#harry dean staton

[superretroworld]

Christine - O Carro Assassino (CHRISTINE, 1983)

Um jovem incel bulinado com frequência acaba descolando um miterioso veículo amaldiçoado com um crush pelo proprietário e promove uma matança desenfreada contra todos que ameaçam sua caranga!

[transmascreplica]

i can fuck with how harry dean staton was old his whole life

[slowtides]

country music and folk/rock/blues that feels like country or is adjacent to country. All worth listening to.

Johnny Cash. John Denver. The Chicks. Brandi Carlile. The Highwomen. Jim Croce. Gillian Welch. Bonnie Raitt. Mary Chapin Carpenter. The Avett Brothers. James Taylor. Joan Armatrading. Tracy Chapman. Judy Blank. Lori McKenna. Emmylou Harris. Dolly Parton. Allison Krauss. The Indigo Girls. Eva Cassidy. Lizzy LeBleu. Neil Halstead. Alexi Murdoch. Mick McAuley. The Soggy Bottom Boys. Marty Robbins. Jimmy Dean. Steve Earle. Darrell Scott. Peter Paul and Mary. Dave Van Ronk. Joan Baez. Carolina Chocolate Drops. Karen Dalton. Sara Watkins. Roberta Flack. Mason Jennings. Patti Griffin. Amos Lee. Reba McEntire. Odetta. Kaia Kater. Elizabeth Cotten. Etta Baker. Candi Staton. Rhiannon Giddens. Yola. Amythyst Kiah.

[chillionairepofficial]

I can’t explain exactly why I love David Lynch so much but it starts with Twin Peaks and has something about Harry Dean Staton n Laura Dern and Angelo Badalamenti and I would probably conclude w a long speech on Eraserhead being arguably the greatest film of all time….

[mannytoodope]

[shade-without-color]

Harry Dean Staton FC Challenge-Quoxitic

Note: Before I finished tackling with the western prompt,I actually forget I did a Harry Dean Staton FC tribute in his passing. This is called a magical realism western based on my home,and I was influenced by his role in Paris Texas by Wim Wenders (Remind me to watch that again)

Him

God exists in Victoria,for she watched the land,cradling it as her own. I am just a watcher of a strange land. Faces all powdered with spices and minerals. Languages all bleed back and forth in the ears. The ship sailed by and I am the one to alight many faces. They do not know my name nor my religion. I am just him. Sir. Master. Lord. The emperor of my castle and this household.

They descend upon that chest filled with people. It was that treasure. I came back to embrace the humidity as my long lost sister. She waited for  For she stood by along with the censuses which I have to clear. The names beyond my English tongue. And there I glanced upon a woman,she seems to stare my own gods in the eye as she looked after my children who called her their ah man,serving every whim and care in that lustrous pearl where we came from. She did not speak the annotations of what is contradicted in that strange country but never less she is brave. Defying the Christian laws of submission,as she took one of my children to the winding streets of Chinatown to hold a candy of strange nature. But what I seen in her is the strength of her ancestors crawling under her skin. She clothed with their blood and their might.

Somehow the sky faded alongside with the rain cooling the sweltering house. She did not speak my tongue.

But there is something which I will never slip my tongue into.

[kinodiario]

Lucky - John Carroll Lynch [2017] USA

[criterioncollectionashaiku]

Criterion Collection as Haiku: Paris, Texas

I’ve seen over 250 movies in the Criterion Collection, and one of my all-time favorites has consistently been Wim Wenders’ 1984 film, Paris, Texas. The movie has popped up twice this week in very unexpected ways: once last night at a dinner with friends, and also on Reddit’s Criterion page, where someone linked to an essay by Nicky Smith called “The Emotional Terrorism of Paris, Texas.” Smith HATES Paris, Texas, and I’ll explain why shortly. Her essay has definitely changed the way I’ve thought about the world within the movie, but I’m here today to provide a different read — one that explains why I’ve loved it all these years.

Needless to say, major spoilers ahead. If you’ve never seen Paris, Texas and would like to view it tabula rasa, then stop reading and come back after you’ve had a chance to watch and digest it.

First, let’s start with a quick plot summary: The movie opens with Travis (played by Harry Dean Stanton) walking through a desert. He’s dressed in a dusty suit, a red cap, and an unkempt beard. We come to learn that Travis has been missing for four years. No one has heard from or seen him until, one day, his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), gets a call that Travis is at a doctor’s office in a remote part of Texas. Walt and his wife Anne (Aurore Clément) live in California, but upon hearing the news of his brother, Walt immediately drives to Texas. By the time he arrives, Travis has left the medical office and is roaming the desert once again. Walt searches aimlessly for Travis and eventually finds his brother.

Walt is full of questions, but Travis remains mostly silent. The two eventually make it back to Los Angeles, where Travis is reunited with his now seven-year-old son, Hunter (Hunter Carson), who for the past four years was raised by Walt and Anne. Hunter’s mom/Travis’ ex, Jane (Nastassja Kinski), left Hunter in Walt and Anne’s custody shortly after Travis left, and she’s had limited communication with Anne since then.

The first half of the movie is about Travis’ return to humanity — learning to reconnect with his son and brother and sister-in-law. He slowly becomes more communicative, although he’s largely silent on what happened between him and Jane.

The second half of the movie begins when Anne tells Travis that she thinks she knows where Jane is. For a year now, Jane has been making monthly deposits in a bank account under Hunter’s name that she asked Anne to open for her. These deposits always happen on the 5th of the month, and they’re always at a bank in Houston. Travis asks what day it is, and Anne says it’s the 1st of November.

Travis is determined to find Jane. When he tells Hunter this, Hunter says he wants to come along, too. Even though Travis knows Walt and Anne wouldn’t approve, he picks Hunter up from school and the two drive to Houston to find Jane.

They spot her at the bank Anne mentioned and follow her to a peep show club. Travis leaves Hunter in the car, then goes into the club to confirm that Jane does, indeed, work there. The next day he leaves Hunter in a hotel room and goes to the club for the climactic scene between Travis and Jane. Because it’s a peep show, the glass in the room is one-way: Travis, as the customer, can see Jane, but Jane can’t see Travis. All communications is done through a telephone on Travis’ side of the mirror and an intercom on Jane’s side. Travis tells a story in the third-person that’s actually their story: a story of a man and a woman in love, but the guy gets jealous and possessive. One day the woman says she’s pregnant, and things are okay for a while, but then once the baby is born the mother has postpartum depression, and the two start fighting more and more. The guy starts drinking and becoming abusive; the breaking point is one night when he catches the woman trying to escape, and he ties her to the stove. He goes back to sleep and wakes up to their trailer engulfed in flames, the woman and the son gone.

At this point, the conversation flips. Travis shines the light in his face so that Jane can see him, but he can’t see her. She has a monologue about how she couldn’t care for Hunter by herself, that she had an emptiness inside her. And even though she loved Hunter, it hurt to talk to Anne about the boy, so Jane stopped calling. She also played out conversations in her mind between herself and Travis, all the things she’d say, but since Travis disappeared she eventually moved on. Travis tells Jane where Hunter is, and the movie ends with Jane and Hunter embracing while Travis watches them from the top of a parking garage across the street before he drives off into the night.

Whew. Okay, so that summary was a little bit longer than I expected. But I wanted to lay out some of the key points that I’ll get to in a bit. Before that, let me summarize Nicky Smith’s argument about why she hates Paris, Texas. Her critique is with the second half of the movie, when Travis kidnaps Hunter to go to Texas. The crux of the matter is that we don’t ever see Walt and Anne again, and thus we don’t witness the deeply hurtful emotional turmoil they’re going through. Moreover, the climactic scene between Travis and Jane, Smith argues, is problematic. “What’s criminal and irresponsible,” she writes, “is shown as heart-warming and fun.” She views Travis’ monologue as valorization of his actions, completely whitewashing his atrocious behavior.

I have a very different read on these points. Because for me, what I love about Paris, Texas, is the structural reversal of traditional story arcs. This is not a redemption story. We don’t start with a character we dislike whom we grow to like (or at least empathize with). The example I’m thinking of here is Citizen Kane, a movie I absolutely hated when I saw it in high school. I couldn’t get over how much of an asshole Orson Welles’ character, Charles Foster Kane, was. But I rewatched it maybe five or six years ago and had a slightly different take. I still think Kane is a piece of shit, yet isn’t the whole “twist” that Rosebud is his childhood sled supposed to be humanizing? It’s an element to make him appear more gentle, to get us to feel for this horribly despicable character.

Paris, Texas does the opposite. Here, we start with an inherently relatable character. Casting Harry Dean Stanton as Travis was a genius move, because Staton’s face — especially when rugged and sunburned — is one that conveys sadness. He seems so gentle and quiet, so hurt and broken that we, as the audience, are drawn to him. The film’s grammar tells us that Travis is our protagonist, and by virtue of being the protagonist we give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s a Good Guy.

But this isn’t true at all — Travis is horrible. He’s abusive and emotionally manipulative, as we learn in the scene between him and Jane. I don’t view Travis’ monologue as in any way valorizing his actions or whitewashing over them. Instead, this is a deeply affecting moment of reckoning — not of Jane to Travis (who has had plenty of time to do so already), but of the viewer to Travis. We have to come to terms that this person we’ve followed for the past two hours was (is?) a monster. This isn’t redemption because the movie never full exonerates Travis. I had to put the “is?” in parentheses a sentence ago because I’m not sure myself how much Travis has changed. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he hasn’t fully earned it.

Take Smith’s example of kidnapping. That is, indeed, a supremely fucked up thing Travis does. I’m not going to try to excuse that behavior, but I do think Travis’ actions aren’t quite as nefarious as Smith depicts. In the scene when Travis and Hunter are driving after Hunter cuts out of school early, Hunter says he wants to come along to find Jane. Travis responds, “What about Walt and Anne?” because he’s aware of how this is going to affect them.

A few hours later, when they’ve reached San Bernardino, Travis has Hunter call Walt and Anne from a payphone. And here’s where we DO see Walt and Anne’s emotional turmoil. Walt is borderline angry at Hunter for not being home yet, and once they find out Travis is taking Hunter to Texas, Anne sobs. This is the last time we see them in the movie, and I argue that it’s the perfect way to hint at their devastation without turning it into a melodrama. Immediately after the call, Travis reiterates that Hunter can go home any time he wants — just say the word, and they’ll turn around.

The subsequent scenes of Travis and Hunter making their way to Texas aren’t some feel-good buddy road movie — at least not in my opinion. Most of their travel is in darkness, notably how they have to sleep in a laundromat because Travis can’t afford (or doesn’t choose to make?) a hotel reservation. This is foreshadowing of Travis’ more reckless side, the part of him we’ll soon learn when he talks with Jane.

Also, returning to Anne and Walt for a second: the fact that the road trip sequence follows the call from the payphone highlights their absence rather than disregards it, at least to me. The way a musical motif can establish a mood for a scene, Walt and Anne’s distraught conversation hangs over the subsequent scenes like an air of discord.

As I said before, one of my favorite parts of Paris, Texas is the structural reversals. I’ve already mentioned Travis’ arc from sympathetic to unsympathetic, but I’d like to point out a couple more. First, Jane. Our view of her changes as the movie progresses, one that’s an inverse of Travis’: I think the movie tries to get you to dislike her from the beginning, only to side with her in the end. Although both Travis and Jane are absent parents, I feel like there’s more tacit blame placed on Jane. One example is during a scene when Walt projects home movies onto a screen. Here we see Travis and Jane and Hunter on a trip to the beach with Anne and Walter. Everyone appears happy, the way we’re told to smile for photographs. Of course, knowing what we know of Travis by the end of the film, this is more Jane pretending that everything is calm and good. However, upon a first viewing, when seen through Travis’ eyes, here we see a woman who has left her family and continues to be missing. How could she be so cold-hearted???

But of course she’s not cold-hearted. She’s anything but. Jane cares so deeply for Hunter that it hurts her too much to hear about his growth and development during those conversations with Anne on the phone. She’s flawed, too, of course, which is what I love about this movie — no one is perfect. Everyone is complicated. But here, in the case of Jane, we grow to empathize with her the more we learn about her story. As our opinion of Travis diminishes, our view of Jane seesaws upward. She is a survivor of domestic abuse and a mother who never really got to raise her son because she thought she was doing what was best for Hunter.

And here’s another one of those narrative reversals: while most stories clunkily reveal exposition at the beginning of the movie, here the exposition is crammed into the last 20 minutes. We learn more about these characters in the end than we do in the whole two hours prior. In that way, the exposition becomes a twist — and not a gotcha twist like The Sixth Sense, but a genuinely disconcerting and unsettling twist.

Okay, one last example, and it has to do with Travis. If the expected narrative arc is for a character to go from being lost to being found, this film does the opposite: it opens with Travis being found and ends with him lost, adrift in the night.

There are so many reasons I love Paris, Texas. The dialogue is honest, funny, raw. The cinematography is gorgeous — all the colors! Ry Cooder’s slide guitar score is unique and fitting. The acting is phenomenal (aside from Hunter, who is wooden, but he’s a child, so I’m not holding it against him). However, one aspect that I don’t think gets discussed enough is Paris, Texas’ narrative structural elements. There’s a lot to appreciate on the surface of this movie, but it should be no surprise — especially given the subject matter — that there’s way more going on underneath.

One-way glass prisms prisons of their past, pent-up penitence roamed free.

[horroroftheflesh]

that early diner scene in paris, texas where dean stockwell tells harry dean staton “dammit, i’m your brother, man” is so touching to me. please don’t touch me i will detonate.

[periodicoirreverentes]

CINE EXPRESS: “Paris, Texas”

CINE EXPRESS: “Paris, Texas”

Helena Garrote Carmena Año: 1984País: Francia-Alemania- Estados UnidosDirección: Wim WendersGuión: Sam ShepardActores: Harry Dean Staton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, Aurore Clément, Hunter Carson, Bernhard Wicki, Socorro Valdez.Género: Drama- Road movie. La vi hace muchos años pero no recordaba el argumento, solo a un hombre sobre fondo rojo que miraba a una mujer a través de un…

[alfabetas]

Lucky

Por Briseida Alcalá

Un anciano solitario se acompaña a si mismo mientras enfrenta la realidad de su propia mortalidad en Lucky.

El protagonista, que da nombre también a le película, es un peripatético genuino que recorre a pie su pequeño pueblo para encontrar entre el andar y la conversación el vehículo para la expresión de la rumia interna de una vejez terminal. Realismo, una palabra que descubre en los crucigramas que gusta resolver, le abre el panorama de la definición de una perspectiva de vida que se ajusta bien a la ideología apropiada ante lo inevitable.

La soledad es también un tema central de la película, desarrollado con un guión inteligente que zanja la otra cara de la existencia con sensibilidad y agudeza a través de sucesos en los que lo común no es ordinario.  El viaje del protagonista se acompaña con el de personajes secundarios perfectamente dibujados que con sus propios conflictos añaden al discurso de la cinta.

Harry Dean Staton apropia la vulnerabilidad de los últimos años a un personaje entrañable, que desde su aparente fragilidad física se apodera de cada escena para destilar diálogos cargados de genuina profundidad.

Con su opera prima, el también actor John Carroll Lynch imprime una mirada clara a un filme que lo perfila como una voz a considerar, orquestando un filme maravilloso con un final dulcísimo que pone al peor de los tiempos una buena cara. Imperdible.

[darringauthier]

Alien (1979)

Classic Review

Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi

Who’s In It: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwight, Harry Dean Staton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto

Who Directed It: Ridley Scott

Plot:  After a space merchant vessel perceives an unknown transmission as a distress call, its landing on the source moon finds one of the crew attacked by a mysterious lifeform, and they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun.

Running Time: 117 Minutes 

IMDB Score: 8.4

Rotten Tomatoes Score: Critics 97%   Audience 94%

My Viewing History: So I know I saw it on tape, VHS but honestly don’t recall how old I was, I was maybe 14 or 15 and yes it scared me, to be honest I think I’ve only seen the film once all the way through, I of course and seen bits and pieces but I did sit down and had a proper view and yes I had seen all the films except the newest ones.

Thoughts: Alien is almost a perfect storm, look at that cast all of them stayed or became names, sure almost all character actors but there wasn’t a bad actor in the cast and boy does that help a film.  The key to me was a hungry and a very talent Ridley Scott I’m not a huge fan of his lastest stuff but the man for his time was one of the best visual filmmakers working.  Alien had a vibe and energy to it, it’s a young man’s film.

Many people have called Alien a haunted house film in space and at one level it is, the coolest thing about Alien, and it’s the thing many of the sequels fell prey to, sure there’s a sub-plot and there’s bigger things going on but at it’s core it’s a monster movie in space and it’s great on that level, this is great genre film making.

The cast is great hard to imagine but at the time Tom Skerritt was top billed and he was the bigger name but of course this is the film that launched Weaver and she’s very good here, we never saw a female lead in a horror movie like her, she wasn’t a scream queen she was a smart bad ass and she really grew into that role in Aliens but she made Ripley and iconic character.

The last thing I want to praise is the running time, go check out other movies from this franchise and see their run time, this film did everything in under 2 hours and they told a great story, it didn’t need to be 2 and half hours of padding.  I guess I should add it’s a genuine scary film.  

Standing: It’s a classic, it’s funny in horror they always have to saw it’s a horror classic and it is, it’s one of the best horror films ever made and it still stands up and it’s still talked about. 

[madmax76d]

Harry Dean Staton

[djm3z]

Sadly another Alien actor to leave us. At 91, Harry Dean Staton died. He was awesome. In so many movies. He was the first in the franchise to be killed by an adult Xenomorph. His line in The Avengers movie when he found Bruce banner naked. "Are you an alien?" The last thing he needed in that movie was another alien. But he will be missed. Rest in peace Brett #Brett #Alien1979 #Alien #HarryDeanStaton

[shade-without-color]

Weekly Update: All about Katharine,and a new idea (WHATTTT)

Note: So lately it has been crunch time due to the retail christmas period which resulted in my lip rashes coming back again (WELL SHIT),it has been difficult to write expect for my off days,but I want to tell you my new idea.

Reading: I have been reading instead to ease my work,so I have the book Katherine which is not too bad,I quite like the beginning and the sea of chambers scene which is nice,though it is not as mind blowing as Wolf Hall which I loved. Anyway I borrow up my boy Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice which is exciting af for me

The Land from Far: Being obsessed with Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility and drawing up the characters from Tolkien’s Similarillon,it is actually a Fantasy AU idea for sense and sensibility with Colonel Brandon and Marianna which has been stuck with my mind,so The story I will tell is the introduction how it came out,I am thinking like Beren and Luthien in a smaller scale,to practice doing smaller casts. So the names are super poetic and title like with The Prince who smelt like spices,which is a play of the lines he spoke to Maragret in the movie. The Princess is called the Princess from far. So she is like a Luthien-like character to me. I have yet to play what is on my mind. Speaking about sense and sensibility,I have a comedy idea based on my stress at retail which I want to try to do a period drama,so I am thinking of Austen England which to put a shop employee meeting the guy in her dreams (Kind like a Darcy spoof)

The crazy Elyssa and Fox on the Run: So it has been ages since I did up the town of Elyssa,so we have Verity going bonkers with Pray for us at our hour of death and Godiva not having the best of times with Vice and Virtue. We have a NSFW Oor and Kesever one with The tower which focused on Oor’s traumatic past with some good old shagging, a much belated FC tribute to Harry Dean Staton with Quoxitic which I want to do him as a Don Quixote character.

Meanwhile we have Genius which I introduced Semeaus which I have one for ages by a doodle And sweet Maria waits for me for an action inspired drabble with Bowie and Hikaru which is nice for them to fight back.

[mariuccia]

“I learned to sing when I was a child, I had a babysitter named Thelma. She was 18, I was six, and I was in love with her. I used to sing her an old Jimmie Rodgers song, ‘T for Thelma.’ I was singing the blues when I was six. Kind of sad, eh?”

Harry Dean Staton