heyhey

Images from two movies I saw yesterday.

1) Let the Right One In, theater
according to IMDB (is it true or not?): The title of the film (as well as the novel upon which it was based) refers to the Morrissey song "Let the Right One Slip In".





2) Brand Upon the Brain, DVD (thanks, Criterion!)
bizarre but thankfully engaging silent film with gleeful overnarration by Isabella Rosellini.





helpful comments from an IMDB poster:
Bizarre to such a degree that, in the demented world shown here, even the most impossible and incredible occurrences can be accepted and taken for granted as part of the plot -- after the first five minutes or so, with the atmosphere of mad-scientist exploitation schlock firmly established, the audience were apparently taking the film on its own terms, over-the-top intertitles, tendentious voice-over, feverish cutting and all.
...
The difference is that this picture engages the audience, creates meaningful characters and actually tells a coherent story with emotional content, wild and lurid or not. For all its parody and sheer weirdness it manages to succeed on a cinematic level rather than as an abstract avant-garde statement. And it manages to get us to swallow some quite incredible scenarios with a straight face.

the trailer.

from my daytum

I give you Exhibit A and Exhibit B (a.k.a. He's Not All There, is He?)


I hope posting the eyebrow situation outside of a cut doesn't count as a spoiler.

with a torn-out tongue

I know this is supposed to be done on Fridays, but I couldn't think of anything

from fannish5:
List your 5 favorite unrequited love stories.
I can only think of three right now.

The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Johnny Truant/"Thumper" the stripper in House of Leaves. I'm serious. It really forms into this really sweet thing.

Ichigo/Mr. Slick in Shimotsuma monogatari (Kamikaze Girls). Ichigo crying on the hill.

I think I could only think of book examples because, in TV shows, unrequited relationships have to be addressed sometime to satisfy viewers. In most movies, the lonely one with unrequited affection is usually the pathetic loser or comic relief sidekick whatever that most viewers don't remember (or at least isn't expected to remember as much as the main characters). But my memory is really, really fuzzy on this topic in fiction, so PLEASE list any or all of your favorite unrequited love stories in the comments, because I seriously think I've missed some really great ones.

I think I'll end this with an appropriate poem I found during my Clusty searches for the topic above.

I am a baby prematurely born
I am a genius dying before I'm thirty...
I am a mouth venting suffering but gagged by a wall-
Like hand
I am a severed nose still wanting to smell roses
I am an unrequited lover expressing love with a
torn-out tongue
I am a pair of hands with amputated fingers holding
my beloved....
It ends fatalistically:
I'm nothing, really
I'm just what I am.

- Liu Hongbin