It's lonely being a cannibal. Tough making friends.

[teenybuffalo]

I got to show Ravenous (1999) to kestrell and alexx_kay yesterday. It was delightful. Zelda, you were one hundred per cent correct about me and this movie. I keep coming back to it. It has all sorts of things I love, and the way it unites them is beautiful. For a movie about human flesh, this is damn good-looking. Blood pouring down window glass with the light

Comments

[sovay]

It's hard to listen to Ives talking about how cannibalism cured his suicidal depression, and see Hart looking happy and healthy and at peace with the world for the first time ever as he dishes up person soup, and restrain yourself from a brief fantasy of finding someone to eat who wouldn't be missed.

This movie sounds brilliant.

"There it is, the obligatory Robert Carlyle arse shot," he says over a screen image of his own pallid buttocks. "Why anybody would pay money to look at that I've no idea."

I really like Robert Carlyle as an actor; I am glad to know that as a person he appears to deserve it.

[teenybuffalo]

It is! Holy smokes, you haven't seen it?! It's so much what I think of as "S.'s sort of movie" that I was working under the assumption you were already well acquainted with it. I urge you to watch this film. Even better, let me screen it for you. (Not on the unpredictably broken projector, I hasten to add. That finally gave up the ghost. Just on a laptop screen.)

Robert Carlyle is great in this. He must have been in his forties at the time it was made, but he's imp-like and charming and has a twinkle in his eye, and is boyish to a degree that's hard to believe. He remains charming while doing some really yucky and un-sexy things. It's astonishing. I never appreciated why lots of people were into him until I watched this movie.

(He's almost enough to get me to try "Once Upon A Time." Not quite, but almost.)

[sovay]

Holy smokes, you haven't seen it?!

I have not! It got on my radar years ago when I discovered Guy Pearce, but I never followed up. I would very much enjoy seeing it with you.

(He's almost enough to get me to try "Once Upon A Time." Not quite, but almost.)

He is the only reason I have ever considered watching that show, ditto Stargate Universe, even if I haven't actually in either case. I saw him first in The Full Monty (1997) where he's a sweetly scruffy fast talker doing his best to be a good father while organizing the impromptu male strip show his big mouth got him and his friends into, i.e., basically adorable; only later did I realize this was rather like discovering Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity (1944).

[teenybuffalo]

OK, great--in a few weeks let's find a time that works for both of us. I'd love to know what you think of it.

Robert Carlyle was in The Full Monty? Yarp. I just haven't revisited that one in so long that I'd forgotten. It's certainly like the Edward G. Robinson comparison, or like knowing Peter Lorre from the "Spring Awakening" stage play. Lots of water and cultural context under the bridge since then.

[kestrell]

This is a cannibal movie for people like me who do not like cannibal movies.

Ives: It just occurred to me: Carlisle's boyish grin in this reminds me of Orson Welles's in "The Third Man"; even after you know what a terrible person he is, you're still charmed by his charm.

Hart: I should have known it would end in tears when he lovingly, though self-mockingly, described his library to Boyd.

My favorite line: "Run, chickens! Run away"

[teenybuffalo]

I really need to get the lead out and watch "The Third Man," don't I? It's just the same effect, yeah. You can't help smiling back and laughing at his jokes even though he still has the same cold, appraising eyes. People in the story want to be on his side, laughing when he laughs, because it's safer there, and he has the same effect on the audience

[sovay]

Jeffrey Jones, who looks like a big sad fox

He really does.

[teenybuffalo]

Yeah. You see how I got to care about this character. It's the whole "trying very hard to be a villain as a coping mechanism, and failing" thing. That and other little stuff that adds up.