rajah524-3
Joined Jan 2008
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Reviews59
rajah524-3's rating
I usually abide by that Beverly Hills Player maxim, "Reward or ignore; never punish." But sometimes I just =have= to vomit. So shoot me.
Can we say "erratic?" Can we say "histrionic?" Dare we say "gay?"
And I'm not even talking about the movie yet. The movie, at least, actually has some moments, mostly when Cher is actually allowed to =be=... like Cher, as well as when Stanley Tucci is on screen.
But some of the reviews here (as is often the case with "diva flicks" like this) are what I'd call "hopefully projective" (of circumstances that don't actually exist), "delusionally enthusiastic," or maybe just confused and commenting on the wrong film.
Aguilera is still in Disneyland. She =is= a fine (if over-reaching, even over-killing) vocal technician and stage performer, but willful reality suspension will be required to buy her characterization. Which is probably the director's fault, as much as her acting coach's. (I hear Stella Adler barking, "Stop ACTING!")
The same director wrote the script (and evidently liked his own work), so I get why it's as cheesy as it is.
This movie actually =did= make "Showgirls" look intriguing by contrast. (I would never have watched this and did manage to get a few other things done while cutie pie had it on. Even she looked perplexed at the end.)
I do appreciate how valuable the premium channels are now. We get to see that we are not the only people who bat about .250 in life.
Can we say "erratic?" Can we say "histrionic?" Dare we say "gay?"
And I'm not even talking about the movie yet. The movie, at least, actually has some moments, mostly when Cher is actually allowed to =be=... like Cher, as well as when Stanley Tucci is on screen.
But some of the reviews here (as is often the case with "diva flicks" like this) are what I'd call "hopefully projective" (of circumstances that don't actually exist), "delusionally enthusiastic," or maybe just confused and commenting on the wrong film.
Aguilera is still in Disneyland. She =is= a fine (if over-reaching, even over-killing) vocal technician and stage performer, but willful reality suspension will be required to buy her characterization. Which is probably the director's fault, as much as her acting coach's. (I hear Stella Adler barking, "Stop ACTING!")
The same director wrote the script (and evidently liked his own work), so I get why it's as cheesy as it is.
This movie actually =did= make "Showgirls" look intriguing by contrast. (I would never have watched this and did manage to get a few other things done while cutie pie had it on. Even she looked perplexed at the end.)
I do appreciate how valuable the premium channels are now. We get to see that we are not the only people who bat about .250 in life.
If I was looking at "Shame" from across a river that separated it from my own Alfie-gone-Carnal-Knowledge life experience, I expect I'd be a lot more tossed, wrenched, wound, or enthused.
McQueen did his homework: He knows the cycle of abuse, and that's pretty much what we're watching here. He understands that the addict has to use again to manage his withdrawal symptoms. He understands that sex is no different from booze or coke or peanut butter pies in the eyes of a particular beholder. He even (appears to) understand that sex is really a matter of tolerance to several drugs (dopamine, testosterone, progesterone, adrenaline, oxytocin and more) for which no commerce is required.
And there's probably some emperor-missing-his-toga stuff going on here, along with an urge to warn the world about his own discoveries and anxieties thereabout. "If =I= have them, what about the rest of you?" And he's surely right; how many guys do you know who'd give up an arm or a leg (some time in the future) to knock 'em over like Brandon here?
But I'm not looking at this from across the river; I'm looking at it from 40 years of previously untreated experience. And =no= one I know would have figured me for a Michael Cain or a Jack Nicholson, save for a few of the more enlightened victims and the wise men and women mentioned further down. Watching Fassbinder was like looking at a security video of a hipper, 75th and 2nd Ave. rendition of my life until a few years ago.
And I'm pretty sure I'm far from being the only guy on this side of the stream. But because I am where I am about it now, I can look at "Shame" as what it is: A little too heavy-handed, duplicitously moralistic, wordlessly preachy, shot from inside the paradigm, and probably plenty useful for those who are still living inside, as well.
It looked to me like McQueen was about to get it here and there were it not for the common cult-ure's dichotomous, schizophrenogenic, crazy-making values about sex and romance, that Brandon (and all the rest of us) would have been unlikely to be so obsessed about the stuff. But there was so much money to be made from =both= of the polarities, wasn't there? A little Vegas here; a little Nashville there. Flip back and forth from the mid-300s to the 500s on DirecTV any evening. There's no crazy-making behavioral conditioning going on there. No. None at all.
I'd have been stuck in the muck of mystery for another 40 years if I hadn't run into Anne Wilson Schaef, Pia Mellody, Ed Khantsian, Phil Shaffer, Pat Carnes, Dennis Donovan and Alan Marlat. But meeting Jules Henry, Ron Laing, Greg Bateson, Don Jackson, et al well after they'd expired was the clincher. And here's the deal on "Shame" for the Cognoscenti reading Clinical Psychiatry News: It looks to me like McQueen knows the first group, but probably not the second.
Sex addiction is like all other addictions. It's a game, and it's a business. There are game pieces and game players. It produces immense profits for those who know the rules. (Start with "variable schedule of reinforcement," "polarizing reality," and the combined role of the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmentum.)
Get past all the purposely confusing, socializing, normalizing =ideas= about sex and romance (including the many in this film), and one can De-Shame sufficiently to get re-balanced and neither be fearful of, nor obsessed with, sex. (The problem is almost always in the words we take for reality. Hey! They're only words.) Most people, however, will only see this film from one side of the moral river or the other. The cult-ure is set up like that, but =real= -- rather than =reel= -- life is actually not.
McQueen did his homework: He knows the cycle of abuse, and that's pretty much what we're watching here. He understands that the addict has to use again to manage his withdrawal symptoms. He understands that sex is no different from booze or coke or peanut butter pies in the eyes of a particular beholder. He even (appears to) understand that sex is really a matter of tolerance to several drugs (dopamine, testosterone, progesterone, adrenaline, oxytocin and more) for which no commerce is required.
And there's probably some emperor-missing-his-toga stuff going on here, along with an urge to warn the world about his own discoveries and anxieties thereabout. "If =I= have them, what about the rest of you?" And he's surely right; how many guys do you know who'd give up an arm or a leg (some time in the future) to knock 'em over like Brandon here?
But I'm not looking at this from across the river; I'm looking at it from 40 years of previously untreated experience. And =no= one I know would have figured me for a Michael Cain or a Jack Nicholson, save for a few of the more enlightened victims and the wise men and women mentioned further down. Watching Fassbinder was like looking at a security video of a hipper, 75th and 2nd Ave. rendition of my life until a few years ago.
And I'm pretty sure I'm far from being the only guy on this side of the stream. But because I am where I am about it now, I can look at "Shame" as what it is: A little too heavy-handed, duplicitously moralistic, wordlessly preachy, shot from inside the paradigm, and probably plenty useful for those who are still living inside, as well.
It looked to me like McQueen was about to get it here and there were it not for the common cult-ure's dichotomous, schizophrenogenic, crazy-making values about sex and romance, that Brandon (and all the rest of us) would have been unlikely to be so obsessed about the stuff. But there was so much money to be made from =both= of the polarities, wasn't there? A little Vegas here; a little Nashville there. Flip back and forth from the mid-300s to the 500s on DirecTV any evening. There's no crazy-making behavioral conditioning going on there. No. None at all.
I'd have been stuck in the muck of mystery for another 40 years if I hadn't run into Anne Wilson Schaef, Pia Mellody, Ed Khantsian, Phil Shaffer, Pat Carnes, Dennis Donovan and Alan Marlat. But meeting Jules Henry, Ron Laing, Greg Bateson, Don Jackson, et al well after they'd expired was the clincher. And here's the deal on "Shame" for the Cognoscenti reading Clinical Psychiatry News: It looks to me like McQueen knows the first group, but probably not the second.
Sex addiction is like all other addictions. It's a game, and it's a business. There are game pieces and game players. It produces immense profits for those who know the rules. (Start with "variable schedule of reinforcement," "polarizing reality," and the combined role of the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmentum.)
Get past all the purposely confusing, socializing, normalizing =ideas= about sex and romance (including the many in this film), and one can De-Shame sufficiently to get re-balanced and neither be fearful of, nor obsessed with, sex. (The problem is almost always in the words we take for reality. Hey! They're only words.) Most people, however, will only see this film from one side of the moral river or the other. The cult-ure is set up like that, but =real= -- rather than =reel= -- life is actually not.