Primer/ Gunner Palace

Reviewing 2 very different movies today...

1. is Primer ... This is one of the most interesting debuts I have ever seen ... It does not have the clearest narrative ... **** ... It is a movie about time travel, discovery and causality ...

Here is a short discussion ...

I really enjoy this movie ... yes its confusing, yes some of the sound and camerawork isn't perfect .. but its really interestign and involves engineers tinkering that find something they don't expect ...

It would be very interesting if they could go farther back then they thought they could ... Basically in my mind things got weird and when they tried to fix it things got weirder ...
.. i think seeing the subtitles helps too ...

I really enjoy this film and it was the second time I saw it ... ***1/2 ...

I would be very curious to see what else Shane Carruth does with more then $7,000 .....

Here is a plot explanation of the movie .. I will put the website in spoiler tags ...

http://www.francisshanahan.com/detail.aspx?cid=375

This movie is very interesting, very thought provoking, and intriguing ... the narrative is not completely clear but very very interesting .. .would love comments ...


The other film I am reviewing right now is TOTALLY different. Its Gunner Palace, a documentary about a unit that was stationed in Uday Hussein's old pleasure palace in a hostile neighborhood called Adamihya, which the US doesn't control well ... It has around 300 troops stationed and basically acting like cops trying to find insurgents in post-"war" Iraq.

This movie deals with the fact that most soldiers are very young and that in Iraq, the main armed conflict and taking of Baghdad is/was much, much easier then winning the peace. I do hope Iraq finds stability, but there were many errors made in Gulf War II... Chief among them was the immediate dissolution of the army and police and not protecting Baghdad's cultural treasures.

Its an interesting film, and i enjoyed it. There is one really interesting cat out of Colorado that plays a great guitar and some good freestyle rappers.

This movie took me a few tries to get into .... ***

that it for now.

E. Charles Quinn

Inside Deep Throat

***1/2

The version I rented was the "R" rated version from Blockbuster Online. This movie was released at NC-17.

First, I am happy to report the movie was 88 minutes long not the 60 minutes shown on the envelope and at Blockbuster Online.... I had a huge rant on SG about this being 30 minutes shorter in the edited version. I am very happy this is nearly the full film.

I was shocked to realize this movie grossed $600 million dollars. It also changed the way erotica/pornography was treated in this country. This battle of censorship is the main thrust of the picture.

Since the $25,000 budget of this movie was partnered with mafia money, the stars got almost no money ($1250 for Linda Lovelace and $250 for the male star) and the director got bought out early on. The mob got most of this money, and I think if it was going to be prosecuted it should have been under racketeering not obscenity.

Really well made documentary, excellent special features, all of the shorts are fun to watch, and the commentary seems very good although I have not finished it yet... The main commentary has lots of interview excerpts that didn't make it in the film.

I really do wish that "dirty" pictures and mainstream movies had merged more in the early/mid 70s ... Most of the erotica made today is not in the same class as a "Deep Throat" or a "Devil in Miss Jones 1/2" ... Devil and Miss Jones 2 being my favorite erotic film mainly for the comedy (****1/2) ...

A very good movie, very well directed about one of the biggest censorship battles in American history. I would love to say that censorship is dying in this country, but in the Bush adminstration there are new crackdowns.

America should never forget that the first amendment is the core of the nation.

E. Charles Quinn