s film Matador! An ex-bullfighter who gets turned on by killing, a lady lawyer with the same fetish and a young man driven insane by his religious upbringing – these are the main characters in this stylish black comedy about dark sides of human nature. Second up, Billy Wilder’s movie The Apartment. The heat is turned up on office politics when a man allows his boss to use his apartment for romantic encounters. Sex ones. An apartment to have sex in. Continue reading

Daisies + Bad Education

Daisies + Bad Education

Gender in the sixties and in the twenty-sixties. Daisies: not on the tv/film obscurity chart, but probably should be. Maybe it fell off the bottom. Black and white, definition, war and colors. Maybe-Robot girls do all the (bad?) things. Something about Daisies ladies and newspapers. Daisies provokes a very different kind of conversation about film, and Double Feature likes it. Bad Education requires taking notes, and then throwing them out and writing new notes. Fuck it, why not ditch these notes. Let’s Play Identity! Who does what as who and why are they doing that? Also, don’t forget, boohiss religion. Every time you squirm, known that’s because someone bumped the pretension knob. Really though, how about that Year 1? Continue reading

Wet Hot American Summer + What Have I Done to Deserve This

Wet Hot American Summer + What Have I Done to Deserve This

Notable casts in absurd comedies. Seriously though everyone, The Movie Crypt. The moments before the Netflix series Wet Hot American Summer: The First Day at Camp. Older playing younger. An unremarkable reception. Two crazy approaches to humor. The shotgun method. The machine gun method. Foreign film invasion! Imagine Wet Hot American Summer with Jason Voorhees. What Have I Done to Deserve This? The blood lizard. Putting up the wallpaper. Spanish film trends and their influence on American films. Taking guess on What Have I Done to Deserve This? Continue reading

The Skin I Live In + The Future

The Skin I Live In + The Future

Refuse to let go! Antonio Banderas leads The Skin I Live In. Fixate on items, ask questions. Discovery and tiger men. Attention to detail. What will happen vs what has happened. The iconography of Eyes Without a Face. Surgery, abduction, intrigue! Awakening to villainy. Pedro Almodovar. Miranda July’s The Future. Miranda July revisited! Books, articles and nut jobs. Two people on a couch typing into their notebooks. Relatable. No matter how widely accepted, anthropomorphizing animals is crazy. A tough pill to swallow. Why resist? The greatest human invention of recent note. Never ever unplug. Continue reading