Vallee should stick to his field of expertise, which is not film crticism. When is he gonna blog at boing boing on UFOs?

Thanks for posting that, pp. I have to say, I found it a terribly disappointing read. It's not his first viewing of Eyes Wide Shut, and yet it's still nothing more to him than "handsome young millionaire doctor tries to get laid in New York for three days and fails"? I'd expect that depth of analysis from Howard Stern. And I'm simply puzzled that he could write "occultism is not science-fiction," and yet commend The Ninth Gate.

I wish he would return to what I believe he knows the best, which is the stuff I hardly know at all.

yes, i found the comments far more insightful than the actual article.

Indeed it was very disappointing.

Jeff wrote:"...tries to get laid in New York for three days and fails"?

which makes him an unequivocal loser

So why is it that so many of these stories seem flat, and fail to reach the level of insight into hidden structures of the world true esoteric adventures are supposed to promise?

...superb photography, the great acting, and the expansive landscapes...

...flashing the conventional [occult] symbols before us like so many obligatory props.

The films are both very cold on their exterior, which is the point, and self-aware of the distance between the approach and the content, the former being more important than the latter. See what c2w argued, at length extensively the last time there was an epic Kubrick thread.

If you want The Dictionary of 19th Century Esoteric Freemasonry, you can pretty much read all but the 33rd degree on the interweb courtesy of Gen. Pike's wagging pro-slavery tongue. I'll even email a copy of some Austin O. Spare PDFs or something.



And Polanski? Way to miss the freaking context, Vallee. Aren't you a Frenchmen, with sophisticated tastes and a post-modern worldview? Or did all those hamburgers and pomme frites out in California fry your brain? "Write what you know"? Freaking write about how suspicious the whole UFO phenomenon is, or about being a venture capitalist chasing UFO cults, not movies that were hot in the synchromystic blogosphere twenty months ago.

Vallee should stick to his field of expertise, which is not film crticism. When is he gonna blog at boing boing on UFOs?

He won't. I get the feeling that his understanding is too nuanced to fly with that sort of readership. If it takes more than a ten-word soundbite (and i mean that literally, two sentence is too long for most of the self-professed "geeks" (which means, "I like computers more than sports") who I imagine visit boing boing). "Wait, you are saying that the UFO phenomenon is too wide-spread to be explained via swamp gas and atmospheric phenomena, but it's full of hoaxes, but some of the things written off as hoaxes suggest a complex social web indicative of manipulation by government or other institutions for reasons that are difficult to decipher? Back off on the conspiracy theory crazy juice, old man, next thing you'll be telling me that Mohammed Atta was a drug runner with ties to organized crime, and not a militant Islamist, or maybe both at the same time, or something."

Jeff wrote:Thanks for posting that, pp. I have to say, I found it a terribly disappointing read. It's not his first viewing of Eyes Wide Shut, and yet it's still nothing more to him than "handsome young millionaire doctor tries to get laid in New York for three days and fails"? I'd expect that depth of analysis from Howard Stern. And I'm simply puzzled that he could write "occultism is not science-fiction," and yet commend The Ninth Gate.

I wish he would return to what I believe he knows the best, which is the stuff I hardly know at all.

Best(and most frighteningly insightful) analysis of Eyes Wide Shut I've seen:
http://wrongwaywizard.blogspot.com/2008 ... izard.html

Agreed with the "yikes that was bad" comments.

I've enjoyed reading some of Vallee's books, when I'm in that mood. But it's mostly because I give him the benefit of the doubt -- he *must* know something about that UFO stuff, right? The Close Encounters Frenchman is based on him!

But, he eventually admits that he is pretty much unsure about everything he's ever thought about UFOs and the people who report them. And it *is* a dead end. I've had a passing interest in this stuff since I was a kid, in the 1970s, and nothing ever changes. How can you study that, seriously, after a number of years?

Anyway, his movie criticism is shit. Kubrick's movies are rich in symbolism and metaphor, but they are (IMHO) mostly about making beautiful movies with disturbing storylines. I don't know "what Eyes Wide Shut is about," and neither does he, and neither do you, and Kubrick certainly knew what he was attempting but that doesn't mean he understood the final product. Art is weird.

Couldn't get through Ninth Gate, myself.

1) Kubrick

He was making films for spooks during the Cold War. Psyops.
'Eyes Wide Shut' is about himself as a coerced yet fascinated lowly helper to them.

This is probably why he suddenly died and why the studio edited his film.
See 'William Colby's canoe accident.'

2) Jacques Vallee

The only reason we know of this man is because of the first patsy for the JFK assassination who was to be set up in Chicago, Thomas Arthur Vallee.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... opic=12867

Jacques Vallee was almost certainly steered into the 'UFO' topic and publicized to hide this spook craft in the US coup of '63.

And he doesn't seem to know shit about spook craft in psyops movies, either. No surprise.

Or else he would've known why Steven CIA Spielberg named the 'Jacques Vallee' character in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' after a French cinema traitor, "LaCombe."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacombe_Lucien

Because old Jacques was not supposed to lead readers to suspecting military-intelligence of orchestrated deception. And he did.
Still, less dangerous than the first patsy for the CIA coup in the US of '63.

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:The only reason we know of this man is because of the first patsy for the JFK assassination who was to be set up in Chicago, Thomas Arthur Vallee.

Oh my God! Which leads us too..

Art Vandelay, George Costanza's alias on Seinfeld! It's starting to make so much sense now....



Seriously though, I do agree that William Colby was probably "accidented".

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:1) Kubrick

He was making films for spooks during the Cold War. Psyops.
'Eyes Wide Shut' is about himself as a coerced yet fascinated lowly helper to them.

You deprive yourself of so much by misunderstanding his movies. It makes me sad for you every single time you do it. He never made so much as one single movie that wasn't absolutely and unambiguously the total antithesis of cold-war spookdom. Not one.

Furthermore, his take on what permanent war, American-style is really all about at the end of the day, as expressed by the final moments of Full Metal Jacket, could practically have been written for you personally and you alone specially to appreciate as no one else could, out of all the teeming masses on the planet earth. But only if you were open to understanding that it was your ally and not your opponent, of course.

It's a damn shame.

The only reason we know of this man is because of the first patsy for the JFK assassination who was to be set up in Chicago, Thomas Arthur Vallee.

Damn, I wish I had one of those funny manatee pictures. This sentence is so breathtakingly, willfully obtuse it staggers the mind and confounds the understanding. Despite what you may think of J-J Vallee's views, surely he deserves a little better...?

Vallee is now over 70 years old. Could it be that he is losing his edge?

Hugh's analysis of Jacques Vallee is hilarious, definitely the highlight of this thread. Penetrating insights, Hugh!

In all seriousness, though, Hugh is getting so rote we could replace him with a bot and I wouldn't notice unless there were typos.

Wombaticus Rex wrote:Hugh's analysis of Jacques Vallee is hilarious, definitely the highlight of this thread. Penetrating insights, Hugh!

In all seriousness, though, Hugh is getting so rote we could replace him with a bot and I wouldn't notice unless there were typos.

What I don't get, is why Hugh bashes occult/sync obversations when Hugh's thoughts and methods and say...Goro Adachi/Jake Kotze/etc are almost identical when typed out.