Shampoo

Freewheelin' exploits extemporaneously philandering seek abundant finances to facilitate commerce.

He's a local success and highly sought after, the rich and famous attuned to his ingenious hairstyling, he hopes to open his own salon, his skill set lacking desired vocabularies (not writing about myself).

Alternative dialects suit him well as he wanders to and fro, and his natural way with words leads to manifold indiscretions. 

His partner has no idea and neither do the love interests of his contacts, who happen to be the jealous type, even if they applaud sportspersonship.

He's reached an age however that culturally suggests he settle down, and a choice must therefore be made in accordance with upheld tradition.

Yet even though he's established he does lack ze boundless wealth, which leads to sophisticated complications, that can't be put back on the shelf.

I thought things would be rather simple in my youth, you find someone then you marry them, and then focus on work afterwards, never having to worry about your relationship's status, both partners committed to conjugal ideals.

But sundry exceptions open up while aging which are by no means crystal clear, and relationships seem inordinately complicated and confusing and rather laborious.

George (Warren Beatty) flies far and wide in a sphere unaccustomed to stock impulse, and does well or at least never lands and generally avoids shocking turbulence.

Many of the peeps he encounters are happy to actively engage, and see no point in pursuing repercussions since they dismally spoil the fun.

As long as everyone doesn't see the harm in carefree amusement, it seems like a joyous state, in which one could passionately succeed, perhaps even levitate.

Perhaps at times it works and there's no need for grim presumption.

Before the embrace of traditional ideals, the characters within seem quite well off. 

L'Avventura

An artistic heritage so vast and imposing its contemporary admirers can't help but compose themselves with awe.

Quotidian cheek materialistically tethered exchanging observations with speculative mobilization possessing unimaginative magnetism (wry jealousy).

Small towns with no work wherein which the male inhabitants collectively contemplate aesthetics casually passing by.

Playful luxury illusively inconvenienced slumbers with impoverished free speech which differentiates not between beauty and brutality, a life spent with no feminine contact (it's odd when people seek answers and the answers are brutal and you try not to respond but they demand that answer, and if you respond they despise you even more than they would have if you had said nothing, and then treat you brutally).

A culture laments the disappearance of a siren whose mischievous independent preference for theoretical possibility created a sensation which his desire dismissively ignored.

Patriarchically philandering, L'Avventura presents a bored successful man to whom the most sought after precious women helplessly swoon, his innocent unattached habitual eloquence effortlessly ensnaring them within psychological shackles composed of forgiveness, sympathy, contempt, and guilt.

Apart from his betrothed who can't be found.

Culturally inclined, bucolic and urban socioeconomics multifacetedly engender amorous situations which fleetingly comment on relationships and/or conjugal commitment inasmuch as they carnivalesquely sexualize poverty and privilege.

The subject of so many wild comedies intellectually transformed into a literary matriculately meandering exposé, undesirable men imagining they're exceptionally endowed with unqualifiable gravitational irreducibility, which the opposite sex is irresistibly drawn towards, ethically as irresponsible as sadism, politically, masochistically responsive.

L'Avventura gets away with it, cloaking its victorious Lothario in voluminous vulnerable versatility, surrounding his endeavours with enough différence to democratically deconstruct any paradigmatic impulse, wildly commenting with realistic fascination, embroiling and staking with convectional subterfuge, brilliant inspired indulgence or bold calculated virtuosity?, metanarrative expression expressly exalting, cinematic sophistication, love, adventure.

Oz: the Great and Powerful

The Wizard of Oz meets Xena: Warrior Princess?

That's an A+ in my books.

The old school Wizard of Oz film with which I'm familiar was a lighthearted tale, adored by generations of fantasy loving children, devoted and unassuming, blindly caught up in its melodramatic charm, dreaming sweet dreams filled with hope and sincerity later that night, never failing, to wake up anew.

There's no doubt that there's some of this in Sam Raimi's envisioning of the land of Oz, wherein we find the Wizard learning to become the factor everyone believes him to be at first sight, but while we don't discover that there's something not quite right about him until Toto's astute perception in the Judy Garland film, it's obvious from the get-go that in Oz: the Great and Powerful Oz (James Franco) is a sleazy unscrupulous cad, successfully (and spontaneously) brandishing his smoke and mirrors, yet hopelessly lacking what one might refer to as conscientious considerations, apart from their individualized financial formalities.

The title itself offers further insight into these competing fantastic motivations.

Oz: the Great and Powerful sounds like the sort of ridiculous phrase you'd expect someone cravenly searching for riches, even if the search only takes place within their own head, to use to describe themselves, while also seeming like an exaggerated mesmerizing monicker carefully chosen to inspire charismatic imaginations, when its historical spectacle is taken into consideration.

I didn't know Sam Raimi had directed before entering the theatre, and his presence added a latent sense of potentially ingratiating cheesy carnivalesque conviviality to these contemplations, wherein bold mischievous alternative emoticons masquerade on a traditional family friendly frequency, seeking to covertly manifest their raunch(iness).

The opening credits themselves kaleidoscopically illuminate this multiplicity, ebulliently engineering a phantasmagorical dissimulation, for whatever audience, startlingly straightforward, arguably the film's best feature.

But after the Wizard lands in Oz and meets Theodora (Mila Kunis) the film is far too startlingly straightforward for the next hour at least. The lines are terrible. Kunis struggles to deliver them. But they're so bad that you start to think that this could be one of those great films which subtly satirizes its generic counterparts while trying to remain appealing to the young at heart in order to conjure a laconic lackadaisical laxative before suddenly introducing moments of kitschy consubstantiations which attempt to transform the preceding mockery into a campy enduring endearing romp, just as the Wizard casts off his mortal shell and takes on his ethereal form, while coming to believe that yes, he can.

When the brutal lines are isolated, with no community within which to blossom and grow, they're tough to take, but when the time comes for Glinda (Michelle Williams) and the Wizard to unite their citizens to fight Evanora's (Rachel Weisz) minions group dynamics socially network their way into a publicly pertinent pyrotechnic plurality, as the Wizard uses his artifice in a startlingly straightforward phantasmagorical dissimulation, lighthearted, melodramatic, and ridiculous yet conscientious and ingratiating, fighting the good fight against overwhelming odds, to save both his community's, and his own, imagination.

And the film too.

I'd like to read a study which places both films within their social historical contexts in order to elucidate which possesses a more substantial degree of traditional alternative reflexivity, thirty years from now.

Classic Sam Raimi.