CinePhils, Take 29: Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, “goodness is something to be chosen”

Existential themes in the Aliens films, questions of humanity, isolation, the Other, AIs and their natures, playing God, and meeting our gods. Special guest segment with Dr. Kim Baltzer-Jaray on gender in the Alien films

Viddying ultraviolence, free will, and behaviorism in the dystopian neoliberal state. And Beethoven, of course.

Madness, obsession, terrible cases of writer’s block, and other things philosophers go through.

Actually it is take 27, we’ve been away for too long. Nostalgia, simplicity, yearning, and a bit of humanity is the cure for cynicism. Also, well constructed cinematic, symmetrical camera work and such.

Rob and David hold forth on lyrical images, Sandler seriously acting, virtues of love in the spectrum, non-musical musicals, pudding and air miles, and having a love in your life that makes one stronger than anything you can imagine.

David and Rob discuss Scorsese’s hangups on women, fire, and dangerous things. Griffin Dunne’s problems selling his freak outs, alternate worlds when the bars close, Henry Miller and the problem with men in the 80s.

John Wayne vs. Robert DeNiro, on being awful and not knowing it, beautiful vistas, claustrophobic spaces, New York, incels, and the desaturated color of blood.

Rob and I forget the time and have a long, wide-ranging discussion of two Alex Cox films, one of which ended his Hollywood career, and the other of which is a great Mexican film albeit filmed by a Brit. Politics, ethics, cops, colonialism, and of course some philosophy too.

David and Rob discuss Colonialism, propaganda, Italian realism, and cinema verité. A bit of philosophy too.

Rob and David discuss legal epistemology, post-truth, Justice, and the unbearable whining of whistleblowers, all while surviving internet outages, failures to record, etc.