So far The Conversations has not discussed The Conversation.

May 14, 2010 7:25 AM

'The Conversations is a monthly feature in which Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard discuss a wide range of cinematic subjects: critical analyses of films, filmmaker overviews, and more. Readers should expect to encounter spoilers.' Including: Passion of the Christ vs. The Last Temptation of Christ, Mulholland Dr., Pixar, and others.
posted by shakespeherian (10 comments total)

The House Next Door has been one of the best film blogs out there for a long time IMHO. They just recently moved over to Slant. Good to see they're still doing good work.
posted by HumanComplex at 7:38 AM on May 14, 2010

The Passion/Last Temptation conversation is great reading. Thanks for posting this.
posted by Shepherd at 8:32 AM on May 14, 2010

This is pretty darn good.
posted by grubi at 8:32 AM on May 14, 2010

Although:

There's a quick scene early on where WALL-E notices that his treads are getting worn. He stops by a fallen robot and then there's a jump cut to his newly replaced treads motoring along. It instantly reminded me of a ubiquitous scene that appears in many war movies or films about poverty, where a downtrodden man finds a corpse and takes the opportunity to strip off its boots, replacing his own with somewhat nicer ones. That's basically what WALL-E does here, though it happens so fast and is glossed over so quickly that it's easy to miss.

Really? Is that type of scene "ubiquitous"? Because I can't think of two examples of it beyond WALL-E. Sometimes film people get caught up in being a film person, failing to realize we didn't all watch 200 French films about suffering in World War II.

Or maybe he isn't using 'ubiquitous' correctly, I dunno.
posted by grubi at 8:44 AM on May 14, 2010

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who feels this way:

Finding Nemo, a picture so simplemindedly sweet that it's only as interesting as its visuals and thus is often boring

(Also: Man, this Pixar article is long!)
posted by StarmanDXE at 10:48 AM on May 14, 2010

SPOILER: They're all really long.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:02 AM on May 14, 2010

Joy! Discussion of Mulholland Drive that begins with David Foster Wallace musings on David Lynch. My culture receptors are overloading with goodness.
posted by Babblesort at 3:30 PM on May 14, 2010

oh man, they love Mulholland Drive. Am I the only Lynch fan in the world who thought he was treading water on that thing? Really, every time I see someone talk about experiencing "a lynch film" when talking about mulholland drive, I think "so it's like blue velvet or lost highway, except not as good."
posted by shmegegge at 7:02 PM on May 14, 2010

These are great, thanks for bringing them to my attention. I like the shoutouts to Henson in the Pixar one.
posted by marble at 7:36 PM on May 14, 2010

I've been waiting to read something contrasting the Passion with Last Temptation and this conversation did the trick. Thanks.
posted by Jezebella at 8:22 PM on May 15, 2010