Tom Kalin - Swoon (1992)

Tom Kalin - Swoon (1992) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105508 http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51EEJTES1XL.jpg BY ROGER EBERT / November 13, 1992 `Swoon" reopens once again the notorious thrill-killing of Bobby Frank, whose murder in the 1920s became an international scandal when it was revealed that two rich young Chicago homosexuals, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold Jr., had committed the crime. Their motives were chilling: They wanted to do it simply to prove to themselves that they were smart enough to get away with it. Leopold and Loeb escaped the death penalty only because of an impassioned defense by Clarence Darrow, the best-known defense attorney of his time, who argued they were insane, and used their homosexuality as proof of insanity. The case has been made into two previous movies - Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" (1948) and Richard Fleisher's "Compulsion" (1959), but both to one degree or another played down the topic of homosexuality. This new version by writer-director Tom Kalin plays it up, sometimes in ways that are fairly disturbing, as when he seems to linger on the ways the dominant Loeb was able to control the more submissive Leopold by using sex as a weapon. The movie, shot in black and white, has the look of modern men's fashion photography, and Kalin deliberately allows anachronistic props into the frame (a TV channel changer and a push-button phone, for example) to make the film's reality level more ambiguous. This is a period picture that knows it is a period picture, and is also aware of later periods; there is no attempt to fix the story's attitudes in the 1920s, and there is a subtle but unmistakable level of the film that addresses the killing in terms of sadomasochistic chic. The murder of Bobby Frank is seen not as a criminal act, but as a sexual adventure that got out of hand. The question then becomes: How should one interpret the film? Kalin does not use the argument that society is to blame, that because homosexuality was outlawed, Leopold and Loeb were somehow forced into the lapse of sanity which led to the murder. There is every indication in the film that Loeb in particular enjoyed the whole event, not just the murder, but the way it demonstrated his power over Leopold; one imagines he would have been capable of the same crime in a more permissive era, or, for that matter, if he had not been homosexual at all. He is simply an evil person. Leopold, on the other hand, is a weak one, whose relationship with Loeb is complex. Sex is a part of it. So is fear; he dreads losing the approval and friendship of this man he finds so attractive, and does what he does almost in a daze of need and apprehension. Later in a long life, he tried to redeem himself, in prison and on parole, and there was never the sense that he was as essentially evil as Loeb. What is the movie trying to show us? The power of sexual control, for one thing; Loeb, who is depraved, is also highly intelligent, and everything he does seems almost like an exercise, to prove that he can do it. "Swoon" goes much deeper than the other studies of the Frank case, because it tries to show exactly how the psychosexual balance between the two killers made a murder possible, when neither Leopold nor Loeb could possibly have killed by himself. Loeb was incapable of the act, and Leopold incapable of the desire. This is the kind of movie that inspires discussion afterwards. It is being reviewed as an example of the new "queer cinema," deliberately gay films by openly gay filmmakers, but I am not sure "Swoon" would have needed to be much different if the killers had been heterosexual lovers. I don't think what they did resulted from the fact that they were gay; I believe similar acts throughout history, in tolerant times and repressive ones, have been committed by all kinds of people were born without what we call the conscience (as Loeb was) or without the courage to follow it (Leopold). It is probably true that more people fall in Leopold's category than Loeb's, which is why he has always drawn more sympathy from students of the case. It is easier and more reassuring to imagine being seduced into evil, than to imagine not even knowing what evil is. http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/vv90/tau-tau_the-egyptian-mau/sw1.jpg http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/vv90/tau-tau_the-egyptian-mau/sw2.jpg http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/vv90/tau-tau_the-egyptian-mau/sw3.jpg http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/vv90/tau-tau_the-egyptian-mau/sw4.jpg http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/vv90/tau-tau_the-egyptian-mau/sw5.jpg -------not my rip------ File Size (in bytes):...........................1,464,668,160 --- Video Information --- Video Codec Name:...............................XviD 1.1.0 Final Duration (hh:mm:ss):............................1:29:19 Frame Count:....................................133950 Frame Width (pixels):...........................608 Frame Height (pixels):..........................336 Aspect Ratio:...................................1.810 Frames Per Second:..............................25.000 Video Bitrate (kbps):...........................2053 ......MPEG-4......B-VOP........................ Quality Factor (bits/pixel)/frame:..............0.402" --- Audio Information --- Audio Codec:....................................0x0055 MPEG-1 Layer 3 Audio Sample Rate (Hz):.........................48000 Audio Bitrate(kbps):............................121 Audio Bitrate Type ("CBR" or "VBR"):............VBR Audio Channel Count:............................2 Freakyflicks is a free and open community dedicated to preserving and sharing cinematic art in the digital era. Our goal is to disseminate such works of art to the widest audience possible through the channels provided by P2P technology. The Freakyflicks collection is limited to those films that have played an exceptional role in the history of cinema and its progression in becoming a great art. Films that are usually described as classic, cult, arthouse and avant-garde. If you have films that fit this description feel free to share them and participate in our community. 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Sparkone08 (2009-05-29)

LORD_TERABYTE - Can you help me?
Im looking for a movie called 'The Lamp'
I think it was made/released in 1986
Basic jist - A group of teenagers spend a night in a museum (housing an old lamp) where an evil genie (jin) starts killing them off one by one.
It's a classic horror, i used to own it on vhs, but i can't find a download anywhere.
You can get in touch by leaving a msg on either of my blogs (below)
Many thanks
http://blog.bitcomet.com/sparkone
http://grailknights.blogspot.com/

bauxiet (2009-08-06)

Sparkone08 - this is the one you're looking for: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091707/