Purpose?
Reminder: this is a blog with cultural bulimia -- a "compulsive consumption of images that only leaves us hungry for more".
It's a documentary about one old, very dirty joke, with comedians from the Stone Age (Phyllis Diller, Larry Storch) to the modern era (Jon Stewart, Bob Saget) telling it over and over while discussing its history and lore.Watch the trailer.
The joke has been told since vaudeville days, though hardly ever in public. It's like a comedians' trade secret.
I won't bore you with the joke's setup. The middle is too crude to repeat, and varies with the teller anyway, which is the joke's whole point. It's an improvised tale about a depraved family's unspeakable habits, piling up the sexual and scatological horrors until the tension relieving, two-word punch line ("The Aristocrats!"). At this point the comedian's audience will either double over in hilarity or stare at him blankly. [You'll Laugh. You'll Cry. You'll Look Puzzled.]
I’ve been kicked around since I was born.I heard Eldissa by accident while in New York last week. They "re-imagine the disco and soul classics as chilled Bossa Nova grooves, with a touch of Lounge music". Sounds cheesy but sounds so good...
And now it’s all right. it’s ok.
And you may look the other way.
We can try to understand
The new york times’ effect on man.
Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother,
You’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
As a physical realization of disaster, parts of the picture are stunning" but "as the scenes of destruction cease, one has time to ponder the oddity of a science-fiction movie without science, or even routine curiosity. Who are the aliens? What is their chemical makeup and how might they be vulnerable? What does the attack mean? Nobody raises any of these issues. The movie is given over to a family in flight, the primal survivalist drama. It's as if the aliens landed and everyone died so that Tom Cruise could grow up one more time.With zero expectations I went to see Mad Hot Ballroom and it blew me away. This small budget documentary adds up to something so beautiful and moving that you can't help but question how have we fallen under the dictatorship of big-budget 'events'. It pains me that more people will not see this movie.