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by Mask » Fri May 17, 2013 8:13 pm
by justdrew » Fri Jun 07, 2013 9:41 pm
by The Consul » Fri Jun 14, 2013 4:38 pm
by justdrew » Fri Jun 14, 2013 8:08 pm
by justdrew » Fri Jun 14, 2013 8:20 pm
brekin » 14 Jun 2013 14:59 wrote:First I heard about this: In 1969 Jim Henson made the film "The Cube". I haven't been able to view it all the way through yet but crazy to compare and contrast this with the later "Cube" films. A nice personal take on Henson's "Cube" down below before the Youtube clip of the entire film. Geez, just reading the descriptions of the two different Cube films almost
30 years apart makes me want to reply "Yes, son, we are in the Cube now."
Jim Henson's 1969 The CubeThe Cube is an hour-long teleplay that aired on NBC's weekly anthology television show NBC Experiment in Television in 1969. The production was produced and directed by puppeteer and filmmaker Jim Henson, and was one of several experiments with the live-action film medium which he conducted in the 1960s, before focusing entirely on The Muppets and other puppet works. The screenplay was co-written by long-time Muppet writer Jerry Juhl. The teleplay only aired twice: first on February 23 of 1969, with a rerun in 1970.
Synopsis
An unnamed man, simply called "The Man" (Richard Schaal) is trapped in a cubical white room where anyone else can enter and leave, but which he himself apparently cannot leave. A stool is brought in covered in strawberry jam, the furniture changes throughout the play. The main character, is subjected to an increasingly puzzling and frustrating series of encounters, as a variety of people come through various hidden doors. But, as many remind him, he can only leave through his own door, so he must find it to leave. He received various contradictory information and his character is often mocked or made to appear foolish through trickery. A priest gives him an orb which is supposed to hold the meaning of life but only makes a grinding noise, the man smashed it to find inexplicably it is made of strawberry jam inside. Eventually a gun is left in the room and the man attempts to shoot himself and ink squirts onto his face. All the people he had encountered enter and laugh at him. Enraged he tells them he's had enough and that no matter what happens he knows he is real. The man then leaves the room and is escorted into an office where he laments on the revelation of his own realness. He accidentally cuts himself with a knife while demonstrating and is asked to taste his blood. He does so and reveals his blood is "strawberry jam", the office fades away to reveal the man is still trapped in the cube. After wandering around the room one last time, he sits down on the floor, apparently resigned to his fate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cube_%28film%29
Nice personal take on Henson's the cube here.1969. The same year Sesame Street premiered, Jim Henson released an experimental television production called ‘The Cube’. I was ten years old and I was TV baby. That is - I was part of the generation that welcomed TV as the new oracle. Cable did not exist, so all of the 'interesting' stuff was shown late at night before the channels went off the air - midnight movies and experimental programs. I saw 'The Cube' a couple of times as a kid. But I really don't remember when. For my entire life it seemed like a dream. It was never released on videotape and it was not cataloged as a movie. Jim Henson's career skyrocketed with the Muppets and 'The Cube' disappeared. Occasionally, I would look through video stores or ask other people about it, but no one knew anything. I was unaware of it, but it did surface briefly for cult movie showings during the 80's. Then came the internet and the search brought all of the TV babies together. It is as if we all saw the same UFO and now we are finally talking about it. I soon ran across a Yahoo group and found a copy of the film. It is now in the public domain. I watched it again for the first time in 35 years. Closure - it does exist after all. 'The Cube' is about the existential dilemma faced by a man who suddenly finds himself trapped inside an 8 foot by 8 foot cube. He can't get out, but apparently other people can come and go as they please through panels in the walls. At first the Man is curious, but slowly gets more and more frustrated and dejected. It is a production reminiscent of Huis Clos (No Exit) by Sartre; where physical boundaries affirm the reality of psychological isolation. It is a fascinating, dark film that is often offbeat and humorous. The 20 characters are all interesting parodies of common human stereotypes. 'The Cube' is the absence of context. A mime is very much the same - white faced and silent. Life in 'The Cube' mimics the emptiness of our relationships with others. And ultimately - the relationship with oneself. Are we really trapped?
At times it seems that Jim Henson has created an existential drama with people puppeting the roles instead of Muppets. On another layer, TV itself is 'The Cube'. It presents us with attention deficit clichés which offer no insights or answers - just entertainment. It teases us with familiarity and humor, but ultimately leaves us feeling empty and trapped. I showed my own children the film and they were pulled into it much like I was. It seems that there is a connection between childhood and the recognition of spatial boundaries concerning personality and our relationships with others. Apparently... the cube analogy is all too familiar. Adults tend to react to the dated nature of the film and dismiss it as just plain weird and offbeat. After watching the film, my son Jack and I got into an elevator and watched the doors close. He looked up at me and asked 'Are we inside The Cube now Dad?'. After watching the film a few times I decided to adapt the screenplay into a minimalist stage production. There is really no need for a physical cube. In fact - the dilemma is even more intense because of course - the cube does not exist as a physical reality. The audience does not need to be reminded of the conditions of confinement once they realize the Man's situation. This eases the production overhead as well and allows the audience to focus on the action and movement without being distracted by scene changes. I am also producing the play as a series of improv skits inviting audience participation. This is further explained in the script below. There was a recent stage production of The Cube performed in Germany called Kubus. Here is the trailer and some video stills.
http://www.flaniganswake.com/TheCube/
Vincenzo Natali's Cube 1997Cube is a 1997 Canadian science fiction psychological horror film, directed by Vincenzo Natali. The film was a successful product of the Canadian Film Centre's First Feature Project.[3]
The movie received a cult status for its surreal, Kafkaesque settings; it is set in identical cube-like rooms (hence the name) with each room being a different color (white, blue, green, amber and red), and no background story is revealed for the characters or the reason they were left in the Cube. The film also doesn't demonstrate any clear plot regarding the Cube's background, creation, purpose and its location. The timeframe of the story is also left unknown.
Plot
A man named Alderson (Julian Richings) awakens and finds himself in a cube-shaped room with a hatch in each wall and in the floor and ceiling. Opening some of the hatches, he finds passages to rooms that are identical except for their colors. He enters an orange room and, without warning, is sliced to pieces by a wire grill.
In another such room, five people - Quentin, Worth, Holloway, Rennes and Leaven - meet. None know where they are, how they got there, or why. Quentin informs them that some cubes contain traps (almost killed by one); assuming they are triggered by motion detectors, Rennes tests each by throwing his boot in first. Leaven notices numbers inscribed in the passageways between rooms. Quentin, a policeman, recognizes "the Wren" as an escape artist renowned for getting out of jails. After "booting" one room, Rennes enters but is sprayed by acid, which dissolves his face and kills him.
Quentin believes each person has a reason for being there. He is a police officer, Leaven is a mathematics student, Holloway a doctor and conspiracy theorist who thinks the "military industrial complex" is responsible for their predicament, while the surly Worth declines to talk about himself or his past actions. Leaven theorizes that any room marked with a prime number is a trap. They then find a mentally challenged man named Kazan, whom Holloway insists they bring along.
Quentin enters a supposedly safe room and is nearly killed by a razor-wire trap, disproving Leaven's theory. Tensions rise, and Quentin becomes irritated by Holloway's paranoia and liberalism, Kazan's childlike mentality, and Worth's reticence. He baits Worth into revealing himself. Worth admits that he knows about this place: he designed the Cube's outer shell. Worth insists that he knows nothing about the rest of the structure. He believes that it was ordered by a bureaucracy, its purpose lost over time; they are only imprisoned there because not using it would require the organization to admit that the Cube was a mistake, a waste of time and money. His knowledge of the outer shell's size allows Leaven to determine that there are 26 rooms to a side, 17,576 rooms in all. She guesses that the numbers indicate the Cartesian coordinates of the rooms. The group starts moving toward the nearest edge based on her theory.
Arriving near the edge, they find that each neighbouring room is trapped. Rather than backtrack, they decide to make their way silently through a blue colored room whose trap is activated by sound rather than by motion. Nearly everyone makes it through without incident, but Kazan makes a noise during Quentin's transit of the room and Quentin is almost impaled by spikes. Upon reaching safety, he threatens Kazan with violence.
They arrive at an edge room and find a wide, unlit gap between it and the outer shell. Holloway swings out to investigate, using a rope made from their clothes, but nearly falls when the Cube suddenly shakes. She climbs up and grabs Quentin's arm but he drops her to her death, telling the others that she slipped.
As they rest, Quentin tries to persuade Leaven to abandon the others with him. He makes a sexual advance but she rejects him with disgust, and he quickly becomes aggressive. When Worth intervenes, Quentin beats him and then throws him through the floor hatch. Worth laughs hysterically at what he finds — Rennes' corpse. The thought that they have been going around in circles is demoralizing, but then Worth realizes that they are not going in circles, the rooms are moving periodically.
Leaven deduces that traps are not tagged by prime numbers but by powers of prime numbers. Kazan is an autistic savant who can quickly do prime factorizations and thus identify the trapped rooms. Leaven determines that the numbers indicate the positions within the cube where each room rests between moves through the Cube. The room that connects to the "bridge" leading to the only door in the outer shell proves to be the one in which the group first woke up. The alignment they need will come in two moves.
Worth ambushes Quentin and leaves him behind during one move as they hurry to the cube adjoining the bridge. When they open the hatch, they are met by a bright white light (which is the only exit and entrance of the Cube). Worth decides to stay over Leaven's objections, saying there is nothing outside for him but "boundless human stupidity", but Leaven responds, "I can live with that." Bloodied Quentin appears and fatally stabs first Leaven, then Worth with a door handle, before going after Kazan. With the last of his strength, Worth grabs Quentin's leg, holding him long enough for Quentin to be ripped apart in the passageway as the bridge shifts. Worth then dies of his wounds, with a smile on his face. Kazan, now free, slowly walks into the bright light.
by The Consul » Fri Jun 14, 2013 8:45 pm
by jcivil » Fri Jun 14, 2013 9:59 pm
by conniption » Tue Jul 30, 2013 6:20 am
by brekin » Tue Jul 30, 2013 1:05 pm
In this chilling and inventive documentary, executive produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, the unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads are challenged to re-enact some of their many murders in the style of the American movies they love.
by 8bitagent » Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:44 pm
by MayDay » Wed Jul 31, 2013 3:33 pm
by justdrew » Thu Aug 01, 2013 12:17 am
by Nordic » Thu Aug 01, 2013 3:30 am
by JackRiddler » Tue Aug 06, 2013 4:59 am
Uploaded on Jul 22, 2009
Oral/aural sex -ed of the most sublime order regarding masturbation. Nathan Lane reads a letter by Dalton Trumbo to his son on the subject of masturbation. It's the brilliant, hilarious show stopper from TRUMBO (2007). If you like this, you'll LOVE the movie. Go buy/rent it!
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My Dear Son,
I am sending you two books I think appropriate for a young man spending 5/7ths of his time in the monkish precincts of John Jay Hall.
The first is Education of a Poker Player, by Herbert O. Yardley. Read it in secret; hide it, whenever you leave quarters, and youll be rewarded with many unfair, but legal, advantages over friend and enemy alike.
The second book I think you should share with your young companions. It is: Sex Without Guilt, by a man who will take his place in history as the greatest humanitarian since Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Ellis, PhD. This good man has written what might be called a manual for masturbators. The result (mailed in plane wrapper under separate cover) is one of those fortuitous events when the right man collides with the right idea at precisely the right time.
This whole new approach, this fresh wind blowing under the sheets, so to speak, this large hearted appeal for cheerful self pollution invokes, perhaps, a deeper response in my heart than in most for I sneaky, timorous, incontinent little beast with my pavian obsessions was never wholesomely at home with my penile problem, all because of that maggoty, mountainous pustule of needless guilt that throbbed like an abscess in my young boys heart. On warm summer nights while exuberant girl-hunting contemporaries scampered in and out of the brush under high, western stars, I, dedicated fool, lie swooning in my bed with no companion save the lewd and smirking demons of my bottomless guilt. Cowering there in seminal darkness, liquescent with self-loathing, attentive only to the stealthy rise and crafty ebbing of my dark scrotumnal blood, fearful as a lechwe, yet firmer of purpose than any rutting buffalo, I celebrated the rights of Shuas son with solemn resignation. Poor little chap on a summers night, morosely masturbating. Tut, tut, tut.
Even now, more than three decades later, even now when I forget a friends name, or mislay my spectacles, or pause in mid-sentence idiocy even now such lapses set a clammy chill upon my heart. Its then, while panic tightens my sagging throat, that I whisper to myself Its true after all: it does make you crazy! It does cause the brain to soften. Why, oh why did I like it so much?! Why didnt I stop while I was ahead of the game?! Ah well, little good to know it now. The harms done, the jigs up, youre thoroughly rattled, better youd been born with handless stumps.
I recall a certain chill, winter night on which my father took me to one of those Calvinist fertility rights disguised as a father and son banquet. Master of the revels was an acrid old goat named Horace T. McGuiness. He opened his discourse with a series of blasphemous demands that the Almighty agree with his ghastly notions, and then got down to the meat of the program, which, to no ones surprise, was girls. When you go out with a young lady, he slavered you go out with your own sister! It seemed plain to me that if one day I did burst upon the world as the hymeneal Genghis Khan of my dreams, I would be in for an extremely incestuous time of it. I can still hear that demented old reprobate howling his bill of particulars against poor Onan, the Bibles first recorded masturbator, shaking his fist at us and sweating like a diseased stoat. He wasted his seed! Ohhhh monstrous, shameful, nameless act! He spilled it right out onto the ground all of it. And this displeased the Lord, and the Lord slew him.
Yet, the more I think on it, the more positive I become that you will never truly be able to comprehend, in all its horror, that interminably sustained convulsion which was your fathers youth. Its only reasonable that this should be so, since you had so many advantages that were denied to me. To name but three of them: a private room, a masturbating father, and Albert Ellis, PhD.
I carried the ball for all of us, and carried it farther than anyone had a right to expect. I was the Prometheus of my secret tribe, a penile virtuoso, a gonadic prodigy, a spermatiphorous thunderbolt in fine, a masturbators masturbator.
Transcribed from Trumbo (2007, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0889671/)
by wintler2 » Fri Aug 16, 2013 8:18 am
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