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Recommendations!
Valrus:
Motherfucking Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. What an amazing book.
I also second the His Dark Materials trilogy.
Bunnyman:
--- Quote from: Duchess Tapioca ---Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
This one should not need explination. See it for Byron, it was dedicated to Byron. Also, the cast includes: Mel Gibson with a mullet, Tina Turner in chain mail, and a monkey. What more do you want? Camels? It is your lucky day, there are camels too.
--- End quote ---
Just saw it. I can vouch for its awesomeness up until around 47 minutes, at which point it turns into a post-nuke (I guess it's no longer world-wide-riot as the cause of the apocalypse?) version of Hook. Let it be known: Tina Turner makes a terrible Dustin Hoffman. And with such an awesome setup as two guys bouncing around on bungees trying to kill each other with hanging spears, why did they forget about it after one fight?
everyone must see Bonnie and Clyde. There's a reason it's considered an American classic. And, considering one of the leads is impotent, remarkably sexy.
ruyi:
(yay for serenity and la belle et la bete!)
osama
beautifully made movie. lots of images that will haunt you for days after.
basically it centers around this young girl in an afghanistan under the taliban's control. her family has no men in the household, and the women are not allowed to leave the household unescorted. they are forced to disguise the young osama as a boy, shaving her head and dressing her in boy's clothes, in order to allow her to find work.
i liked how this was simultaneously emotionally powerful, having an important message pertaining to the real world, and it was also had very beautiful/artistic images.
the cranes are flying
an old russian b&w classic.
in some way's it's pretty typical; a tale of a love story between a man and a woman, but then the man has to leave as a soldier.
the execution is great though. i would recommend that you see this with your lady or your man, except it's also kind of tragic, so it may not be a good hang-out-at-home-and-cuddle type movie. but personally i think this is so much better than all the romance movies out there today.
kurt vonnegut
any books by him are amazing. once you read him, all other novels will seem boring in comparison.
he's incredibly easy to understand and his books are fun. at the same time, they do make you think and they do cover deep issues. this guy is a genius.
if you'd like, you can start with breakfast of champions. it includes felt tip drawings on about every other page. includes drawings of an anus (two drawings, actually), panties, cows and beef...it's just a ridiculously awesome book.
carl rogers
...so i posted a thread on him but i suppose most of you may not have heard of him before. no matter, i have only first heard of him this year d: anyways he was one of the key figures of the humanist force in psychology. he made a lot of revolutions in therapy. i'm going to try to sum up the gist of his ideas -
YOU know best about yourself and what direction your life should go.
therapists (who are really just people) don't evaluate your behavior or tell you what you are doing is "wrong", or prescribe for you a new way you "ought" to behave...instead, they facilitate your own personal development so that you may be enabled to be the one who starts trusting your own feelings and making the right decisions and ultimately, fulfilling your potential.
left out some, but eh. anyways like vonnegut he's incredibly easy to read, and i think his ideas are incredibly important. his most famous work imo is "on becoming a person" (excerpt here) and i think every person should read it. seriously. it's a bit long-ish though, so if you want to get a feel for his ideas (as well as read on what may be a more interesting topic for you) you could get started with "on becoming partners: marriage and its alternatives". it's an easy, enjoyable, fun read. basically he just interviews ordinary people in relationships. some of the information is a bit dated - like his chapters on communes and predictions for the year...2000 i think - but nevertheless still fascinating. i learned so much from this book.
farewell my concubine
chinese film centering around a boy raised in the discipline of chinese opera. he was trained specifically in a female role, and he grows up a homosexual. love triangle involved. this is kind of a creepy movie, but also very tragic. like the other movies i recommended, this film is cool 'cause it gives you a nice little slice of the time period and culture and whatnot. also contains a really nice performance by the late leslie chung. and the incredibly hot gong li. (sorry. i have unconventional tastes, yes. i'm the kind of person who finds nancy kwan to be incredibly hot back in the day.)
s'bout all i can think of! anyone seen/read these before?
Kaytea:
Has to be Poseidon, if you're bored. It is the ripoff of Titanic that it looks, and they blatantly didn't research, or they would have known that waves out at sea ain't that shape, but it's still an ace movie, even with the annoying gratituous (sp?) leg/panties shots.
IntermittentEvil:
hmm...
Movies:
Four Rooms - A Tarantino-connected film about four different stories in four different hotel rooms, all connected somehow, and with a bellboy playing various roles for each room. It is funny and outrageous, very Tarantino, but the homages and the characters are what make the film.
Onibaba - Still don't know much about this historically, but it was an incredible film and one of the few to really disturb me at the end. Lots of extremes of human behavior push toward their clash in the finale.
Invitation to a Suicide - I shouldn't push a movie that I haven't seen, but I will because I've seen the trailer and heard the music. Also, it's one of the most brilliant plots I've ever seen in a movie. Boy gets in trouble with the mob. Boy's father is threatened if he doesn't pay mobster. Boy raises money by selling tickets to his own suicide. The whole neighborhood supports this venture. I will buy this as soon as it hits DVD. http://www.invitationtoasuicide.com/
Pi - A twisted film with a message that doesn't show up often enough, from the director of Requiem for a Dream. Also, I'm a nerd and I like the numerology and mathematics involved in the plot.
Books:
Jules Verne's books I've only recently come back to, but they are great adventure books (the first adventure books, arguably) and a lot of fun to read; don't let detailed sections bog you down though, which was my problem the first time through.
Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum - You could write an encyclopedia of the occult just trying to follow all of his references. Seriously. Because that's basically what the book is about anyway. But once I got past worrying over details, the plot and the imagery and all of his ideas and such really grabbed me, and they still haven't let go.
the Legend of Gilgamesh - (trans. Stephen Mitchell) - My favorite "epic poem" (technically not, for you classics majors), a recent reinterpretation of the poem takes the literal translation and turns it into the closest the English language could get to reproducing the feel of such a yarn in its original form, making actual translations feel clunky and uninspired (heh).
One last book- I read an essay by a fellow named Michel Houellebecq on his early experiences with H.P. Lovecraft (who I also recommend), and it is one oddly intriguing piece of work. This one you'll just have to read to see what I mean, even if you haven't read Lovecraft. If nothing else, it provides a study of an oft-ignored iconoclast through analysis of his work.
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