Since there's already a /leftytv/ thread, let's have a /leftykino/ thread too.
What do you guys think of John Carpenter?
Artistically he's a great filmmaker, one of my favorites, if not my absolute favorite.
Politically I think some of his movies are really interesting and it's refreshing to see American movies being anti establishment and left-leaning.
Also, what are some good lefty movies or directors you'd recommend?
I love several of his movies but not for political reasons. If Holla Forums was right and TL was about jews I'd like it anyway.
Daily reminder /ourguy/ pissed off the alt right last year
I love the architecture and atmosphere of his films. Gritty portrayals of run down urban areas will always feel more real than sleek curated cityscapes viewed from a helicopter.
I love that man
That Ben guy won the twitter argument by virtue of the fact that every retard responding to him has no idea how to respond to him.
The Thing is my favorite movie. I like Garland's Ex Machina and Gilliam's Brazil, too. THX-1138 is an interesting watch.
The Thing is absolutely amazing!
I really need to see Brazil.
I love cyberpunk and dystopian movies in general.
Will also check out Ex Machina and THX-1138.
I wonder how those alt right idiots manage to miss the point so badly? He was using a traditional method of indirectly conveying a message, much like H. G. Welles criticized British imperialism in the War of the Worlds by subjugating the heart of the mighty British Empire to Martian invasion with the end goal of colonization, and indirectly asked "How do you like being on the receiving end for once?"
In They Live the billboards and commercials carry a hidden subliminal message which can only be seen by wearing special glasses. The purpose is to keep the populace docile and predictable, to keep them consuming and reproducing while unknowingly acting against their own good and for the benefit of the hidden few. These hidden messages behind the ads and billboards do not however differ much from the consumerist spirit which's ingrained in the plain normal ads to begin with. The alien infiltration and manipulation of our cultural and spiritual landscape is completely irrelevant, it's existence or nonexistence changes nothing. The commercials still tell the same tale, with or without subliminal signals. No manipulation required.
In this light it is laughably easy to see that the great alien conspiracy is merely a framing device, much like in the War of the Worlds, to allow the fundamental message to seep past our knee-jerk dismissive reactions towards open and harsh criticism. Criticism, that's in this case directed towards capitalism, market psychology, and the standing cultural hegemony. It places the viewer in front of an obvious, yet ironically hidden and indirect question: "If you think alien subliminal messages and manipulation is a bad thing, you're rooting for the hero after all, why do you not hate capitalism? What's the difference?"
Have you not noticed neo-nazis conflate jew with socioeconomically dominant faction in the same manner that "intersectional feminists" conflate socioeconomically dominant faction with straight cis white male?
A really good little known documentary I've seen is East Side Story. It's about musical films in East Germany and the Eastern Bloc and covers musicians like Frank Schobel. It's pretty good and is on YouTube in English. I recommend it.
youtube.com
Well, yes. That's sort of my point. It doesn't matter who pulls the strings, the strings are still there to begin with.
Carpenter makes cult movies, not good movies.
And /leftykino/ is stupid, you can read every movie ever made from an anti capitalist stand point. Even movies that are made by anti communist such as pic related.
GitS movies, Jin-Roh and Patlabor 2 are a critical theorist's wet dream
Are you trying to compare him to someone like John Ford or Andrei Tarkovski? Because as far as suspense and horror goes, he's one of the best.
He makes really quotable "cool" movies and as far as mainstream american horro movies he's good, that said I think he's contributions to the media are overrated.
His technical department is obviously top notch, but the guy himself is kind of an overplayed meme.
And no, I'm not comparing him to john ford or Tarkovsky, I see nothing bad in doing more accessible movies or more mainstream and I'm not snobbish, It's just that his movies imho are more cult movies and t shirt movies than actually good movies.
He's awesome at doing music tho
I don't really know man, Halloween and The Thing are timeless classics, which revolutionized the Genre of horror in multiple ways.
And let's not forget that In The Mouth Of Madness is one of the best horror movies ever made.
Especially if you're into Lovecraftian horror.
Too bad Lovecraft as a person makes it really really hard to enjoy Lovecraft's works, honestly.
Reminder that even Zizek loves Carpenter's movies.
Zizek said he hate scorsese movies which is the worst opinion you can have on anything ever.
Zizek is not a cinephile
Zizek is a great man
I think The Thing is one of those movies that's just "perfect".
Agreed.
I love Kurt Russell, too bad he's annoyingly libertarian…
i recommend the qatsi-trilogy by godfrey reggio. it's an experimental film and actually a docu, but you can still watch it in a cinema. music by philip glass.
yes
oh hell no
the first one is the best one
Fuck no.
Do you mean best?
Ehhh I love Scorsese but he's almost as hit or miss as Kevin Smith tbh.
Ok no, not that bad
What are you two motherfuckers talking about?
How in the hell is scorsese a bad director? This is a Holla Forums tier nuclear take
So are you faggots just going to conveniently ignore that the villain from Escape from LA was a literal /yourguy/ with an ucanny resemblance to Che?
If anything, Carpenter's most likely a lolbertarian.
I think most people are trying to forgot the whole movie tbh
Don't get me wrong, I love Scorsese, I'd never say he's a bad director but he made some horrible movies.
Then again so did Carpenter
They Live is basically what would happen if Adorno wrote a movie tbh. If the alt right actually knew what the Frankfurt school was all about instead of just believing memes about them then they might pick up on it.
To be fair Frank Capra also made “The Battle of Russia” which is probably the ☭TANKIE☭st movie ever made.
Nah it can't beat Fall of Berlin.
It’s at the very least the most ☭TANKIE☭ movie made outside of the eastern bloc.
What about the North Star?
How intelligent do you have to be, to be a cinephile?
It's a wonderful life is anti capitalistic. The House Un-American Activities Committee tied to ban it.
There's no such movie
I've just put the Willis remake of Death Wish on. Is a mix of direct action and violent revenge right wing, as the liberal film reviewers insist?
The original was extremely right wing.
There's an Alex Jones cameo by the sound of things.
The Thing is one of my favorite movies ever, and Annihilation looks similar, so I hope it's also good. Very few films nail human interaction like The Thing did.
Fuck y'all. Escape from LA was great. You just don't know how to have fun. Che-style revolution would mean dick in that situation. Snake had the right idea in the end. Also, the fucking balls on Carpenter to portray a black trans woman as hot back in the 90s.
The ending of Escape from LA was AnPrim as fuck
Not for me tbh
Like Lovecraft was clearly a very emotionally disturbed person with an neurotic fear of the world outside his town. His racism and reactionary tendencies to me more speak to his extreme sense of weakness and frailty. I think it's part of what makes his work so good. Who better to make the universe disturbing and scary than a man perpetually in fear of the world and it's changes?
sure thing brainlet the anti-communist film that was almost banned for being too anti capitalist
I don't understand the left's infatuation with They Live. The film basically explains away late capitalism and its associated cultural hegemony with an inept metaphor in the form of an alien ploy to enslave the human race. It's typical "if only they weren't there, we could have nice things" tripe, and it's honestly not surprising that Holla Forumstards latched onto it. It's very easy to replace the alien figures with the malevolent cabal of your fancy: Jews, Illuminatis, Freemasons, Globalists, Papists, whatever. That Carpenter himself claims "it's about yuppies" doesn't change anything about the mediocrity of the worldview he centered the film around.
Carpenter did make terrific music, though.
Name/link to the movie?
American censors during the Cold War were complete lunatics. They would suspect anything of communism if it contained mere mentions of equality, fairness or similar concepts — it didn't need to be actually radical. Anything that wasn't essentially a glorified ad camping for American business interests was considered potentially subversive by zealous blacklisters. Reminder that Capra's main motivation for making this film was "to combat a modern trend toward atheism" (his words).
There is literally no mention of anyone beside carpenter here man.
He's talking about La Chinoise.
La Chinoise. Actually just watched it for the first time a few weeks ago. It's french new wave so its not a conventional film but if you are a leftist you can definitely appreciate it on some level i think. Here's a torrent link if anyone's interested:
thepiratebay.org
Lots of french new wave films incorporated marxist concepts into them considering it was sort of en vogue at the time. IMO not a tonne of great leftist films in the mainstream.. i am not familiar enough with deep cut indie selections but there is definitely lots of great non-mainstream leftist films if you can dig. i am sure someone will have a few good lists to offer. Here's two lefty film lists i have saved.