The Fifth Estate's cold calculated construct of Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) maintains that he's a driven well-meaning intense prick whose inability to bend resolutely cost him dearly.
Guilty of high-tech intractability.
The portrait's possibly unfair.
It was a simple matter of redacting articles posted on WikiLeaks so that the names of covert individuals mentioned within them would not appear and the individuals themselves would likely not be violently punished (murdered) afterwards.
Not such a simple matter for Assange, according to The Fifth Estate, however.
He was determined to publish leaked articles in full on principle to demonstrate that he wasn't doing anything to hedge the truth.
I respect this on principle, but when people's lives are at stake I do have to agree with The Fifth Estate's condemnation of the practise, Assange being unable to recast his image as his freedom fighting persona gained international traction.
The problem in the film is this.
Assange rightfully despises tyranny.
It's what he fights against.
Tyrants tend to kill people.
In The Fifth Estate, as WikiLeaks's reach exponentially extends, it becomes clear that Assange is a general of sorts, more of a supreme commander, and that by releasing unredacted documents, he has the power to sacrifice troops for what he considers to be the greater good, but he still sacrifices troops nonetheless, somewhat carelessly, I might add.
So on principle, he makes decisions that could have cost people their lives, people who may have been fighting for the same things using different methods, when he really didn't have to, he could have redacted the documents without ruining them, which causes him to become tyrannical himself, an unfortunate development for such an heroic person.
What I loved about The Fifth Estate was its examination of history, contemporary history, how many of its characters are aware of the monumental changes the internet has brought about, like Gutenberg's printing press on hyperactive culturally enlivening intergalactic booster juice, The Guardian's Nick Davies (David Thewlis) offering some notable insights, moving the film away from the severely intensifying interactions between Assange and Daniel Berg (Daniel Brühl).
Looking forward to reading/viewing what other biographers have to say about Assange over the upcoming decades.
Compelling person.
Brilliant colossus.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Sunday, October 27, 2013
L'autre maison
Serene lakeside pastoral tranquility's cumulative regenerative assertive grace tantalizingly taunts a troubled convalescing alcoholic in Mathieu Roy's L'autre maison, a man struggling to overcome his sundry jealousies and youthful longings, his inability to refrain from hostilely instigating comparative packs compounding his skittish alarm, a lost unattainable sense of consistent security haunting his unconscious, alcohol no longer an option, but peace, present, partout.
Flying off the handle quickly, abrasively, and confidently, Eric's (Émile Proulx-Cloutier) destructive instincts reflect the stormy endearing tract of the frightened everyperson, his counterproductive soul-searching trail blazed by Proulx-Cloutier's strong performance.
The film periodically focuses on his distracted bemusements, intermixing and contrasting his viewpoints with more successful and less coherent supportive family members.
Its calm enduring inquisitive patience forges a tight urban/rural familial dialectic whose curative emphasis boundlessly allures.
The late night swim is an important moment.
Ah, dinner is served.
Love permeates.
With raccoons.
Flying off the handle quickly, abrasively, and confidently, Eric's (Émile Proulx-Cloutier) destructive instincts reflect the stormy endearing tract of the frightened everyperson, his counterproductive soul-searching trail blazed by Proulx-Cloutier's strong performance.
The film periodically focuses on his distracted bemusements, intermixing and contrasting his viewpoints with more successful and less coherent supportive family members.
Its calm enduring inquisitive patience forges a tight urban/rural familial dialectic whose curative emphasis boundlessly allures.
The late night swim is an important moment.
Ah, dinner is served.
Love permeates.
With raccoons.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Amsterdam
Three close friends, living in a small town, married and settled, habitual and unsuspecting, routine linear sturdy timber, off for an expected excursion, wives, nothing to be worried about.
But a salacious drug and alcohol fuelled binge replaces their traditional fishing trip, in none other than fabled Amsterdam, during which an adulterous peculiarity comes to light, ushering in a new set of incongruous relational vertices, discordant complexities, whose devastated heartbroken pinpricked clutches, deceptively destabilize a longstanding foundation of trust.
It's a morality tale.
A classic case of conjugal infidelity crushing one's sense of purpose and well-being.
The crush is perhaps too limiting as its despondent affects prevent Sam (Robin Aubert) from taking part in most of the film, exploratory analysis sacrificed for betrayed obsession, Amsterdam examining the detonation of reason, as thoughts of forgiveness abandon.
His friends are left trying to explain his absence after he chooses to remain in Europe, their cover-up exacerbating the situation, lies, trauma, incompatibility.
They didn't hire Columbo to investigate this one.
Old school yet relevant, Amsterdam substantializes conceptions of loyalty and friendship, refusing to disqualify their guilt, hardboiled chaotic remorse.
But it really boils down to childishness.
Whose the more childish, Sam or Jeff (Gabriel Sabourin)?
From right to left?
But a salacious drug and alcohol fuelled binge replaces their traditional fishing trip, in none other than fabled Amsterdam, during which an adulterous peculiarity comes to light, ushering in a new set of incongruous relational vertices, discordant complexities, whose devastated heartbroken pinpricked clutches, deceptively destabilize a longstanding foundation of trust.
It's a morality tale.
A classic case of conjugal infidelity crushing one's sense of purpose and well-being.
The crush is perhaps too limiting as its despondent affects prevent Sam (Robin Aubert) from taking part in most of the film, exploratory analysis sacrificed for betrayed obsession, Amsterdam examining the detonation of reason, as thoughts of forgiveness abandon.
His friends are left trying to explain his absence after he chooses to remain in Europe, their cover-up exacerbating the situation, lies, trauma, incompatibility.
They didn't hire Columbo to investigate this one.
Old school yet relevant, Amsterdam substantializes conceptions of loyalty and friendship, refusing to disqualify their guilt, hardboiled chaotic remorse.
But it really boils down to childishness.
Whose the more childish, Sam or Jeff (Gabriel Sabourin)?
From right to left?
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Machete Kills
Impressed by Machete Kills.
So many great lines in this film.
It's like Kyle Ward and Robert and Marcel Rodriguez really took the extra time and care a quality ridiculously sensational over-the-top film needs to be convincingly down-to-earth yet mesmerizing and decaptivating.
It sets a high standard for other filmmakers working along similar lines, and, much like Planet Terror, gives them something to aspire to.
Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) has her other eye shot out and then gets up to fight blind?
Fully loaded machine gun breasts?
The heart that refuses to cease beating?
It's the President on the phone?
El Cameleón?
No need for rhetorical explanations.
It's rare that a film so confidently and quickly moves from the improbable to the ludicrous to the exceptional, so sure of itself, so Machete (Danny Trejo).
Oddly, whereas I thought Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows faltered by situating Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) in an international scenario, Machete Kills excels precisely for this reason.
The Last Stand had a similar cast but lacked Machete Kills's sharp-edged artistry.
Pacific Rim had many great lines but I'm afraid it's no Machete Kills.
Let's just throw in Star Wars.
The next one takes place in space.
In space!
Like Star Trek II in terms of outshining its predecessor.
Not that I'm comparing Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Machete.
I'm wondering if Machete can somehow be worked into an Avengers film, either through reference or by making a direct appearance.
The Avengers could use some Machete.
A rugged old-school indestructible hero.
Going to see this film, again.
So many great lines in this film.
It's like Kyle Ward and Robert and Marcel Rodriguez really took the extra time and care a quality ridiculously sensational over-the-top film needs to be convincingly down-to-earth yet mesmerizing and decaptivating.
It sets a high standard for other filmmakers working along similar lines, and, much like Planet Terror, gives them something to aspire to.
Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) has her other eye shot out and then gets up to fight blind?
Fully loaded machine gun breasts?
The heart that refuses to cease beating?
It's the President on the phone?
El Cameleón?
No need for rhetorical explanations.
It's rare that a film so confidently and quickly moves from the improbable to the ludicrous to the exceptional, so sure of itself, so Machete (Danny Trejo).
Oddly, whereas I thought Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows faltered by situating Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) in an international scenario, Machete Kills excels precisely for this reason.
The Last Stand had a similar cast but lacked Machete Kills's sharp-edged artistry.
Pacific Rim had many great lines but I'm afraid it's no Machete Kills.
Let's just throw in Star Wars.
The next one takes place in space.
In space!
Like Star Trek II in terms of outshining its predecessor.
Not that I'm comparing Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Machete.
I'm wondering if Machete can somehow be worked into an Avengers film, either through reference or by making a direct appearance.
The Avengers could use some Machete.
A rugged old-school indestructible hero.
Going to see this film, again.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Gravity
Trauma's debilitating cloaked severity haunts Gravity's heroine as destructive debris and interstellar circumstances threaten her very survival, necessitating the delivery of split-second correct decision making where the slightest miscue will accelerate her demise.
Her oxygen supply is running low.
George Clooney (Matt Kowalski) doesn't make it.
Perdition rests in the flames.
Of cherished, bygone, days.
The immediacy of her isolated predicament and its associated inanimate malevolence prevents her conscious reflexivity from being able to divert periodic onslaughts of asphyxiating plush, the situation requiring simultaneous internal and external synthesized orchestrations for her reliable future to independently portend.
The film's action reliably and boisterously builds as the bright and beautiful Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) approaches its climax.
Couldn't help but think of the ending of the first Alien film, and that Gravity is somewhat of a gem amongst science-fiction considering that it poignantly and thought provokingly stuns throughout, providing a brilliant exemplar of feminine strength, without introducing a bloodthirsty monster.
Science-fiction more concerned with the beauty of life than gruesome death?
That stands out.
Her oxygen supply is running low.
George Clooney (Matt Kowalski) doesn't make it.
Perdition rests in the flames.
Of cherished, bygone, days.
The immediacy of her isolated predicament and its associated inanimate malevolence prevents her conscious reflexivity from being able to divert periodic onslaughts of asphyxiating plush, the situation requiring simultaneous internal and external synthesized orchestrations for her reliable future to independently portend.
The film's action reliably and boisterously builds as the bright and beautiful Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) approaches its climax.
Couldn't help but think of the ending of the first Alien film, and that Gravity is somewhat of a gem amongst science-fiction considering that it poignantly and thought provokingly stuns throughout, providing a brilliant exemplar of feminine strength, without introducing a bloodthirsty monster.
Science-fiction more concerned with the beauty of life than gruesome death?
That stands out.
Runner Runner
Liked what happens in Runner Runner more than the film itself.
It's too generic for my tastes, not the kind of generic film that recognizes its shortcomings and works an awkward self-critical yet confident and bedazzling dimension into its reels, haughty and sporty, arrogant yet maudlin, but the kind that directly deals with a popular contemporary pastime (online gambling) by utilizing a straightforward style with all the associated bells and whistles, to maximize its take home without taking any serious risks.
Throughout the film serious risks are taken, the plot necessitates serious risk taking, it's just that it takes these serious risks leisurely and comfortably, straightforwardly, if that makes sense.
This aspect is best represented by the crocodile scene.
It still employs clever underground reversals however that made me glad I stuck it out till the end.
To avoid giving away what happens, imagine a situation where a brilliant statistical analyst has the worst possible luck and his financial situation dictates that alternative methods must be embraced if he's to succeed, like Inception's Cobb, the socioeconomic dice stacked against him in each and every sophisticated spin of the wheel, in/formal inter/national legalities stacking the deck, but tries to maximize his profits anyways, even though it could result in the loss of everything.
He makes his bet.
Doubles down.
Throws in the chips.
Undergrounds within undergrounds.
Proceeding delicately.
It's too generic for my tastes, not the kind of generic film that recognizes its shortcomings and works an awkward self-critical yet confident and bedazzling dimension into its reels, haughty and sporty, arrogant yet maudlin, but the kind that directly deals with a popular contemporary pastime (online gambling) by utilizing a straightforward style with all the associated bells and whistles, to maximize its take home without taking any serious risks.
Throughout the film serious risks are taken, the plot necessitates serious risk taking, it's just that it takes these serious risks leisurely and comfortably, straightforwardly, if that makes sense.
This aspect is best represented by the crocodile scene.
It still employs clever underground reversals however that made me glad I stuck it out till the end.
To avoid giving away what happens, imagine a situation where a brilliant statistical analyst has the worst possible luck and his financial situation dictates that alternative methods must be embraced if he's to succeed, like Inception's Cobb, the socioeconomic dice stacked against him in each and every sophisticated spin of the wheel, in/formal inter/national legalities stacking the deck, but tries to maximize his profits anyways, even though it could result in the loss of everything.
He makes his bet.
Doubles down.
Throws in the chips.
Undergrounds within undergrounds.
Proceeding delicately.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
The Butler
Periodically piecing together various volatile historical tracts, intergenerationally sketching a people's hard beaten path, sustained successful service slowly evidencing sophistication and ingenuity, facets which for some archaic reason required proof, proof that wasn't that easy to come by due to multileveled systemic oppressions, which persist, and committed confrontational activism, manifesting different variations on a theme, familially questioning particular forms of engagement, Lee Daniels's The Butler functioning as a practical ideological switchboard, easy to follow yet deep and hard hitting, well suited to wide audiences, proper.
Considering the potent surge of what's being described as the new racism, this is an important film.
The Butler's a good starting point for young secondary students interested in learning more about 20th century American history as well, since it broadly condenses many important developments and personalities, thereby making them accessible, while setting them up with oppositions to avoid having things appear too simplistic, these elements serving to encourage further study.
It also demonstrates that your occupation or income doesn't necessarily limit your ability to play a role in the world at large.
Imagine what could have been done with web 2.0 back then.
Out of sight.
Considering the potent surge of what's being described as the new racism, this is an important film.
The Butler's a good starting point for young secondary students interested in learning more about 20th century American history as well, since it broadly condenses many important developments and personalities, thereby making them accessible, while setting them up with oppositions to avoid having things appear too simplistic, these elements serving to encourage further study.
It also demonstrates that your occupation or income doesn't necessarily limit your ability to play a role in the world at large.
Imagine what could have been done with web 2.0 back then.
Out of sight.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Don Jon
A sexually active male whose interests and activities generally correspond to a popular idealization of traditional masculinity finds himself attempting to conform to what at first seems a model relationship, in Joseph Gordon-Levitt's feature length directorial debut Don Jon, seduced by a perfect 10, then willing to abide by related sociocultural courting mechanisms.
There's just one problem.
Well, a couple of problems (she's very bossy).
But the main problem is pornography.
Porno, porno, porno.
This guy's addiction to porn knows no limits and he even prefers it to sex, completely and utterly obsessed, strategies, a psychological playbook, on his phone while waiting for class, always on his mind, no holds barred, wild uncontrollable excessive lust, instantly activated at each and every opportunity.
His new partner is unimpressed and it causes friction in their relationship.
The film intelligently and comically exaggerates a controversial phenomenon to its extreme, lusciously and ironically opposing it to an obstinate depiction of perfection, interspersing familial dynamics at well chosen intervals (best Tony Danza performance ever!), while patiently revealing a workable solution.
It's fun, the script (written by Gordon-Levitt) providing every character with solid lines and developmental motions, firmly rooted in what's often considered to have been normal in the 1950s (with more swearing), subtly launching a raunchy prorated convalescent case-study, whose sustainable solution vivaciously stylizes.
Jon's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) internal turmoil is expressed through road rage.
The pulsating gender based intertextual clashes work well.
Surprisingly tame considering.
Swear those were CFL clips.
There's just one problem.
Well, a couple of problems (she's very bossy).
But the main problem is pornography.
Porno, porno, porno.
This guy's addiction to porn knows no limits and he even prefers it to sex, completely and utterly obsessed, strategies, a psychological playbook, on his phone while waiting for class, always on his mind, no holds barred, wild uncontrollable excessive lust, instantly activated at each and every opportunity.
His new partner is unimpressed and it causes friction in their relationship.
The film intelligently and comically exaggerates a controversial phenomenon to its extreme, lusciously and ironically opposing it to an obstinate depiction of perfection, interspersing familial dynamics at well chosen intervals (best Tony Danza performance ever!), while patiently revealing a workable solution.
It's fun, the script (written by Gordon-Levitt) providing every character with solid lines and developmental motions, firmly rooted in what's often considered to have been normal in the 1950s (with more swearing), subtly launching a raunchy prorated convalescent case-study, whose sustainable solution vivaciously stylizes.
Jon's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) internal turmoil is expressed through road rage.
The pulsating gender based intertextual clashes work well.
Surprisingly tame considering.
Swear those were CFL clips.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
The Ghosts in Our Machine
Liz Marshall's new documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine follows the beneficial risks taken by photographer and animal rights activist Jo-Anne McArthur as she snaps heartbreaking shots of the animals enslaved in various industries.
Grim statistics numerically accompany her outputs, providing troubling realities with cold hard facts.
The fur industry's profits are increasing, for instance.
Scientific laboratories have actually bred a beagle to maximize its docility.
Dairy cows generally give milk for three to four years before they're butchered, even though they could have lived a much longer life, their utters no longer being profitable.
Facilities like those chronicled in Gabriela Cowperthwaite's Blackfish are sprouting up all over the world.
And the practices adopted by many organic farmers aren't that different from their large-scale competitors.
Animal rights are the focus and discourses which justify animal abuses are contradicted through a wide range of compelling photographic and cinematic images.
The film is informative without being preachy, evocative but not sickly sentimental.
It's not sensational, relying more on the integrity of its illustrations than the volatility of its message.
When they visit the Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York and show close-ups of their resident cows, pigs, sheep, etc., intricately capturing their emotions and personalities, it's truly moving.
The film should be airing on the CBC's documentary channel on Sunday, November 24th.
Finding funding to support your work, an artist's dedication, and historical revelations are featured as well.
Here's an article about animal rights in Switzerland.
This is what I think Ms. McArthur is referring to when she mentions bears.
Farm Sanctuary's catalogue and its value added information are remarkable.
Living an ethical life.
During question period after the film, an audience member asked how Ms. Marshall and Ms. McArthur manage to continue pursuing their goals in the face of so much suffering (paraphrasing), and Jo-Anne recommended Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World as an aid.
Sounds like a good read.
Grim statistics numerically accompany her outputs, providing troubling realities with cold hard facts.
The fur industry's profits are increasing, for instance.
Scientific laboratories have actually bred a beagle to maximize its docility.
Dairy cows generally give milk for three to four years before they're butchered, even though they could have lived a much longer life, their utters no longer being profitable.
Facilities like those chronicled in Gabriela Cowperthwaite's Blackfish are sprouting up all over the world.
And the practices adopted by many organic farmers aren't that different from their large-scale competitors.
Animal rights are the focus and discourses which justify animal abuses are contradicted through a wide range of compelling photographic and cinematic images.
The film is informative without being preachy, evocative but not sickly sentimental.
It's not sensational, relying more on the integrity of its illustrations than the volatility of its message.
When they visit the Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York and show close-ups of their resident cows, pigs, sheep, etc., intricately capturing their emotions and personalities, it's truly moving.
The film should be airing on the CBC's documentary channel on Sunday, November 24th.
Finding funding to support your work, an artist's dedication, and historical revelations are featured as well.
Here's an article about animal rights in Switzerland.
This is what I think Ms. McArthur is referring to when she mentions bears.
Farm Sanctuary's catalogue and its value added information are remarkable.
Living an ethical life.
During question period after the film, an audience member asked how Ms. Marshall and Ms. McArthur manage to continue pursuing their goals in the face of so much suffering (paraphrasing), and Jo-Anne recommended Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World as an aid.
Sounds like a good read.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Gabrielle
As love's vitalistic harmonies musically surge, ecstatically flourishing for the curious young couple, condescending and encouraging conceptions cut-off and receive their rapturous transmissions, best interests taking shape in both evaluations, the scurrilous and the sanctified, amorously pressured.
To imagine that someone would attempt to prevent something as beautiful as Gabrielle (Gabrielle Marion-Rivard) and Martin's (Alexandre Landry) feelings for one another from joyously entrancing is beyond me, as if love is solely reserved for the prescient and the punctual, rather than for anyone caught up in its (initial) emancipating embrace.
Louise Archambault's Gabrielle does visually and pensively craft several scenes which explore the dangers facing Gabrielle should she choose to live on her own, practically and remorsefully nuancing their breadths, while nurturing her bold explorations.
Better to seek than to writhe.
Love's highly impractical anyways, regularly striking at inopportune moments, to which the application of hindsight can strive to sear logic, and succour an empirical spirituality.
Gabrielle and Martin cogently access their mutually supportive luminescent crunch, the unfortunately partially transgressive aspect of their unity only serving to further strengthen their resolve.
The film's progressively cautious competing rationalities motivate a conjugal oscillation, an illustrative illumination, stabilized through bliss.
To imagine that someone would attempt to prevent something as beautiful as Gabrielle (Gabrielle Marion-Rivard) and Martin's (Alexandre Landry) feelings for one another from joyously entrancing is beyond me, as if love is solely reserved for the prescient and the punctual, rather than for anyone caught up in its (initial) emancipating embrace.
Louise Archambault's Gabrielle does visually and pensively craft several scenes which explore the dangers facing Gabrielle should she choose to live on her own, practically and remorsefully nuancing their breadths, while nurturing her bold explorations.
Better to seek than to writhe.
Love's highly impractical anyways, regularly striking at inopportune moments, to which the application of hindsight can strive to sear logic, and succour an empirical spirituality.
Gabrielle and Martin cogently access their mutually supportive luminescent crunch, the unfortunately partially transgressive aspect of their unity only serving to further strengthen their resolve.
The film's progressively cautious competing rationalities motivate a conjugal oscillation, an illustrative illumination, stabilized through bliss.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster)
Reluctantly impenetrable, hesitant yet incomparable, Wing Chun Grandmaster Ip Man (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) invincibly materializes his compact modest integrity, within, flexibly counterpoised, internationally driven.
Kar Wai Wong's Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster) celebrates his life, highlighting both monumental challenges and athletic altercations, some likely coaxed from oral and written records of his legend, complexly diversifying the phenomenon of martial arts, woefully positioning a seductive feminine element.
The film's temperament complements his psyche as an invasion commandeers his financial resources and he's forced to relocate to Hong Kong, having refused to collaborate.
Confident, reticent, and didactic, it unreels as if silent while biographically contending.
His post-invasion love interest forges the film's romantic counterbalance as her tragic commensurable conception of honour unwittingly tantalizes.
A Master of the martial arts herself (Xingyi and Bagua), her farsighted father having permitted her to train, thereby breaking with tradition, her devotion to her admirable related vow therefore remains a point of principled controversy, unable to release her desire, celestially sustained.
Yi dai zong shi's final message reflects a pluralistic pedagogical ideal, one which emphasizes study and traditional fluctuation, without betraying one's sense of concrete socioindividualism.
An action-packed wise accessible film, poignant without reference to the austere, insurmountable and unfathomable, tenaciously breaking through the ages.
Kar Wai Wong's Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster) celebrates his life, highlighting both monumental challenges and athletic altercations, some likely coaxed from oral and written records of his legend, complexly diversifying the phenomenon of martial arts, woefully positioning a seductive feminine element.
The film's temperament complements his psyche as an invasion commandeers his financial resources and he's forced to relocate to Hong Kong, having refused to collaborate.
Confident, reticent, and didactic, it unreels as if silent while biographically contending.
His post-invasion love interest forges the film's romantic counterbalance as her tragic commensurable conception of honour unwittingly tantalizes.
A Master of the martial arts herself (Xingyi and Bagua), her farsighted father having permitted her to train, thereby breaking with tradition, her devotion to her admirable related vow therefore remains a point of principled controversy, unable to release her desire, celestially sustained.
Yi dai zong shi's final message reflects a pluralistic pedagogical ideal, one which emphasizes study and traditional fluctuation, without betraying one's sense of concrete socioindividualism.
An action-packed wise accessible film, poignant without reference to the austere, insurmountable and unfathomable, tenaciously breaking through the ages.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Camille Claudel 1915
Attaching a strictly temporal dimension to the passage of time, wherein a brilliant delicate artist's psychological sentence is thought to be perennially relapsing, her in/direct encampment in the Real having seared an ominous dread, intransigent incarnate interference, a burning flame shrouded in darkness, no companions, no recourse, no distinctions, hospitable exclusion, reclusively aligned.
She can't break free.
Powerful performance by Juliette Binoche (Camille Claudel).
She is provided with the chance to convalesce and her ability to reason traumatically cloisters logical probabilities whose unrequited lesions awoke excessively paranoid delusions.
Her loved ones remain condemnatory, acting in accordance with principles which they consider to be charitably Christian, imprisoning her for life in an asylum, proudly refusing to listen.
The authoritative sanctioned madness is regally revealed as two differently abled persons are rebuked for not rehearsing their play with the requisite depth of emotion.
Mme Claudel is obviously disturbed, not possessed, and may have benefitted from more suitable surroundings, pharmaceutical aids, and/or an understanding listener.
That's not to say pharmaceuticals should have definitely been administered.
If pharmaceutical companies are run like a business who seeks to see revenues increase every quarter, and they rely upon people being diagnosed with particular characteristics in order for their products to be sold, a rather disreputable culture could resultantly emerge, if specific diagnoses are not cross-referenced.
Pharmaceuticals may not have been required in Camille's case as her self-diagnosis indicates, her hypothesized cure seeming reasonable enough, affable, sane.
A different time; Camille Claudel 1915 examines a different set of historical rationalities.
A patient, helpless, conspicuous film, judiciously stark, the sound and the fury.
She can't break free.
Powerful performance by Juliette Binoche (Camille Claudel).
She is provided with the chance to convalesce and her ability to reason traumatically cloisters logical probabilities whose unrequited lesions awoke excessively paranoid delusions.
Her loved ones remain condemnatory, acting in accordance with principles which they consider to be charitably Christian, imprisoning her for life in an asylum, proudly refusing to listen.
The authoritative sanctioned madness is regally revealed as two differently abled persons are rebuked for not rehearsing their play with the requisite depth of emotion.
Mme Claudel is obviously disturbed, not possessed, and may have benefitted from more suitable surroundings, pharmaceutical aids, and/or an understanding listener.
That's not to say pharmaceuticals should have definitely been administered.
If pharmaceutical companies are run like a business who seeks to see revenues increase every quarter, and they rely upon people being diagnosed with particular characteristics in order for their products to be sold, a rather disreputable culture could resultantly emerge, if specific diagnoses are not cross-referenced.
Pharmaceuticals may not have been required in Camille's case as her self-diagnosis indicates, her hypothesized cure seeming reasonable enough, affable, sane.
A different time; Camille Claudel 1915 examines a different set of historical rationalities.
A patient, helpless, conspicuous film, judiciously stark, the sound and the fury.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Ekstra
Taking a humanistic approach to the production of soap operas, focusing primarily on the arduous routines followed by their hope-filled extras, digging in real deep, opportunity jostling with obsolescence, divas, directors, and delays, a rigid overworked tawdry hierarchical continuity graciously swoons to sycophantically accommodate, while viciously displacing its retributive wrath.
The extras take the heat for egocentric conceits, yet flexibly flow in bleached toiled caprice.
Irony abounds as the stars and high ranking members of the crew act like precious progenitors of substantial stakes while creating horrendous gaudy cylindrical refuse.
The cigarette burn improvisation.
A tasteless product placement.
The insertion of an automobile.
Cinematically fell for Loida Malabanan (Vilma Santos) as she attempts to breakthrough, her roles functioning as metafictional realistic vindications as she fantastically battles the wicked, heartbreakingly symbolic, cold, and unforgiving.
Ekstra is also filled with congenial moments of accidental amicable trust, tightrope walking starstruck stalking vests, multiple different angles, competing operational perspectives.
On the fly.
The extras take the heat for egocentric conceits, yet flexibly flow in bleached toiled caprice.
Irony abounds as the stars and high ranking members of the crew act like precious progenitors of substantial stakes while creating horrendous gaudy cylindrical refuse.
The cigarette burn improvisation.
A tasteless product placement.
The insertion of an automobile.
Cinematically fell for Loida Malabanan (Vilma Santos) as she attempts to breakthrough, her roles functioning as metafictional realistic vindications as she fantastically battles the wicked, heartbreakingly symbolic, cold, and unforgiving.
Ekstra is also filled with congenial moments of accidental amicable trust, tightrope walking starstruck stalking vests, multiple different angles, competing operational perspectives.
On the fly.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Vic et Flo ont vu un ours (Vic and Flo Saw a Bear)
Callous direct confrontational cheek infused with rehabilitated romantic longing curiously cohabitates with its surrounding community, comfortably nestled in a formerly saccharine sugar shack, problems with those they encounter, there are problems with those they encounter, in Vic et Flo ont vu un ours (Vic and Flo Saw a Bear), wherein an elderly ex-con whose formative years were likely filled with anger, the film being unconcerned with historical details, an emancipated secluded parareactive present, reunites with her luscious love interest, whose fermenting fugacious boundless wanderlust, delicately soothes, and traumatically glistens.
There are those who are seeking revenge.
Those who vitriolically interact.
The sedate, the facilitative, the confused.
And trusty, tight-lipped, do-gooding Guillaume (Marc-André Grondin).
The sequence where he takes Vic (Pierrette Robitaille) and Flo (Romane Bohringer) to the aquarium and the museum is invaluable.
The film's form itself mischievously mirrors Vic and Flo's grizzled disregard, their justifiable frustrations with their roles in the order of things, as displayed by the rapid fire hyperactive opening credits, overflowing with kinetic energy, setting up a cerebral symphony, as if Denis Cȏté is saying, "yes, I could have done more, but isn't what I have done enough to still warrant critical acclaim, which doesn't concern me anyways, je m'en fous?"
I've only seen Vic et Flo ont vu un ours and it's good enough to make me want to rent the rest of his films, quickly full-speed ahead, this guy is awesome.
The same applies to Guillaume Sylvestre.
They don't actually see a bear but the moment where you're thinking, hey, maybe the title isn't metaphorical, couldn't be more dysfunctionally discomforting.
Jackie (Marie Brassard) looks a bit like Wild at Heart's Juana Durango (Grace Zabriskie) at one point.
Pourquoi? Pourquoi!
There are those who are seeking revenge.
Those who vitriolically interact.
The sedate, the facilitative, the confused.
And trusty, tight-lipped, do-gooding Guillaume (Marc-André Grondin).
The sequence where he takes Vic (Pierrette Robitaille) and Flo (Romane Bohringer) to the aquarium and the museum is invaluable.
The film's form itself mischievously mirrors Vic and Flo's grizzled disregard, their justifiable frustrations with their roles in the order of things, as displayed by the rapid fire hyperactive opening credits, overflowing with kinetic energy, setting up a cerebral symphony, as if Denis Cȏté is saying, "yes, I could have done more, but isn't what I have done enough to still warrant critical acclaim, which doesn't concern me anyways, je m'en fous?"
I've only seen Vic et Flo ont vu un ours and it's good enough to make me want to rent the rest of his films, quickly full-speed ahead, this guy is awesome.
The same applies to Guillaume Sylvestre.
They don't actually see a bear but the moment where you're thinking, hey, maybe the title isn't metaphorical, couldn't be more dysfunctionally discomforting.
Jackie (Marie Brassard) looks a bit like Wild at Heart's Juana Durango (Grace Zabriskie) at one point.
Pourquoi? Pourquoi!
Riddick
After a lengthy hiatus, Riddick (Vin Diesel) returns, once again stuck on a desolate hostile planet, forced to battle and befriend to survive.
The film appeared to be a rip off to me in the previews, The Chronicles of Riddick having ended with Riddick sitting atop the Necromonger hierarchy, having vengefully transitioned from irrepressible individual to potentially influential figurehead, but I thought I would ignore Riddick's retrograde decision (and bland title) to focus more intently on Pitch Black, worrying about what could have been created seeming futile, wasteful, and unproductive, Riddick still featuring Riddick, iconic bad ass, incontrovertible anti-soldier, that being okay.
But Riddick does explain how he came to be isolated once again and the explanation lacks credibility, considering how easily he consistently outsmarts his adversaries, and the obviousness of the trap he falls into, although he does acknowledge his moment of weakness through narration, and was dealing with quixotically clever foes.
Still, how did he fall into that one, seriously, come on?
Also, when he transmits his presence on the planet to the universe at large why didn't the Necromongers come after him? If he's still alive, he's technically still the Lord Marshal, and should have therefore been cravenously or ceremoniously sought after, by those with an interest in logistical legitimacy. Perhaps they wanted to wait and see if someone else could handle their mess for them, but if anyone knows how agile Riddick is, it's the Necromongers, meaning they likely would have wanted to settle the score personally, as the crow flies.
S'pose this sets up the next sequel though, fingers crossed.
At one point during Riddick, I thought he might quickly outmaneuver the two sets of Mercs intent on his capture and escape to reinstate himself within Necromonger lore, but as it became apparent that this would not happen, I begrudgingly acquiesced.
There are some classic Riddick moments, some classic Riddick lines, some classic Riddick obstructions, and the beginning which focuses on his survival tactics is arguably the film's best feature.
Some key developmental diagnostics flaccidly fluctuate, however, leaving a strong, explosive, crystalline character searching for better material, a fitting ending for this film, now that I think about it.
Really loved the edited version of The Chronicles of Riddick. Waited for this film for years.
The film appeared to be a rip off to me in the previews, The Chronicles of Riddick having ended with Riddick sitting atop the Necromonger hierarchy, having vengefully transitioned from irrepressible individual to potentially influential figurehead, but I thought I would ignore Riddick's retrograde decision (and bland title) to focus more intently on Pitch Black, worrying about what could have been created seeming futile, wasteful, and unproductive, Riddick still featuring Riddick, iconic bad ass, incontrovertible anti-soldier, that being okay.
But Riddick does explain how he came to be isolated once again and the explanation lacks credibility, considering how easily he consistently outsmarts his adversaries, and the obviousness of the trap he falls into, although he does acknowledge his moment of weakness through narration, and was dealing with quixotically clever foes.
Still, how did he fall into that one, seriously, come on?
Also, when he transmits his presence on the planet to the universe at large why didn't the Necromongers come after him? If he's still alive, he's technically still the Lord Marshal, and should have therefore been cravenously or ceremoniously sought after, by those with an interest in logistical legitimacy. Perhaps they wanted to wait and see if someone else could handle their mess for them, but if anyone knows how agile Riddick is, it's the Necromongers, meaning they likely would have wanted to settle the score personally, as the crow flies.
S'pose this sets up the next sequel though, fingers crossed.
At one point during Riddick, I thought he might quickly outmaneuver the two sets of Mercs intent on his capture and escape to reinstate himself within Necromonger lore, but as it became apparent that this would not happen, I begrudgingly acquiesced.
There are some classic Riddick moments, some classic Riddick lines, some classic Riddick obstructions, and the beginning which focuses on his survival tactics is arguably the film's best feature.
Some key developmental diagnostics flaccidly fluctuate, however, leaving a strong, explosive, crystalline character searching for better material, a fitting ending for this film, now that I think about it.
Really loved the edited version of The Chronicles of Riddick. Waited for this film for years.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
The World's End
12 pubs.
12 pints.
5 friends.
Grievances.
A youthful night of rambunctious drinking whose objectives were not achieved is revisited later on in life after 4 of 5 friends have embraced occupational stability, its chaotic contours representing the other friend's liveliest memory, after a lifetime of nurturing mind-altering nullifications.
The goal is to finish The Golden Mile, drinking a pint at each of Newton Haven's 12 pubs, sticking together as a team, revitalizing a wayward sense of indestructibility.
Gary King (Simon Pegg and Thomas Law) somehow manages to quickly convince his old friends to join him, once being the leader of the pack, compassion, pity, and camaraderie functioning as motivating factors, the beast gassed up and ready to flux capacity.
But a paradigm shift has occurred in peaceful Newton Haven, and although familiar faces remain, things are no longer quite what they seemed.
A challenge to the evening's nostalgic embroileries unravels a sinister intergalactic plot to colonize the Earth and eat organic food, against which the 5 friends must then contend, while continuing to pursue their dipsomanic agenda.
To the World's End.
Is The World's End a diabolical delusion taking place solely within the demented mind of Mr. King, or have people indeed been replaced with glad handing automata, in search of healthier lifestyles?
The improbability suggests the answer is a simple yes, but the film's extracurricular exhibitionism begs the question, if this is merely obstetric, why does it revel so collegially within its confines?
It does function as a response to Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright examining their own encounters with the aging process.
Functions too similarly to Hot Fuzz.
Contemporary kings they may be, I didn't see This is the End, and don't want to compare them to anyone else, my intuition transmitting that these comedic constabularies have intercepted an apocalyptic discourse.
Smart script though, the situations themselves often funnier than what takes place within them, which, I suppose in my case, is also a sign of age.
I would probably only be able to drink 8 pints.
If I didn't have to work for the next two days.
And had several cans of minestrone soup available at home.
12 pints.
5 friends.
Grievances.
A youthful night of rambunctious drinking whose objectives were not achieved is revisited later on in life after 4 of 5 friends have embraced occupational stability, its chaotic contours representing the other friend's liveliest memory, after a lifetime of nurturing mind-altering nullifications.
The goal is to finish The Golden Mile, drinking a pint at each of Newton Haven's 12 pubs, sticking together as a team, revitalizing a wayward sense of indestructibility.
Gary King (Simon Pegg and Thomas Law) somehow manages to quickly convince his old friends to join him, once being the leader of the pack, compassion, pity, and camaraderie functioning as motivating factors, the beast gassed up and ready to flux capacity.
But a paradigm shift has occurred in peaceful Newton Haven, and although familiar faces remain, things are no longer quite what they seemed.
A challenge to the evening's nostalgic embroileries unravels a sinister intergalactic plot to colonize the Earth and eat organic food, against which the 5 friends must then contend, while continuing to pursue their dipsomanic agenda.
To the World's End.
Is The World's End a diabolical delusion taking place solely within the demented mind of Mr. King, or have people indeed been replaced with glad handing automata, in search of healthier lifestyles?
The improbability suggests the answer is a simple yes, but the film's extracurricular exhibitionism begs the question, if this is merely obstetric, why does it revel so collegially within its confines?
It does function as a response to Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright examining their own encounters with the aging process.
Functions too similarly to Hot Fuzz.
Contemporary kings they may be, I didn't see This is the End, and don't want to compare them to anyone else, my intuition transmitting that these comedic constabularies have intercepted an apocalyptic discourse.
Smart script though, the situations themselves often funnier than what takes place within them, which, I suppose in my case, is also a sign of age.
I would probably only be able to drink 8 pints.
If I didn't have to work for the next two days.
And had several cans of minestrone soup available at home.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
La vie domestique
What a prick of a day.
The bourgeois baggage bumptiously builds up in this one, as 4 housewives reflexively mold their materiality.
A picture perfect life, complete with good schools, automobiles, and giant houses has been secured, yet aging has reintroduced theoretically antiquated distinctions between feminine and masculine, whose casual unconscious biases and restrained level-headed counterbalances (the dialogue keeps a cool reserved yet provocative head) suggest that La vie domestique can be thought of as a prolonged micromanifested scream, each of its nanofrustrations minimalistically implicated in the stifling restrictions of gender based economically reinforced comments, along with the gut wrenching crunch of ostensible opportunity.
The aforementioned predominantly applies to Juliette (Emmanuelle Devos) as she struggles in her role of supportive wife and mother, providing extracurricular guidance to underprivileged youth while trying to find work in the publishing industry.
She's strong, confident, capable, and aware that time lacks its former robust capacities, alarming amplifications assiduously absorbed.
Her husband (Laurent Poitrenaux as Thomas) tries to comprehend at times but keeps saying the wrong things, seeking to control rather than comprehend, turning domineering near the end.
The ass at the beginning directly establishes the rage.
The rest multilaterally multiplies it.
The bourgeois baggage bumptiously builds up in this one, as 4 housewives reflexively mold their materiality.
A picture perfect life, complete with good schools, automobiles, and giant houses has been secured, yet aging has reintroduced theoretically antiquated distinctions between feminine and masculine, whose casual unconscious biases and restrained level-headed counterbalances (the dialogue keeps a cool reserved yet provocative head) suggest that La vie domestique can be thought of as a prolonged micromanifested scream, each of its nanofrustrations minimalistically implicated in the stifling restrictions of gender based economically reinforced comments, along with the gut wrenching crunch of ostensible opportunity.
The aforementioned predominantly applies to Juliette (Emmanuelle Devos) as she struggles in her role of supportive wife and mother, providing extracurricular guidance to underprivileged youth while trying to find work in the publishing industry.
She's strong, confident, capable, and aware that time lacks its former robust capacities, alarming amplifications assiduously absorbed.
Her husband (Laurent Poitrenaux as Thomas) tries to comprehend at times but keeps saying the wrong things, seeking to control rather than comprehend, turning domineering near the end.
The ass at the beginning directly establishes the rage.
The rest multilaterally multiplies it.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Fènix 11-23
A young child's fascination with Harry Potter leads him to create The Army of the Phoenix online, dedicated to promoting Catalonian language rights, and defending the culture of Catalan.
Due to recent terrorist bombings, however, his activism runs afoul of Spain's anti-terrorism laws, and he's soon absurdly disciplined and punished.
Recalling Jason Buxton's Blackbird, Èric Bertran (Nil Cardoner) makes the mistake of responding to a threat with threatening language, hostilely mentioning a controversial underground organization in his reply, naively behaving as youngsters often do, unaware of the legal ramifications of his rapid fire inflammatory comment.
Both films examine the resulting social consequences but in Fènix 11-23 a support network develops which eases the tension.
Èric's life undergoes monumental changes as his family, friends, teacher, surrounding community members, and love interest come to terms with their fears regarding the penalties, directors Joel Joan and Sergi Lara rationally unreeling these fears, slowly moving from the callous to the understanding, as concepts such as democracy become more tangible.
Fènix 11-23 doesn't maudlinly express its examination of free speech (it's a true story), nor engage in sensationalist practices.
Rather, it shows how sensationalism can be a political byproduct that can ruin the lives of the people politicians are supposed to protect.
You can't write about controversial issues without expecting the police to take note and place you on a list of some kind. They are concerned with fighting terrorism.
You can expect them not to harass children, or anyone, exercising their democratic rights, turning playful miscalculations into seditious intents, winning a few votes and/or budget increases thereby, while sacrificing the ideals they're supposed to uphold.
Èric's unyielding courage is an inspiration.
Talk about bold.
Due to recent terrorist bombings, however, his activism runs afoul of Spain's anti-terrorism laws, and he's soon absurdly disciplined and punished.
Recalling Jason Buxton's Blackbird, Èric Bertran (Nil Cardoner) makes the mistake of responding to a threat with threatening language, hostilely mentioning a controversial underground organization in his reply, naively behaving as youngsters often do, unaware of the legal ramifications of his rapid fire inflammatory comment.
Both films examine the resulting social consequences but in Fènix 11-23 a support network develops which eases the tension.
Èric's life undergoes monumental changes as his family, friends, teacher, surrounding community members, and love interest come to terms with their fears regarding the penalties, directors Joel Joan and Sergi Lara rationally unreeling these fears, slowly moving from the callous to the understanding, as concepts such as democracy become more tangible.
Fènix 11-23 doesn't maudlinly express its examination of free speech (it's a true story), nor engage in sensationalist practices.
Rather, it shows how sensationalism can be a political byproduct that can ruin the lives of the people politicians are supposed to protect.
You can't write about controversial issues without expecting the police to take note and place you on a list of some kind. They are concerned with fighting terrorism.
You can expect them not to harass children, or anyone, exercising their democratic rights, turning playful miscalculations into seditious intents, winning a few votes and/or budget increases thereby, while sacrificing the ideals they're supposed to uphold.
Èric's unyielding courage is an inspiration.
Talk about bold.
La fille du Martin
The passing of a loved one accompanies a young woman's thoughts as she travels to the region of her birth to mourn.
Unbeknownst to her, a free-spirited youth awaits to assist in the grieving process.
As she convalesces basking in the Lac Saint-Jean wilderness, cinematographer Ronald Richard sensuously suggests that its pristine pastimes strengthen her beauty (Catherine Michaud as Sara Leblanc).
That beauty is indeed strengthened, as young love ignites to cause problems for villainous poachers, headaches for parental guidance, undisclosed wisecracks for a fraternal rivalry, and campfire tales for local legends.
Samuel Thivierge's La fille du Martin unpretentiously lodges a romantic reel in the Laurentian filmscape, lightheartedly casting its luminescent lures, hooking urban and rural encampments alike.
Straightforward, freewheeling, and independent yet accountable, it amicably shifts from outstanding shot to outstanding shot, infusing its comedic relations with bucolic luxury, its health sustained by its spry self-restraint.
I'll have to visit Lac Saint-Jean someday.
Only 5 hours away.
Rent an ATV, do some fishin'.
Hey hey!
(Nice porcupine shot).
Unbeknownst to her, a free-spirited youth awaits to assist in the grieving process.
As she convalesces basking in the Lac Saint-Jean wilderness, cinematographer Ronald Richard sensuously suggests that its pristine pastimes strengthen her beauty (Catherine Michaud as Sara Leblanc).
That beauty is indeed strengthened, as young love ignites to cause problems for villainous poachers, headaches for parental guidance, undisclosed wisecracks for a fraternal rivalry, and campfire tales for local legends.
Samuel Thivierge's La fille du Martin unpretentiously lodges a romantic reel in the Laurentian filmscape, lightheartedly casting its luminescent lures, hooking urban and rural encampments alike.
Straightforward, freewheeling, and independent yet accountable, it amicably shifts from outstanding shot to outstanding shot, infusing its comedic relations with bucolic luxury, its health sustained by its spry self-restraint.
I'll have to visit Lac Saint-Jean someday.
Only 5 hours away.
Rent an ATV, do some fishin'.
Hey hey!
(Nice porcupine shot).
Lost in Laos
Alessandro Zunino's sly transformational obscurely poised Lost in Laos potentially situates a metamockumentary between two worlds, wherein survival is latticed with familial, relational, and biological vertebrae, adrift in the Laotian jungle, anxiously struggling at home.
On the bilateral, feisty student Daniela (Daniela Camera) sets out with her partner Paolo (Daniele Pitari) to intermingle inebriated and impressionistic filmic observations as part of a wild abandoned ad hoc international trance known as Lost in Laos.
She keeps in contact with her traditional parents until too many substances are consumed at once and she wakes up with Paolo miles from town, down the river, passports and related pieces of identification missing, no food, soaking wet, lost.
The credits set up the film's serious yet sardonic transitional identifications by creatively yet dazzlingly introducing each letter of the crew's names before the name appears in full, at that point in time each character possessing a stable conception of self developed over time, after which the full name breaks apart into its individual components, thereby foreshadowing the upcoming psychological turmoil by the letter.
The creative yet dazzling dynamic sets up the surreal metamockumentary exposition as well, Lost in Laos intellectually diversifying its subject matter while picturesquely percolating a piquant self-awareness, whose bright abnegations voyeuristically mystify.
The boundary between truth and fiction forms part of Daniela's thesis and this dialectical deployment caused me to wonder if the film was really about either an aging professional couple imagining what life would have been like if they had taken more risks, or a young adventurous couple theorizing on the benefits of a bourgeois life spent together.
At which point I had to take mockumentary itself into consideration, wondering if Zunino was eruditely lampooning this style of analysis to simply present a troublemaking voyage of discovery.
Difficult to say.
On the bilateral, feisty student Daniela (Daniela Camera) sets out with her partner Paolo (Daniele Pitari) to intermingle inebriated and impressionistic filmic observations as part of a wild abandoned ad hoc international trance known as Lost in Laos.
She keeps in contact with her traditional parents until too many substances are consumed at once and she wakes up with Paolo miles from town, down the river, passports and related pieces of identification missing, no food, soaking wet, lost.
The credits set up the film's serious yet sardonic transitional identifications by creatively yet dazzlingly introducing each letter of the crew's names before the name appears in full, at that point in time each character possessing a stable conception of self developed over time, after which the full name breaks apart into its individual components, thereby foreshadowing the upcoming psychological turmoil by the letter.
The creative yet dazzling dynamic sets up the surreal metamockumentary exposition as well, Lost in Laos intellectually diversifying its subject matter while picturesquely percolating a piquant self-awareness, whose bright abnegations voyeuristically mystify.
The boundary between truth and fiction forms part of Daniela's thesis and this dialectical deployment caused me to wonder if the film was really about either an aging professional couple imagining what life would have been like if they had taken more risks, or a young adventurous couple theorizing on the benefits of a bourgeois life spent together.
At which point I had to take mockumentary itself into consideration, wondering if Zunino was eruditely lampooning this style of analysis to simply present a troublemaking voyage of discovery.
Difficult to say.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Blackfish
Glad I don't work for Seaworld.
Seems to me, that if you capture a killer whale, and stick him or her in a bathtub for the rest of his or her life, forcing them to do ridiculous tricks thereafter, there are going to be problems, problems, problems, as the decades go by.
And if one of the orcas kills a trainer, you should release it back into the wild afterwards, making sure to warn current and future employees about the dangers of working with them, in order to mitigate future conflicts, if you don't decide to simply let them all go, to roam the ocean freely at their leisure.
But while working at Sealand formerly of Victoria, B.C., an orca named Tilikum did kill a trainer, Seaworld did then purchase him, they didn't let their trainers know about his problematic past, and he did kill again, what is your problem, Seaworld?
Documentary filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite comprehensively examines Seaworld's business practices in Blackfish, expertly intertwining the plights of both orcas and workers, thereby synthesizing environmental and humanistic concerns, while chillingly interspersing promotional Seaworld commercials, in an attempt to help put a definitive end to socioenvironmental circus acts.
Obviously if you're working with orcas or bears or tigers you need to exercise caution at all times.
Obviously if you're employing people to work with them you have to warn them to exercise constant vigilance, and reevaluate your capitalistic considerations once life threatening patterns emerge.
For example, this whale killed someone. Be careful.
The animals might not understand how much stronger they are than humans and may end up killing someone during what they thought was harmless playtime.
They may also go mad after living in cages for years and grow tired of not receiving staple food allotments after failing to perform the perfect trick, and may seek to teach their trainers a lesson of their own.
Blackfish scientifically explores the nature of orcas and the evidence uniformly indicates that they are highly intelligent beings possessing complex emotional matrices, and strong family bonds.
Leave them in the ocean I say, and let them conduct their leviathanesque affairs unabated.
Whalewatching, a fun family friendly option during the right times of the year.
It's a wonderful thing seeing marine life actively and independently engaged.
Seaworld can recuperate lost profits by building an orca themed roller coaster.
Where people sit in killer whale trains.
And are splashed by artificial sea spray at some point during the ride.
Seems to me, that if you capture a killer whale, and stick him or her in a bathtub for the rest of his or her life, forcing them to do ridiculous tricks thereafter, there are going to be problems, problems, problems, as the decades go by.
And if one of the orcas kills a trainer, you should release it back into the wild afterwards, making sure to warn current and future employees about the dangers of working with them, in order to mitigate future conflicts, if you don't decide to simply let them all go, to roam the ocean freely at their leisure.
But while working at Sealand formerly of Victoria, B.C., an orca named Tilikum did kill a trainer, Seaworld did then purchase him, they didn't let their trainers know about his problematic past, and he did kill again, what is your problem, Seaworld?
Documentary filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite comprehensively examines Seaworld's business practices in Blackfish, expertly intertwining the plights of both orcas and workers, thereby synthesizing environmental and humanistic concerns, while chillingly interspersing promotional Seaworld commercials, in an attempt to help put a definitive end to socioenvironmental circus acts.
Obviously if you're working with orcas or bears or tigers you need to exercise caution at all times.
Obviously if you're employing people to work with them you have to warn them to exercise constant vigilance, and reevaluate your capitalistic considerations once life threatening patterns emerge.
For example, this whale killed someone. Be careful.
The animals might not understand how much stronger they are than humans and may end up killing someone during what they thought was harmless playtime.
They may also go mad after living in cages for years and grow tired of not receiving staple food allotments after failing to perform the perfect trick, and may seek to teach their trainers a lesson of their own.
Blackfish scientifically explores the nature of orcas and the evidence uniformly indicates that they are highly intelligent beings possessing complex emotional matrices, and strong family bonds.
Leave them in the ocean I say, and let them conduct their leviathanesque affairs unabated.
Whalewatching, a fun family friendly option during the right times of the year.
It's a wonderful thing seeing marine life actively and independently engaged.
Seaworld can recuperate lost profits by building an orca themed roller coaster.
Where people sit in killer whale trains.
And are splashed by artificial sea spray at some point during the ride.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
We're the Millers
A cornucopia of unrefined protracted sleaze, non-traditional role models doing their best to advise, their chosen economic insignias problematizing their bourgeois endorsements, choosing questionable yet confident manners of expression, juxtaposed with professional counterparts whose assiduity assumes authority yet lacks respectability, the perseverance of youth humanely automatizing errors in judgment, so many errors in judgment, serendipitously sanctioned, incontinently divine.
The film struggles as its characters acclimatize themselves to each other.
All you really have to do is write about what happens and you're good.
Although you're really not supposed to do that.
There are so many good ideas worked into We're the Millers's script that thinking about what happens afterwards trumps actually watching the film, many of the jokes falling flat, not that there aren't hilarious moments.
For me, it's most significant flaw is a product of the enormous and commendable risks that went into its construction, an attempt to simultaneously deconstruct and build-up cherished yet occasionally hypocritical codes of conduct, the juxtaposition requiring a contraceptive consensus to export its value that never intangibly materializes.
Lacking stability, character development is sacrificed for references and in/direct pop cultural criticisms, leaving it blindly searching for a good episode of Family Guy, rather than focusing on Trailer Park Boys, season 2.
The film struggles as its characters acclimatize themselves to each other.
All you really have to do is write about what happens and you're good.
Although you're really not supposed to do that.
There are so many good ideas worked into We're the Millers's script that thinking about what happens afterwards trumps actually watching the film, many of the jokes falling flat, not that there aren't hilarious moments.
For me, it's most significant flaw is a product of the enormous and commendable risks that went into its construction, an attempt to simultaneously deconstruct and build-up cherished yet occasionally hypocritical codes of conduct, the juxtaposition requiring a contraceptive consensus to export its value that never intangibly materializes.
Lacking stability, character development is sacrificed for references and in/direct pop cultural criticisms, leaving it blindly searching for a good episode of Family Guy, rather than focusing on Trailer Park Boys, season 2.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Elysium
Universal healthcare, workplace health and safety initiatives, and true love are spatially vindicated in Neill Blomkamp's Elysium, wherein the unsympathetic inprickacies of a totalitarian state create an orderly robotic despotic exactitude whose overbearing calculations encourage widespread temporal discontent.
A colony for the wealthiest has been created in space on a station known as Elysium, whose cloistered citizens enjoy incomparable privilege and general legal impunity.
On Elysium, everything is relatively perfect, advanced technologies guaranteeing ideal health and well-being, pools, mansions, extravagance, for all.
For the 99.9% still living on an overpopulated underfunded desolate and impoverished planet Earth, in the year 2154, the law is applied authoritatively and immediately, statistical automatons having replaced the potentially understanding, the struggling worker left with no harmless option but to silently obey.
But even though Elysium possesses enormous technological and financial superiority, Earth's population is too large to ubiquitously suppress, and a group of freedom fighters, whose poverty and encumbering lack of resources necessitates a frugal expedient expensive quid pro quo, covertly flourish in the rubble, using their brilliant hands-on luminosities, to keep a faint degree of hope alive.
Extremes abound.
With characterless villains.
Their attempts to degrade the system even further accidentally nourish an individualistic inductively altruistic messianic thrust, whose attempts to reform were systematically rebuked.
Emphasizing an egalitarian redistribution of resources, and citizenship and advanced healthcare options, for all, Elysium is quite the blockbuster, medically administering a sensationally practical ethical solvency.
Myriad sociopolitical dynamics are built into the script.
Which welds the human factor to the heart of structural change.
A colony for the wealthiest has been created in space on a station known as Elysium, whose cloistered citizens enjoy incomparable privilege and general legal impunity.
On Elysium, everything is relatively perfect, advanced technologies guaranteeing ideal health and well-being, pools, mansions, extravagance, for all.
For the 99.9% still living on an overpopulated underfunded desolate and impoverished planet Earth, in the year 2154, the law is applied authoritatively and immediately, statistical automatons having replaced the potentially understanding, the struggling worker left with no harmless option but to silently obey.
But even though Elysium possesses enormous technological and financial superiority, Earth's population is too large to ubiquitously suppress, and a group of freedom fighters, whose poverty and encumbering lack of resources necessitates a frugal expedient expensive quid pro quo, covertly flourish in the rubble, using their brilliant hands-on luminosities, to keep a faint degree of hope alive.
Extremes abound.
With characterless villains.
Their attempts to degrade the system even further accidentally nourish an individualistic inductively altruistic messianic thrust, whose attempts to reform were systematically rebuked.
Emphasizing an egalitarian redistribution of resources, and citizenship and advanced healthcare options, for all, Elysium is quite the blockbuster, medically administering a sensationally practical ethical solvency.
Myriad sociopolitical dynamics are built into the script.
Which welds the human factor to the heart of structural change.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Blue Jasmine
Financial fermentations can require that lifestyle adjustments be made, Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine perplexedly yet malleably corrugating lead character Jasmine's (Cate Blanchett) descent into madness, competing economic logistics blending the blunt and the beautiful, comedically interspersing experimental affective influences, opportunity knocking, devotion concocting, bitterness imbibing, ripely spoiled.
The truth can be important.
Truths within truths etherealize.
The ethereal cherishes its material foundations.
Specific bases firmly rooted in itinerant psychohistorical discourses.
Jasmine drifts into the past as social interactions manifest a poppy madeleine effect, but their incremental narrative progressions problematize the device's distractions, the plot being secondary to the reflections in In Search of Lost Time.
I've got to find some way to work Proust into the cinema.
The device itself at first tore me away from Blue Jasmine's narrative thread, interrupting scenes which I was hoping would last much longer, at which point I was mildly frustrated by the intrusion, then lured in by the realism, but initially dissatisfied with the resolution.
Within the resolution, when the distraction's coordinated revelations reveal Jasmine's role as ethical agent, the two narratives synthesize then implode, a symbol for the equation of the imaginary and the real, drinking the water of life, causing her to lose her mind consequently.
Which makes the resolution satisfactory, albeit too neat and tidy, apart from the madness, I suppose.
The act of going with the flow is subtly and not-so-subtly lampooned throughout.
With Sally Hawkins (Ginger), Bobby Cannavale (Chili), and Andrew Dice Clay (Augie).
The truth can be important.
Truths within truths etherealize.
The ethereal cherishes its material foundations.
Specific bases firmly rooted in itinerant psychohistorical discourses.
Jasmine drifts into the past as social interactions manifest a poppy madeleine effect, but their incremental narrative progressions problematize the device's distractions, the plot being secondary to the reflections in In Search of Lost Time.
I've got to find some way to work Proust into the cinema.
The device itself at first tore me away from Blue Jasmine's narrative thread, interrupting scenes which I was hoping would last much longer, at which point I was mildly frustrated by the intrusion, then lured in by the realism, but initially dissatisfied with the resolution.
Within the resolution, when the distraction's coordinated revelations reveal Jasmine's role as ethical agent, the two narratives synthesize then implode, a symbol for the equation of the imaginary and the real, drinking the water of life, causing her to lose her mind consequently.
Which makes the resolution satisfactory, albeit too neat and tidy, apart from the madness, I suppose.
The act of going with the flow is subtly and not-so-subtly lampooned throughout.
With Sally Hawkins (Ginger), Bobby Cannavale (Chili), and Andrew Dice Clay (Augie).
Thursday, August 8, 2013
2 Guns
Centripetally incensing two sharp sabre-toothed cynosures to shifting psychotic solipsistic syndicates, vengefully frothing from within and without, taking precautions which establish guidelines ad hoc, a weathered weaponized multileveled liaison, 2 Guns fires, 2 Guns fires back, a Fred Ward cameo keeps things intact, the script sometimes swoons, occasionally falters, through cutbacks monterey jack, transitional malters, but chemistry can be a wonderful thing, and Denzel and the Wahlberg flow smoothly, ching ching, learning to trust what they've often been taught, is foolhardy nonsense, born, to be bought.
They should seriously do more movies together.
Functioning in fraternal unison.
Excited for the sequel.
Their are a bunch of, for lack of a better phrase, prick moments, where one prick talks business with another, both express their angst, neither comes across looking particularly sympathetic, but their points are made, confidently, confidence backed up by bravado.
The soldiering aspect of this Summer's blockbusters, already inculcated by The Wolverine's frenzy, bridges an international divide in 2 Guns, as Trench (Washington) and Stigman (Wahlberg) are forced to bypass the vehicularly qualified Mexican/American border with a group of hopeful workers, reminiscent of a theme from Pacific Rim as well (soldiering also present in Pacific Rim), Trench and Stigman having been abrasively abused by the CIA (Trench), the American Navy (Stigman), and a cartel Kingpin (Edward James Olmos as Papi Greco)(both), leading them to forge a more comprehensive understanding of social democracy, American style.
The 'oak leaves costume' comment worked well, this being a work of fiction.
Strong female role models are lacking within.
Not much of a focus on technology either.
Also, there's no way Trench and Stigman would have been able to kidnap Greco that easily.
The ease with which he was kidnapped does accentuate raw individualistic teamwork however.
Yes, it does.
They should seriously do more movies together.
Functioning in fraternal unison.
Excited for the sequel.
Their are a bunch of, for lack of a better phrase, prick moments, where one prick talks business with another, both express their angst, neither comes across looking particularly sympathetic, but their points are made, confidently, confidence backed up by bravado.
The soldiering aspect of this Summer's blockbusters, already inculcated by The Wolverine's frenzy, bridges an international divide in 2 Guns, as Trench (Washington) and Stigman (Wahlberg) are forced to bypass the vehicularly qualified Mexican/American border with a group of hopeful workers, reminiscent of a theme from Pacific Rim as well (soldiering also present in Pacific Rim), Trench and Stigman having been abrasively abused by the CIA (Trench), the American Navy (Stigman), and a cartel Kingpin (Edward James Olmos as Papi Greco)(both), leading them to forge a more comprehensive understanding of social democracy, American style.
The 'oak leaves costume' comment worked well, this being a work of fiction.
Strong female role models are lacking within.
Not much of a focus on technology either.
Also, there's no way Trench and Stigman would have been able to kidnap Greco that easily.
The ease with which he was kidnapped does accentuate raw individualistic teamwork however.
Yes, it does.
Fruitvale Station
Tragedy strikes a young struggling family in Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station, as a tough ex-con (Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant) makes the hard decisions necessary to turn his life around.
The film doesn't make him out to be a saint, rather, it delivers a down to earth condensed synopsis of the last few months of his life, during which he comes to terms with the potentially damaging consequences of his extracurricular economic pursuits, and decides it's time to stop selling drugs, find and keep a job, and start applying a higher degree of respect to his partner (Melonie Diaz as Sophina) and daughter (Ariana Neal as Tatiana).
Not so easy to do if you're used to working on your own for more money, but there's respect for working within the law, if you believe in yourself.
Oscar starts to believe but isn't given the chance to make good on his promises after an abusive cop (Kevin Durand as Officer Caruso) unnecessarily roughs up him and his friends one night, another police person then shooting and killing him.
The police had no right to drag them off the train so they were justified in actively voicing their criticisms.
If you do happen to run into a bad lieutenant, however, who has the power to make things difficult for you, and then they start to make things difficult for you, I recommend not saying anything, just keeping quiet, even if they try to provoke you, think of something beautiful, close your eyes after trying to catch their badge number and/or name, and resist passively.
Then they'll have no reason to detain you and if they do anyways just remain quiet until it becomes clear that they have no reason to detain you later on.
There are a lot of situations where this strategy won't work, but if you fight back, things will only get worse.
Freedom is more important than lipping off and the police can take that freedom away.
Or go so far as to take your life, as they did with Oscar Grant.
I'm assuming that in many cases what I'm writing here doesn't apply because the police aren't going to abuse their authority.
They certainly did in Oscar Grant's case though, he was justified in actively voicing his criticisms, and should be currently working and taking care of his family, in the land of the free.
The film doesn't make him out to be a saint, rather, it delivers a down to earth condensed synopsis of the last few months of his life, during which he comes to terms with the potentially damaging consequences of his extracurricular economic pursuits, and decides it's time to stop selling drugs, find and keep a job, and start applying a higher degree of respect to his partner (Melonie Diaz as Sophina) and daughter (Ariana Neal as Tatiana).
Not so easy to do if you're used to working on your own for more money, but there's respect for working within the law, if you believe in yourself.
Oscar starts to believe but isn't given the chance to make good on his promises after an abusive cop (Kevin Durand as Officer Caruso) unnecessarily roughs up him and his friends one night, another police person then shooting and killing him.
The police had no right to drag them off the train so they were justified in actively voicing their criticisms.
If you do happen to run into a bad lieutenant, however, who has the power to make things difficult for you, and then they start to make things difficult for you, I recommend not saying anything, just keeping quiet, even if they try to provoke you, think of something beautiful, close your eyes after trying to catch their badge number and/or name, and resist passively.
Then they'll have no reason to detain you and if they do anyways just remain quiet until it becomes clear that they have no reason to detain you later on.
There are a lot of situations where this strategy won't work, but if you fight back, things will only get worse.
Freedom is more important than lipping off and the police can take that freedom away.
Or go so far as to take your life, as they did with Oscar Grant.
I'm assuming that in many cases what I'm writing here doesn't apply because the police aren't going to abuse their authority.
They certainly did in Oscar Grant's case though, he was justified in actively voicing his criticisms, and should be currently working and taking care of his family, in the land of the free.
Friday, August 2, 2013
The Wolverine
A critical plastic treatise on indestructibility, wherein the mighty Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) regenerative distinction is resolutely compromised, a family's billions intergenerationally contend with their honour, a seductive viper embodies intransitive antidotes, and an adopted perspicuity prognostically makes dire predictions, James Mangold's The Wolverine sentimentalizes Logan's recrudescence, as he reluctantly travels to Japan, to visit, a man whose life he once saved.
Not the best of X-Men films but full of intense scenes which decoratively dilate their doctrine.
Including a wicked-cool high-speed train workout.
For me, it wasn't the trip to the veterinary student that caused Wolverine to begin questioning his mortality, the look on his face as Shingen's (Hiroyuki Sanada) sword punctures his chest lacerating a more penetrating ageless lesion, combatively materializing his countless confrontations with death.
Which strengthens his own conception of honour, reminding him that if he is to die he should die honourably, his encounter with the grizzly earlier on, Wolverine, friend of the bear, laying the foundations of this theme, returned to often enough throughout.
While pointing out how cruel it is to hunt with poison.
But, don't read this if you haven't seen the film, how is it that Professor X (Patrick Stewart) lives again?
He blew up in X-Men: The Last Stand, blew up.
I'm happy to see him back, preferring his approach to Magneto's (Ian McKellen), and am wondering if he transferred his consciousness to Magneto's before his body shattered, and now has the power to create a projection of himself for those by whom he wants to be seen, only after he has stopped the passage of time, which provides a bilateral explanation for how Magneto was able to partially move the chess pieces at the end of X-Men 3, and a rather tight resolution to the Professor X/Magneto conflict, the powers of both leaders adhesively united as one.
Wondering how Mystique will fit into this one.
Her powers must have returned somehow.
Considering watching All of Me again.
Awesome bear scene.
Not the best of X-Men films but full of intense scenes which decoratively dilate their doctrine.
Including a wicked-cool high-speed train workout.
For me, it wasn't the trip to the veterinary student that caused Wolverine to begin questioning his mortality, the look on his face as Shingen's (Hiroyuki Sanada) sword punctures his chest lacerating a more penetrating ageless lesion, combatively materializing his countless confrontations with death.
Which strengthens his own conception of honour, reminding him that if he is to die he should die honourably, his encounter with the grizzly earlier on, Wolverine, friend of the bear, laying the foundations of this theme, returned to often enough throughout.
While pointing out how cruel it is to hunt with poison.
But, don't read this if you haven't seen the film, how is it that Professor X (Patrick Stewart) lives again?
He blew up in X-Men: The Last Stand, blew up.
I'm happy to see him back, preferring his approach to Magneto's (Ian McKellen), and am wondering if he transferred his consciousness to Magneto's before his body shattered, and now has the power to create a projection of himself for those by whom he wants to be seen, only after he has stopped the passage of time, which provides a bilateral explanation for how Magneto was able to partially move the chess pieces at the end of X-Men 3, and a rather tight resolution to the Professor X/Magneto conflict, the powers of both leaders adhesively united as one.
Wondering how Mystique will fit into this one.
Her powers must have returned somehow.
Considering watching All of Me again.
Awesome bear scene.
Monday, July 29, 2013
The Way Way Back
A blunt invasive school-of-hard-knocks step-father imbroglio pejoratively and lasciviously attempts to assert control in Jim Rash and Nat Faxon's dark The Way Way Back, as quasi-conjugal security and stability adjudicates the virtues of its commitment, the historical socializations of both partners and the ways in which they complicate their attempts to activate an ideal contentiously affecting their potentially idyllic summer vacation, a cool misunderstood reserved teen (Liam James as Duncan) struggling his way through, while the bumbling and the beautiful accelerate the malaise.
But a job is discovered, and at this job a carefree yet hardworking cast of endearing lifers collegially coordinate a campy composure, confident and comedic, an freewheeling foil for the judgments of the hyperparticular, wistfully deconstructing their neurotic preoccupations.
I was having trouble coming up with a way to describe The Way Way Back's disconcerting yet feasible obtuse accumulative demeanour, but one scene stylizes this insouciance well.
A fun working day at Water Wizz Waterpark comes to an end, yet the camera suddenly focuses on a young child crying, tantrumly juxtaposing the happy sequence with raw temporal trepidation, editing by Tatiana S. Riegel.
It can easily slip by unnoticed, but if consciously observed, provides a quintessential calibration, which persuasively gesticulates an in/authentically sincere dialectic.
First film I've seen with Rob Corddry (Kip) where he doesn't steal multiple scenes, and it was troubling to see Steve Carell (Trent) playing someone with no redeeming qualities whatsoever (I've only ever watched the British version of The Office).
Sam Rockwell (Owen) and the eye-patch kid (River Alexander as Peter) steal the show.
While watching Rockwell's performance I started to think that he should square off against Ryan Reynolds in a fast-paced kinetic free-flowing homage to jocular jouissance where they're both interested in Carey Mulligan whose a secret lesbian playing them and doting after someone else, directed by Ruben Fleischer.
It could work people!
But a job is discovered, and at this job a carefree yet hardworking cast of endearing lifers collegially coordinate a campy composure, confident and comedic, an freewheeling foil for the judgments of the hyperparticular, wistfully deconstructing their neurotic preoccupations.
I was having trouble coming up with a way to describe The Way Way Back's disconcerting yet feasible obtuse accumulative demeanour, but one scene stylizes this insouciance well.
A fun working day at Water Wizz Waterpark comes to an end, yet the camera suddenly focuses on a young child crying, tantrumly juxtaposing the happy sequence with raw temporal trepidation, editing by Tatiana S. Riegel.
It can easily slip by unnoticed, but if consciously observed, provides a quintessential calibration, which persuasively gesticulates an in/authentically sincere dialectic.
First film I've seen with Rob Corddry (Kip) where he doesn't steal multiple scenes, and it was troubling to see Steve Carell (Trent) playing someone with no redeeming qualities whatsoever (I've only ever watched the British version of The Office).
Sam Rockwell (Owen) and the eye-patch kid (River Alexander as Peter) steal the show.
While watching Rockwell's performance I started to think that he should square off against Ryan Reynolds in a fast-paced kinetic free-flowing homage to jocular jouissance where they're both interested in Carey Mulligan whose a secret lesbian playing them and doting after someone else, directed by Ruben Fleischer.
It could work people!
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Unfinished Song
Routine.
Rock solid routine.
Never changing, never yielding, always the same cantankerous affect, unless he's spending time with his loving devoted wife Marion (Vanessa Redgrave), which is what he does most of the time.
Who sings in a choir.
But when she's diagnosed with terminal cancer and her health begins to rapidly deteriorate, Arthur (Terence Stamp) must simultaneously bat heads with both a crushing sense of helplessness, crippling emotional dynamite, and his rather morose relationship with his only son, James (Christopher Eccleston).
And yes, this guy's a prick.
A loveable curmudgeon he is not, Unfinished Song's script blandly interring a characterless ice age, locked in a cage, a glacial, barricade.
Only the power of music can regenerate his hearty husbandry afterwards, and the film's best feature, the jovial, ebullient, non-traditional choir, lead by the young adventurous Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton) with whom Arthur strikes up a somewhat creepy friendship, is positioned to enable some serious, sultry, soul-searching, sentimental metallurgy, reclamatingly extracting a diamond.
Still, Unfinished Song's no As Good as it Gets, too tame and barren to compete with James L. Brooks's noteworthy creation, not that it isn't worth a viewing, for its modest yet surly depiction of marriage, family and friendship.
Bit of a tearjerker.
Rock solid routine.
Never changing, never yielding, always the same cantankerous affect, unless he's spending time with his loving devoted wife Marion (Vanessa Redgrave), which is what he does most of the time.
Who sings in a choir.
But when she's diagnosed with terminal cancer and her health begins to rapidly deteriorate, Arthur (Terence Stamp) must simultaneously bat heads with both a crushing sense of helplessness, crippling emotional dynamite, and his rather morose relationship with his only son, James (Christopher Eccleston).
And yes, this guy's a prick.
A loveable curmudgeon he is not, Unfinished Song's script blandly interring a characterless ice age, locked in a cage, a glacial, barricade.
Only the power of music can regenerate his hearty husbandry afterwards, and the film's best feature, the jovial, ebullient, non-traditional choir, lead by the young adventurous Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton) with whom Arthur strikes up a somewhat creepy friendship, is positioned to enable some serious, sultry, soul-searching, sentimental metallurgy, reclamatingly extracting a diamond.
Still, Unfinished Song's no As Good as it Gets, too tame and barren to compete with James L. Brooks's noteworthy creation, not that it isn't worth a viewing, for its modest yet surly depiction of marriage, family and friendship.
Bit of a tearjerker.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Kapringen (A Hijacking)
Pirates, sailing the seven seas, or the Indian Ocean in this case, in search of bountiful booty, navigate, locate, negotiate.
Their hostages crew a vessel of little value in the projections of their shipping business, so Tobias Lindholm's Kapringen (A Hijacking) shrewdly economizes a bureaucratic humanism.
Leading the company's negotiating team, contrary to the advice of the expert they hire, is company representative Peter C. Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), whose unassailable acumen accrues early on, but his superlative skills have never prioritized pirates.
The advice is to sternly yet non-confrontationally play hardball, and stern yet non-confrontational hardball is played, leaving the captives and their families submerged in agonizing limbo.
The film poses the question, "does Ludvigsen proceed within humanistic parameters, delicately balancing an incisive international reputation with the needs of terrorized workers, seeking to bring them home as quickly as possible, without bristlingly breaking the bank?"
Obviously you can't give into the initial demands of pirates, but Ludvigsen can't seem to comprehend that his genius cannot match this style of adversary, and he delays until everything the expert suggested would happen, happens.
The workers don't even complain about the length of their incarceration, which I initially thought was a problem with the script, but it actually accentuates Ludvigsen's insatiable misplaced resolve, since they're so lugubriously loyal, because of their situation.
Imperceptibly hijacking the bottom line.
Their hostages crew a vessel of little value in the projections of their shipping business, so Tobias Lindholm's Kapringen (A Hijacking) shrewdly economizes a bureaucratic humanism.
Leading the company's negotiating team, contrary to the advice of the expert they hire, is company representative Peter C. Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), whose unassailable acumen accrues early on, but his superlative skills have never prioritized pirates.
The advice is to sternly yet non-confrontationally play hardball, and stern yet non-confrontational hardball is played, leaving the captives and their families submerged in agonizing limbo.
The film poses the question, "does Ludvigsen proceed within humanistic parameters, delicately balancing an incisive international reputation with the needs of terrorized workers, seeking to bring them home as quickly as possible, without bristlingly breaking the bank?"
Obviously you can't give into the initial demands of pirates, but Ludvigsen can't seem to comprehend that his genius cannot match this style of adversary, and he delays until everything the expert suggested would happen, happens.
The workers don't even complain about the length of their incarceration, which I initially thought was a problem with the script, but it actually accentuates Ludvigsen's insatiable misplaced resolve, since they're so lugubriously loyal, because of their situation.
Imperceptibly hijacking the bottom line.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Pacific Rim
Can't decide if this film was brutal, interdimensional, or exceptional, meaning it was fun, if not ludicrous, to watch.
And write about.
A rift has opened up in the Pacific Ocean from which giant monsters from another dimension (Kaijus) emerge to wreak havoc on various coastal cities, displaying a ferocious universal contempt for diplomacy.
They're difficult to stop, so governments around the world pool their resources to create massive 'robots' known as Jaegers, the ultimate Jaeger Bombs, to combat them.
But bureaucracy intervenes, it's decided that the Jaeger program isn't effective, and its funding is cut off, leaving its proponents forced to find alternative revenue streams, so, when a Kaiju is defeated, its body is sold to opportunistic entrepreneurs, one, named Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), his alias chosen from the Carthaginian military commander Hannibal, and the name of his second-favourite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.
It is also decided that giant walls should be built to keep the Kaijus out, but the walls can't withstand Kaiju impacts, they're extremely dangerous to create, and desperate workers are forced to compete for the limited number of perilous positions which result in their construction.
By wasting enormous amounts of money constructing walls to keep out hostile entities while demonstrating that the jobs created thereby are rather life threatening, Pacific Rim suggests that the construction of giant walls is pure and simply a bad idea.
The Kaijus remain a threat, however, but they threaten everyone, so practically everyone unites around the military to fight them.
Whatever the case, the message is clear, a threat to the planet's sustainable security could unite the world, different Jaegars from different countries still possessing a flair for the local (or at least culturally specific theme music).
After a scene focusing on the plight of the workers, a beautiful Asian heroine is introduced (Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori), and one of the workers, the one provided with a chance to once again partially command a Jaegar (Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket), Jaegar's requiring two pilots functioning as one conscious unit, through drifting, also speaks an Asian language.
Don't know what Pacific Rim's trying to say there.
An oddball scientist and Kaiju enthusiast (Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geiszler) eventually drifts with a disembodied piece of preserved Kaiju brain to discover that the Kaijus are planning to colonize the Earth because global warming has ruined our environment to such an extent that it's become a perfect match for Kaiju physiology.
Nice touch.
Possibly the best Godzilla movie ever, taking Real Steel to the next level, charming cheese infused with bellicose brawn, where time is a potent factor and group dynamics require a reluctant resilient cohesivity, Pacific Rim seeks no forgiveness for its action, and exfoliates a bombastic, brilliant, banality.
Quotable lines abound.
And write about.
A rift has opened up in the Pacific Ocean from which giant monsters from another dimension (Kaijus) emerge to wreak havoc on various coastal cities, displaying a ferocious universal contempt for diplomacy.
They're difficult to stop, so governments around the world pool their resources to create massive 'robots' known as Jaegers, the ultimate Jaeger Bombs, to combat them.
But bureaucracy intervenes, it's decided that the Jaeger program isn't effective, and its funding is cut off, leaving its proponents forced to find alternative revenue streams, so, when a Kaiju is defeated, its body is sold to opportunistic entrepreneurs, one, named Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), his alias chosen from the Carthaginian military commander Hannibal, and the name of his second-favourite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.
It is also decided that giant walls should be built to keep the Kaijus out, but the walls can't withstand Kaiju impacts, they're extremely dangerous to create, and desperate workers are forced to compete for the limited number of perilous positions which result in their construction.
By wasting enormous amounts of money constructing walls to keep out hostile entities while demonstrating that the jobs created thereby are rather life threatening, Pacific Rim suggests that the construction of giant walls is pure and simply a bad idea.
The Kaijus remain a threat, however, but they threaten everyone, so practically everyone unites around the military to fight them.
Whatever the case, the message is clear, a threat to the planet's sustainable security could unite the world, different Jaegars from different countries still possessing a flair for the local (or at least culturally specific theme music).
After a scene focusing on the plight of the workers, a beautiful Asian heroine is introduced (Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori), and one of the workers, the one provided with a chance to once again partially command a Jaegar (Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket), Jaegar's requiring two pilots functioning as one conscious unit, through drifting, also speaks an Asian language.
Don't know what Pacific Rim's trying to say there.
An oddball scientist and Kaiju enthusiast (Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geiszler) eventually drifts with a disembodied piece of preserved Kaiju brain to discover that the Kaijus are planning to colonize the Earth because global warming has ruined our environment to such an extent that it's become a perfect match for Kaiju physiology.
Nice touch.
Possibly the best Godzilla movie ever, taking Real Steel to the next level, charming cheese infused with bellicose brawn, where time is a potent factor and group dynamics require a reluctant resilient cohesivity, Pacific Rim seeks no forgiveness for its action, and exfoliates a bombastic, brilliant, banality.
Quotable lines abound.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The Lone Ranger
A naive child's material desires accidentally instigate a collusive capitalistic intercultural catastrophe, as contemporary conditionals refurbish historical hindsights with oratorical laments, and a story is told, details epically bulleted, questions, considerations, responses, internally and externally as the dialogue between listener and storyteller is narratively emboldened, and The Lone Ranger arrives incognito, possessing both lock and key, determined to develop a fair and equitable jurisprudent viaduct, even after it becomes clear that the canyon's been railroaded.
A sincere yet ingenuous circumspective screw, he lacks the pugnacious grit his fellow citizens unconsciously prevaricate, yet is aptly suited for the role of quizzical non sequitur, twisting and turning to fasten himself to the margins.
The film's first 45 minutes are a fast-paced exhilarating hyperkinetic mélange of symbolism and ideology, economically and stereoscopically situated, frothing, gushing, crushing.
The rest awkwardly yet entertainingly condenses myriad systemic tropes, honesty and integrity occupying the position of outcast in a direct no-nonsense Western filmscape (cinematography by Bojan Bazelli), wherein established politicians and lawbreakers represent both sides of an irremediable coin.
Tonto (Johnny Depp) and the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) activate a spiritually guided sense of justice, the former having no recourse to courts of law, the latter dedicated to enabling one.
The mask remains.
Also an imaginative account of what can be created if one frequently visits museums, libraries, art galleries, etc.
While taking an interest in sport.
A sincere yet ingenuous circumspective screw, he lacks the pugnacious grit his fellow citizens unconsciously prevaricate, yet is aptly suited for the role of quizzical non sequitur, twisting and turning to fasten himself to the margins.
The film's first 45 minutes are a fast-paced exhilarating hyperkinetic mélange of symbolism and ideology, economically and stereoscopically situated, frothing, gushing, crushing.
The rest awkwardly yet entertainingly condenses myriad systemic tropes, honesty and integrity occupying the position of outcast in a direct no-nonsense Western filmscape (cinematography by Bojan Bazelli), wherein established politicians and lawbreakers represent both sides of an irremediable coin.
Tonto (Johnny Depp) and the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) activate a spiritually guided sense of justice, the former having no recourse to courts of law, the latter dedicated to enabling one.
The mask remains.
Also an imaginative account of what can be created if one frequently visits museums, libraries, art galleries, etc.
While taking an interest in sport.
Friday, July 12, 2013
The Internship
As versatile exploratory eclectronic dynamics instigate widespread structural changes within the American economy, two salespersons, two heroes, must reconfigure their occupational allegiances, adjusting their garrulous genuflections to an in/directly interactive domain, sticking to their guns while leaving room for error, boldly entering a new domain where Vince Vaughn (Billy McMahon) has never gone before, wherein past general approaches must swiftly absorb sundry divergent nodes and particulars to fasten new understandings to a previously non-existent fluctuating multifaceted computational interface, psychologically constructed on the fly, after which previous sustainable reflexes find themselves transfigured yet productively cogent, as youth and age contend in a transfixed multiplex.
Or Billy and Nick (Owen Wilson) compete for new jobs while working with youthful misfits initially unreceptive to the ethos of the 1980s.
I suppose Mr. Vaughn has gone here before, The Internship bearing remarkable similarities to Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, but this format fits well, and the film contains some hilarious moments.
I didn't like how Billy ditches the team near the end, just like in Dodgeball, but as the team comes together to build him back up, it becomes apparent that he was indeed a good teacher, constructively no longer feeling like a failure as the obvious beneficial affects of his wisecracking salespersonship animate his teammates, a cooperative collegial streamwise dialectic.
The Internship finds a way to interpersonalize doom and gloom forcastes hewed from theorized claims that the net is depersonalizing general social interactions, comedically encoding a face-to-face aesthetic, while incorporating competitive clashes in an asinine yet convivial flashdance.
Not Vaughn's best work, but a fun intergenerational summertime flick, worth checking out for some cheeky commentary and head shaking laughs.
Owen Wilson, also good.
What a feeling.
Or Billy and Nick (Owen Wilson) compete for new jobs while working with youthful misfits initially unreceptive to the ethos of the 1980s.
I suppose Mr. Vaughn has gone here before, The Internship bearing remarkable similarities to Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, but this format fits well, and the film contains some hilarious moments.
I didn't like how Billy ditches the team near the end, just like in Dodgeball, but as the team comes together to build him back up, it becomes apparent that he was indeed a good teacher, constructively no longer feeling like a failure as the obvious beneficial affects of his wisecracking salespersonship animate his teammates, a cooperative collegial streamwise dialectic.
The Internship finds a way to interpersonalize doom and gloom forcastes hewed from theorized claims that the net is depersonalizing general social interactions, comedically encoding a face-to-face aesthetic, while incorporating competitive clashes in an asinine yet convivial flashdance.
Not Vaughn's best work, but a fun intergenerational summertime flick, worth checking out for some cheeky commentary and head shaking laughs.
Owen Wilson, also good.
What a feeling.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo)
Assembly lines randomly recite a literary legion of improvisationalists who immediately harness their impressions ensemble with the goal of creating a tale of romantic note.
As the awareness of being written gesticulates limitless extraneous sensual amenities suddenly enlighten, becoming subjects of study or being callously yet festively disregarded, foreshadowing the genesis of love's interest.
The amenities coalesce with a practical and ingenious array of irresistible logical displacements whose metaphoric merits urbanely defy any sense of symmetrical cohesion.
What a world, what a world.
A tragic plot does take shape however whose voluminous sorrows, intricately and in/tangibly elaborated upon and refined, bear witness to the indoctrination of the real, whose vice-like grip expedites decay, within.
It's pointless to say that L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo) should have been more surreal due to its experimental necessarily incoherent design, since its residual plot provides enough relational factors to make its aesthetic accessible, truly as a subject of beauty, and, if I'm not mistaken, Michel Gondry's saying that a minimum layer of consistency and logic enables radical indulgence to support its erratic spontaneity, although the internal despondency was disquieting as the film progressed.
Don't think I'll ever think of indigo again without thinking about this film, or stop searching in vain for a neat pianocktail.
Terraces in the afternoon.
Nothing but time.
As the awareness of being written gesticulates limitless extraneous sensual amenities suddenly enlighten, becoming subjects of study or being callously yet festively disregarded, foreshadowing the genesis of love's interest.
The amenities coalesce with a practical and ingenious array of irresistible logical displacements whose metaphoric merits urbanely defy any sense of symmetrical cohesion.
What a world, what a world.
A tragic plot does take shape however whose voluminous sorrows, intricately and in/tangibly elaborated upon and refined, bear witness to the indoctrination of the real, whose vice-like grip expedites decay, within.
It's pointless to say that L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo) should have been more surreal due to its experimental necessarily incoherent design, since its residual plot provides enough relational factors to make its aesthetic accessible, truly as a subject of beauty, and, if I'm not mistaken, Michel Gondry's saying that a minimum layer of consistency and logic enables radical indulgence to support its erratic spontaneity, although the internal despondency was disquieting as the film progressed.
Don't think I'll ever think of indigo again without thinking about this film, or stop searching in vain for a neat pianocktail.
Terraces in the afternoon.
Nothing but time.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Frances Ha
Mismatched integrities and harmonious discrepancies awkwardly balance Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha, infuriating yet emancipating missteps and miscues deftly choreographing the undatable's sprightly adaptation to bourgeois vignettes, which catalyze her own artistic vertices.
Forwards, backwards, backwards to move forwards, the other way around, friendships, apprenticeships, the rent.
A comment on commentary, budgets and bivouacs and biology belittling and embowering a transient sense of permanency.
Should one possess an exhaustive knowledge of French prior to reading Proust in order to fully appreciate his crystalline stylistic calaesthetic?
That's best case, but credit should be given to Terence Kilmartin, Andreas Mayor, and D. J. Enright for creating such an accessible English access point in the meantime, incomparably brilliant acts of translation, a poetic compliment to the gen(i)us of both languages.
Just sayin'!
Frances Ha buoyantly yet frantically dissolves convivial points of reference to magnify a being-in-becoming, a fluctuating, stable intransigist.
Dinner with the successful can be that painful.
Good food though.
Yum.
Forwards, backwards, backwards to move forwards, the other way around, friendships, apprenticeships, the rent.
A comment on commentary, budgets and bivouacs and biology belittling and embowering a transient sense of permanency.
Should one possess an exhaustive knowledge of French prior to reading Proust in order to fully appreciate his crystalline stylistic calaesthetic?
That's best case, but credit should be given to Terence Kilmartin, Andreas Mayor, and D. J. Enright for creating such an accessible English access point in the meantime, incomparably brilliant acts of translation, a poetic compliment to the gen(i)us of both languages.
Just sayin'!
Frances Ha buoyantly yet frantically dissolves convivial points of reference to magnify a being-in-becoming, a fluctuating, stable intransigist.
Dinner with the successful can be that painful.
Good food though.
Yum.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
1er amour
Whoa.
Hold on a second.
What the hell just happened?
Trauma, maximized.
Traditional everything, capsized.
An idyllic summer of youthful exploration, satirized.
Desire and the literary imagination, terrorized.
Or distilled, depending on whether or not young Antoine (Loïc Esteves) and Anna (Marianne Fortier) can poetically compute.
The setting is idyllic. Traditional notions of marriage are elevated. The pivotal moment synthesizes far too many constitutional traumatic clefts for Guillaume Sylvestre's 1er amour not to be considered satirical.
While trying to write a breakthrough novel.
Classical music, cicading un/aware.
The shots of the insects etc. innocently foreshadow.
Is M. Sylvestre trying to classically pinpoint a salacious oxymoronic yet foundational postmodern quintessence or simply diagnosing a psychiatrist's dream?
The final image of the boat speeding away, the family unit confined yet in constant motion, offers little guidance.
But that look on his face.
The risk factor, Lothario, focus on the risk factor.
I might have released this in November.
Solid satire.
Hold on a second.
What the hell just happened?
Trauma, maximized.
Traditional everything, capsized.
An idyllic summer of youthful exploration, satirized.
Desire and the literary imagination, terrorized.
Or distilled, depending on whether or not young Antoine (Loïc Esteves) and Anna (Marianne Fortier) can poetically compute.
The setting is idyllic. Traditional notions of marriage are elevated. The pivotal moment synthesizes far too many constitutional traumatic clefts for Guillaume Sylvestre's 1er amour not to be considered satirical.
While trying to write a breakthrough novel.
Classical music, cicading un/aware.
The shots of the insects etc. innocently foreshadow.
Is M. Sylvestre trying to classically pinpoint a salacious oxymoronic yet foundational postmodern quintessence or simply diagnosing a psychiatrist's dream?
The final image of the boat speeding away, the family unit confined yet in constant motion, offers little guidance.
But that look on his face.
The risk factor, Lothario, focus on the risk factor.
I might have released this in November.
Solid satire.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
The East
Professional integrity lands itself a high-level covert assignment, full of danger and risk, wherein it must clandestinely adjudicate its broad range of astute sociological reflexes to infiltrate a stealth pack of humanistic hyperreactivists and expose their audacious whereabouts.
She finds them far too easily, but after coyly yet adhesively nestling, finds herself inductively considering their proactive cause, which seeks stricter much more effective regulations regarding the ways in which big business generates profit.
She works for a rather big business herself and must come to terms with its motives as she becomes increasingly integrated in both domains.
Her partner is frustrated.
Her conscience is bifurcated.
Friendships coalesce.
She is neither arrogant nor weak.
The East melodramatically yet crucially materializes the dissonant underground social dynamics of altruistically pursuing game changing objectives (the comments made by the underground collective occasionally seem at odds with their ethical ideals), bringing some of Terry Eagleton's arguments to life, without shying away from juxtaposing economic with ethical impoverishment.
The scene where Izzy's (Ellen Page) estranged parent jumps in the toxic sludge works well.
Laws can be made to correspond to the goals fought for in this film.
Made and enforced.
Check out Vincent Lam's Tommy Douglas, part of Penguin's Extraordinary Canadians series, and find out what the CCF party did for ordinary hard working citizens of Saskatchewan in a relatively short period of time, when a lot of people thought nothing could be done.
They enacted social democratic change while balancing the budget.
They proceeded cautiously and soundly to legitimize their movement's thrust.
Not that easy to do of course, but there are people all over the world who become rather upset when their water supply turns carcinogenic.
It's just common sense.
She finds them far too easily, but after coyly yet adhesively nestling, finds herself inductively considering their proactive cause, which seeks stricter much more effective regulations regarding the ways in which big business generates profit.
She works for a rather big business herself and must come to terms with its motives as she becomes increasingly integrated in both domains.
Her partner is frustrated.
Her conscience is bifurcated.
Friendships coalesce.
She is neither arrogant nor weak.
The East melodramatically yet crucially materializes the dissonant underground social dynamics of altruistically pursuing game changing objectives (the comments made by the underground collective occasionally seem at odds with their ethical ideals), bringing some of Terry Eagleton's arguments to life, without shying away from juxtaposing economic with ethical impoverishment.
The scene where Izzy's (Ellen Page) estranged parent jumps in the toxic sludge works well.
Laws can be made to correspond to the goals fought for in this film.
Made and enforced.
Check out Vincent Lam's Tommy Douglas, part of Penguin's Extraordinary Canadians series, and find out what the CCF party did for ordinary hard working citizens of Saskatchewan in a relatively short period of time, when a lot of people thought nothing could be done.
They enacted social democratic change while balancing the budget.
They proceeded cautiously and soundly to legitimize their movement's thrust.
Not that easy to do of course, but there are people all over the world who become rather upset when their water supply turns carcinogenic.
It's just common sense.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
The Kings of Summer
United off-kilter offspring.
Clinical bourgeois dexterity.
Juvenile introspective applicatory superciliousness.
Plunging right in.
Two friends and an accompanying oddball run away to the woods for the summer, and, since no one thinks to check for them there, their wilderness survival antics wantonly dipsy-doodle.
Perhaps not wantonly.
The Kings of Summer could have been more wanton.
Wanton at times however, as the daydreamy trouble making instigator must realize that he lacks the instincts of the hunter possessed by his lifelong associate who can't figure out what his problem is after the introduction of a feminine element.
Biaggio (Moises Arias) etherealizes a somewhat useless hands-on constructivism with a pertinent decorative unassuming acumen, best captured by the interpretive dance he releases to the beat of his rhythmic companions's drumming.
They interact as would young idealistic ill-prepared yet stubborn teens who find themselves inhabiting a nimble hardy brash funny neurotic filmic reverie.
The other main feature is Joe's (Nick Robinson) sarcastic jaded controlling super strict live-in family member whose prick of a temperament endears him to none.
Although he does steal a couple of scenes with his complete lack of sensitivity.
Suppose the scenes were meant for him.
He doesn't steal them.
These kids aren't that concerned with electronic devices.
They are able to competently manage a budget for awhile anyways however.
When Joe actually does hunt The Kings of Summer reaches a higher level.
Fun film.
Clinical bourgeois dexterity.
Juvenile introspective applicatory superciliousness.
Plunging right in.
Two friends and an accompanying oddball run away to the woods for the summer, and, since no one thinks to check for them there, their wilderness survival antics wantonly dipsy-doodle.
Perhaps not wantonly.
The Kings of Summer could have been more wanton.
Wanton at times however, as the daydreamy trouble making instigator must realize that he lacks the instincts of the hunter possessed by his lifelong associate who can't figure out what his problem is after the introduction of a feminine element.
Biaggio (Moises Arias) etherealizes a somewhat useless hands-on constructivism with a pertinent decorative unassuming acumen, best captured by the interpretive dance he releases to the beat of his rhythmic companions's drumming.
They interact as would young idealistic ill-prepared yet stubborn teens who find themselves inhabiting a nimble hardy brash funny neurotic filmic reverie.
The other main feature is Joe's (Nick Robinson) sarcastic jaded controlling super strict live-in family member whose prick of a temperament endears him to none.
Although he does steal a couple of scenes with his complete lack of sensitivity.
Suppose the scenes were meant for him.
He doesn't steal them.
These kids aren't that concerned with electronic devices.
They are able to competently manage a budget for awhile anyways however.
When Joe actually does hunt The Kings of Summer reaches a higher level.
Fun film.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Man of Steel
The Man of Steel.
Itinerant and contemplative.
Modest and self-sacrificing.
Sculptor of the spectacularly withdrawn.
Called to action.
Zack Snyder's Man of Steel seeks to altruistically benefit humankind while remaining practically skeptical of their leader's self-serving pretensions.
A 21st century Superman, different from Richard Donner's incarnation, the past continuously and instructively resurfacing, as opposed to being left behind at a certain age.
Like Superman on Facebook.
Prominent features of Superman lore, even his title, are humbly introduced, a sign mentioning Smallville here, an advertisement for LexCorp there, as the film's quasi-historical background subtly reflects Kent's (Henry Cavill) psyche.
Although there's no Jimmy Olsen.
The film confrontationally yet reticently undulates surreal mnemonic passages with sensational graphic carnage, Superman style, as the effected take the time to lend a helping hand, the innocent are humanely taken into consideration, methods of disseminating information multiply, and the ego is intransigently mollified.
The environmental movement finds support as Krypton explodes à cause de rampant resource extraction and later on we find a sole polar bear exploring beside the vestiges of his or her once dependable pack ice.
Jor-El (Russell Crowe) rides a wicked cool H'Raka too.
Solid blend of Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980), paying homage to its most convincing predecessors while leaving the door open for more adventurous avenues of inquiry.
General Zod's (Michael Shannon) still a bit of a dickhole.
Wasn't impressed with the new Ursa (Antje Traue as Faora-Ul).
Some of the supporting cast had more depth in the earlier films.
It's not just that I was 7 years old when I first saw them.
It's not.
Itinerant and contemplative.
Modest and self-sacrificing.
Sculptor of the spectacularly withdrawn.
Called to action.
Zack Snyder's Man of Steel seeks to altruistically benefit humankind while remaining practically skeptical of their leader's self-serving pretensions.
A 21st century Superman, different from Richard Donner's incarnation, the past continuously and instructively resurfacing, as opposed to being left behind at a certain age.
Like Superman on Facebook.
Prominent features of Superman lore, even his title, are humbly introduced, a sign mentioning Smallville here, an advertisement for LexCorp there, as the film's quasi-historical background subtly reflects Kent's (Henry Cavill) psyche.
Although there's no Jimmy Olsen.
The film confrontationally yet reticently undulates surreal mnemonic passages with sensational graphic carnage, Superman style, as the effected take the time to lend a helping hand, the innocent are humanely taken into consideration, methods of disseminating information multiply, and the ego is intransigently mollified.
The environmental movement finds support as Krypton explodes à cause de rampant resource extraction and later on we find a sole polar bear exploring beside the vestiges of his or her once dependable pack ice.
Jor-El (Russell Crowe) rides a wicked cool H'Raka too.
Solid blend of Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980), paying homage to its most convincing predecessors while leaving the door open for more adventurous avenues of inquiry.
General Zod's (Michael Shannon) still a bit of a dickhole.
Wasn't impressed with the new Ursa (Antje Traue as Faora-Ul).
Some of the supporting cast had more depth in the earlier films.
It's not just that I was 7 years old when I first saw them.
It's not.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Epic
The people of the forest, immersed in regenerative evergreen trash talk, immune from the industry of the Stompers, yet still perceptive of their high-flying subterfrugal ways, promoting defensive broad-leaf deciduous synergies, with a staunch sustainable virtuous verdure, to cultivate alimentary symbiotics, and an everlasting intergenerational presence.
The Boggans seek to steal Queen Tara's (Beyoncé Knowles) special pod and awaken it in darkness, thereby sentencing their domain to a putrid epoch of unprecedented decay, during which their malodorous minions will leave the environment in ruin.
A distrusting Stomper's diminutive descension unfurls a wild card in full bloom.
Her realistic encounter with what she considered to be her father's crackpot theories forges deep resplendent rudimentary roots, as well as a cornucopia of friendships.
The profession of safeguarding information is integral to the action.
A living, breathing, biodiverse ecotopia of enchantment and wonder, Epic fumigates unfettered industrial predilections to nurture an arboreal florescence.
Bats get a bad rap though.
Bats are necessary components of a thriving ecosystem and would likely gluttonously feast on Boggans.
I've seen countless bats flying around at dusk and have never had one crash into me.
Mischievous asymmetrical mosquito munchers.
Bats!
The Boggans seek to steal Queen Tara's (Beyoncé Knowles) special pod and awaken it in darkness, thereby sentencing their domain to a putrid epoch of unprecedented decay, during which their malodorous minions will leave the environment in ruin.
A distrusting Stomper's diminutive descension unfurls a wild card in full bloom.
Her realistic encounter with what she considered to be her father's crackpot theories forges deep resplendent rudimentary roots, as well as a cornucopia of friendships.
The profession of safeguarding information is integral to the action.
A living, breathing, biodiverse ecotopia of enchantment and wonder, Epic fumigates unfettered industrial predilections to nurture an arboreal florescence.
Bats get a bad rap though.
Bats are necessary components of a thriving ecosystem and would likely gluttonously feast on Boggans.
I've seen countless bats flying around at dusk and have never had one crash into me.
Mischievous asymmetrical mosquito munchers.
Bats!
Thursday, June 13, 2013
The Lesser Blessed
An isolated inflammatory incident weighs heavy on an Aboriginal teen's conscience while his introverted tendencies and disinterest in his small Northern town's sporty proclivities hinder the smooth development of institutional friendships.
A rough-and-tumble ruffian knows his dark secret and holds it over his head like a combustible cataclysmic rendition.
A practical mistrust of adult male role models heightens the chill pervasive tension while his step-father's commanding yet non-confrontational manner patiently proves that his care is genuine.
There are a couple of great coming-of-age scenes, one, where the youngster in question, Larry Sole (Joel Evans), asks step-father Jed (Benjamin Bratt) for an explanation, which he hesitates to provide due to its grizzly subject matter, but then does, thereby treating Larry with hard-edged respect, and another, where, because of The Lesser Blessed's focus on fighting, drug abuse, hooliganism, and sexual desire, it seems as if the interactive outcome will at least be verbally violent, but when sympathetic reason melts the polarization, a prominent role model begins to take shape.
Jed is contrasted with Larry's teacher who seems like he comes from the South and is ill-prepared for the pressurized seclusion of the Northwest Territories.
Jaded yet convivial crafty confrontations liaise with remote yet age-old ceremonious socializations to foster The Lesser Blessed's adolescent acuity, while incubating an atemporal independent compassion.
With smooth contemporary revitalizations of oral traditions.
Bonding by the campfire.
A rough-and-tumble ruffian knows his dark secret and holds it over his head like a combustible cataclysmic rendition.
A practical mistrust of adult male role models heightens the chill pervasive tension while his step-father's commanding yet non-confrontational manner patiently proves that his care is genuine.
There are a couple of great coming-of-age scenes, one, where the youngster in question, Larry Sole (Joel Evans), asks step-father Jed (Benjamin Bratt) for an explanation, which he hesitates to provide due to its grizzly subject matter, but then does, thereby treating Larry with hard-edged respect, and another, where, because of The Lesser Blessed's focus on fighting, drug abuse, hooliganism, and sexual desire, it seems as if the interactive outcome will at least be verbally violent, but when sympathetic reason melts the polarization, a prominent role model begins to take shape.
Jed is contrasted with Larry's teacher who seems like he comes from the South and is ill-prepared for the pressurized seclusion of the Northwest Territories.
Jaded yet convivial crafty confrontations liaise with remote yet age-old ceremonious socializations to foster The Lesser Blessed's adolescent acuity, while incubating an atemporal independent compassion.
With smooth contemporary revitalizations of oral traditions.
Bonding by the campfire.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
After Earth
Professional militaristic familial dynamics unexpectedly find themselves stranded within a forbidding ravenous planetary panopticon, whose evolutionary criteria must be subsumed then surmounted, as predatory predicaments transform snacks into sentiments, in M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth.
The film's more straightforward.
Establishing a basic super-easy-to-follow far too predictable framework, whose truculent dimensions highlight the potential social impacts of an exhausted environment, it focuses intently on a fearless father (Will Smith) and his spirited son, the only survivors of a craft which crash lands on Earth centuries after humans were forced to flee.
The frame isn't necessarily a problem since After Earth's obviously made for a generalized teenage audience, and I liked the fear speech, but, apart from one scene which indicates that enormous buffaloesque herds have returned, I thought the futuristic depiction of Earth could have used more flora and fauna.
Perhaps due to Epic's contemporaneous release this feature was deliberately limited.
Epic for girls, After Earth for boys?
No comment.
The film's more straightforward.
Establishing a basic super-easy-to-follow far too predictable framework, whose truculent dimensions highlight the potential social impacts of an exhausted environment, it focuses intently on a fearless father (Will Smith) and his spirited son, the only survivors of a craft which crash lands on Earth centuries after humans were forced to flee.
The frame isn't necessarily a problem since After Earth's obviously made for a generalized teenage audience, and I liked the fear speech, but, apart from one scene which indicates that enormous buffaloesque herds have returned, I thought the futuristic depiction of Earth could have used more flora and fauna.
Perhaps due to Epic's contemporaneous release this feature was deliberately limited.
Epic for girls, After Earth for boys?
No comment.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Jagten (The Hunt)
An asphyxiating altercating articulation of innocence incrementally fuels fratricidal flames until an upright loving gregarious educator's life lies holistically in ruin.
Thomas Vinterberg patiently and poignantly crafts a traumatic testament of angelic ostracization as a joyful lifelong friend slowly idealizes the abject.
The childlike recreational pursuits of a supportive communal cohesivity introduced at Jagten's (The Hunt's) outset haunts its terrorized reels in an acerbic antiseptic embodiment of consternated dramatic horror.
Nowhere to go.
No reason to run.
The truth's condemnatory instinct is diatonically disreputed as media sensations are pastorally localized.
Difficult and controversial subject matter.
A didactic tool designed to encourage pause and reflection in order to accentuate the right that one is innocent until proven guilty.
And what can happen if that guilt is assumed inveterately beforehand.
Thomas Vinterberg patiently and poignantly crafts a traumatic testament of angelic ostracization as a joyful lifelong friend slowly idealizes the abject.
The childlike recreational pursuits of a supportive communal cohesivity introduced at Jagten's (The Hunt's) outset haunts its terrorized reels in an acerbic antiseptic embodiment of consternated dramatic horror.
Nowhere to go.
No reason to run.
The truth's condemnatory instinct is diatonically disreputed as media sensations are pastorally localized.
Difficult and controversial subject matter.
A didactic tool designed to encourage pause and reflection in order to accentuate the right that one is innocent until proven guilty.
And what can happen if that guilt is assumed inveterately beforehand.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Mud
Innocent pluck tenderly, loyally, and brazenly clashes with his ideals as their real world applications resoundingly prove despairing.
Not that they aren't still omnipresent, as vital to those whose desires and incomes problematize their sustainability as to those whose iron will does not, uncompromised dedication liaising with starvation and prevarication to slowly devastate an unyielding devotion, destructive acts of retributive jealousy increasing in proportion with their subject's maniacal progressions, with no recourse to substantial alternative educational or economic detachments, to productively cover things up.
Mud's (Matthew McConaughey) love for Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) defines his sense of purpose as a career or a pastime might define another, and only after seeing his self naively rematerialized in the form of a 14-year-old risking everything to help him, does difference dawn.
Jeff Nichol's Mud ruggedly evaporates an accidental transient symbiotic bilateral pact, having uplifted both partners in its unwritten momentary apotheosis.
Seen through a child's eyes, many of the film's sequences are oversimplified.
Strength of character compensates.
Mandatory for lovers of romantic impoverished hard-hitting innovative coming of age bucolics.
Not that they aren't still omnipresent, as vital to those whose desires and incomes problematize their sustainability as to those whose iron will does not, uncompromised dedication liaising with starvation and prevarication to slowly devastate an unyielding devotion, destructive acts of retributive jealousy increasing in proportion with their subject's maniacal progressions, with no recourse to substantial alternative educational or economic detachments, to productively cover things up.
Mud's (Matthew McConaughey) love for Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) defines his sense of purpose as a career or a pastime might define another, and only after seeing his self naively rematerialized in the form of a 14-year-old risking everything to help him, does difference dawn.
Jeff Nichol's Mud ruggedly evaporates an accidental transient symbiotic bilateral pact, having uplifted both partners in its unwritten momentary apotheosis.
Seen through a child's eyes, many of the film's sequences are oversimplified.
Strength of character compensates.
Mandatory for lovers of romantic impoverished hard-hitting innovative coming of age bucolics.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Kon-Tiki
Since a young age I've preserved a healthy skepticism regarding whether or not Columbus discovered America.
As I'm sure many others have as well.
Noting that many of my interlocutors have always maintained a healthy degree of mistrust regarding anything people other than themselves happen to mention, and figuring that this is nothing new, that people have always cultivated such suspicions, it seems hard for me to believe that everyone agreed that the Earth was flat way back when, and that a bunch of disenfranchised trouble makers never simply jumped on a boat to sail the open unrecorded seas, forbidding prohibitions be damned.
I know there are continents on the other side of whatever ocean.
But if I didn't, yet I knew there were islands in the middle of mainland lakes, I could easily hypothesize that similar landmasses existed offshore, and confidently set out in search of their voluptuous bounties.
Thinking ancient cultures didn't travel open waters trading and communicating with each other ir/regularly is too Eurocentric a viewpoint for my tastes, too reliant on the written word, as it was for Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen) in Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Kon-Tiki, who sets out to prove that Indigenous Polynesians already knew, thanks to their reliable oral traditions, that some of their islands were settled from the East as opposed to the West, by ancient Peruvians bravely crossing the Pacific.
Thor boldly proceeds with a crew of 5 adventurers, on a raft, across the Pacific, with no support from the scientific communities of his day, risking everything to expand certain understandings.
Kon-Tiki congenially presents a family friendly bit too comfortable narrative considering wherein hope, faith, inspiration, and truth miraculously guide a stalwart team, with endless shots of their leader (Norway's Peter O'Toole?), and the crabby sentiments of a pesky stowaway.
Its best sequence shows how broken attachments lead to immediate retributions whose consequences, instigated after a confrontational organizational challenge, pits trust against doubt, the same doubt that Heyerdahl represents regarding established truths of his time, said trust triumphing, and said consequences, the situation demanding an immediate life saving response, prove remarkable fortuitous, if not generally foolhardy.
It also productively examines group dynamics for although Herman Watzinger's (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) doubt threatens his group's cohesiveness at times, his continuing presence provides them with the information they need to avoid disaster as they approach their destination, thereby elevating the film's conception of a critical yet devout unified team.
A contemporary established theory that I often hear referenced that seems suspect to me suggests that North and South America were populated by peoples walking across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.
I've also heard other people suspect this theory and am drawing on such conversations (and writings) in presenting this idea.
And I mean, seriously, enough people crossed this bridge to cultivate multidimensional populations from Tuktoyaktuk to Patagonia, walking all the way, only crossing a land bridge between East Asia and Alaska?
Makes more sense to me that there were already peoples inhabiting North and South America and some eventually walked over the bridge to join them.
Does anyone dispute that Australia's Indigenous population lived there for millennia before first European contact?
Worth investigating anyways.
As I'm sure many others have as well.
Noting that many of my interlocutors have always maintained a healthy degree of mistrust regarding anything people other than themselves happen to mention, and figuring that this is nothing new, that people have always cultivated such suspicions, it seems hard for me to believe that everyone agreed that the Earth was flat way back when, and that a bunch of disenfranchised trouble makers never simply jumped on a boat to sail the open unrecorded seas, forbidding prohibitions be damned.
I know there are continents on the other side of whatever ocean.
But if I didn't, yet I knew there were islands in the middle of mainland lakes, I could easily hypothesize that similar landmasses existed offshore, and confidently set out in search of their voluptuous bounties.
Thinking ancient cultures didn't travel open waters trading and communicating with each other ir/regularly is too Eurocentric a viewpoint for my tastes, too reliant on the written word, as it was for Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen) in Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Kon-Tiki, who sets out to prove that Indigenous Polynesians already knew, thanks to their reliable oral traditions, that some of their islands were settled from the East as opposed to the West, by ancient Peruvians bravely crossing the Pacific.
Thor boldly proceeds with a crew of 5 adventurers, on a raft, across the Pacific, with no support from the scientific communities of his day, risking everything to expand certain understandings.
Kon-Tiki congenially presents a family friendly bit too comfortable narrative considering wherein hope, faith, inspiration, and truth miraculously guide a stalwart team, with endless shots of their leader (Norway's Peter O'Toole?), and the crabby sentiments of a pesky stowaway.
Its best sequence shows how broken attachments lead to immediate retributions whose consequences, instigated after a confrontational organizational challenge, pits trust against doubt, the same doubt that Heyerdahl represents regarding established truths of his time, said trust triumphing, and said consequences, the situation demanding an immediate life saving response, prove remarkable fortuitous, if not generally foolhardy.
It also productively examines group dynamics for although Herman Watzinger's (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) doubt threatens his group's cohesiveness at times, his continuing presence provides them with the information they need to avoid disaster as they approach their destination, thereby elevating the film's conception of a critical yet devout unified team.
A contemporary established theory that I often hear referenced that seems suspect to me suggests that North and South America were populated by peoples walking across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.
I've also heard other people suspect this theory and am drawing on such conversations (and writings) in presenting this idea.
And I mean, seriously, enough people crossed this bridge to cultivate multidimensional populations from Tuktoyaktuk to Patagonia, walking all the way, only crossing a land bridge between East Asia and Alaska?
Makes more sense to me that there were already peoples inhabiting North and South America and some eventually walked over the bridge to join them.
Does anyone dispute that Australia's Indigenous population lived there for millennia before first European contact?
Worth investigating anyways.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
The Great Gatsby
Extravagant timidity humbly refrains an opulent recourse to true's love sustain.
Spare no expense, attract the best and the brightest, the emotion's too deep, the goal of the tightest.
Business contacts whose illicit elixirs submerge their protractive congenial mixtures.
Sponsor time honoured traditions of courtship, implying ambitious circuitous quartets.
As fate's lavish weave blends with chance's reprieve, the noblest of dreams hail permanency.
For people, and Queens, and the prettiest things.
Preferred Australia and Moulin Rouge!
Spare no expense, attract the best and the brightest, the emotion's too deep, the goal of the tightest.
Business contacts whose illicit elixirs submerge their protractive congenial mixtures.
Sponsor time honoured traditions of courtship, implying ambitious circuitous quartets.
As fate's lavish weave blends with chance's reprieve, the noblest of dreams hail permanency.
For people, and Queens, and the prettiest things.
Preferred Australia and Moulin Rouge!
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Star Trek Into Darkness
Star Trek, born again.
Was a bit disappointed that Star Trek was born again with the crew from The Original Series, but it's not like there aren't manifold versions of Hamlet out there, Batman will likely live to see another day, Hawaii Five-O is back (I've never seen either of the series), and Beatles and Rolling Stones cover bands will likely continue to sing for centuries to come.
I was hoping to see the Rolling Stones in Montréal next month but the cheapest seat I could find near the rafters costs over 200 hundred dollars. I paid 34 dollars to see them in 1994.
Bring on the cover bands.
Star Trek Into Darkness confidently gambles that the success of its predecessor paved the way for it to take greater liberties with Star Trek's most sacred moments, and I'm assuming every Trekkie has already seen the film twice, and are already dividing into different fastidious factions, each with their own take on the reintroduction of Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch), and the pastiche of Star Trek II's classic ending, so I'm discussing related plot details.
In my opinion, the new cast and crew of the Starship Enterprise were ill-equipped and unready to incorporate this classic ending, nor the famous Khan scream, and their sophomoric attempts to do so, more concerned with travelling at warp speed than taking the time to generate genuine emotion, even though the trap they fall into justifies this dependence, and within the film the new cast and crew is ill-equipped and unready to confront their adversaries, were, still, disheartening.
The cameo from Leonard Nimoy didn't suck me in.
Giving Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and Sulu (John Cho) expanded responsibilities while leaving them primarily in the background heightened the tension.
The who-should-be-captain dialogue between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) was played out in the last film.
And McCoy's (Karl Urban) all wrong (no offense to Karl Urban, he does his best with the material).
Still though, if they hadn't touched Star Trek II's ending, and classic Khan scream, Into Darkness could have been quite different.
And it's not that I didn't think the fight between Khan and Spock was awesome. It's always awesome when Spock suddenly fights in a Star Trek moment, since you suddenly remember that not only is he one of the phenomenon's smartest humanoid characters, he's also one of the toughest.
Giving Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) a strong supporting hopefully continuous role was a great idea.
Introducing consequential conflict amongst the senior staff, Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Kirk, went beyond the professional dynamics found in the films featuring the cast of The Original Series, and since this consequential conflict sees constructive results, it fits nicely with contemporary conflict management theories, while directly encouraging freewill.
Benedict Cumberbatch impresses as Khan.
Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Spock's relationship reappears but isn't focused upon, rather, it comically ameliorates an otherwise typical shuttlecraft descension, accentuating the difficulties of sustaining romantic ties to people with whom you work, while giving Spock a memorable opportunity to advance his coherent logic.
Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) provides a pestiferous dimension rarely seen within the Federation, thereby diversifying Star Trek's internal cohesions, while preempting a sequel, sigh, where there's a war with the Klingons.
This seems more like Picard territory, where there's a possible war, but Picard finds a way to negotiate a peaceful settlement.
Much too early for Picard however.
Perhaps the Borg will attack midway resulting in a sudden pact between Klingons and the Federation.
Kirk never fought the Borg.
Please don't revisit the Nexus.
But a different ending. Something radically different. This would have lessened the cheesy kitsch factor and not caused me to immediately remove my 3D glasses.
The Wrath of Khan is the only Star Trek film that can stand on its own outside the Star Trek parallax.
Discourses of the sacred.
Khan!
Monday, May 20, 2013
Blackbird
Examining the abysmal side of small town teenage individuality, as the newer kid, a goth stranger from the city who can't adjust to hushing up, hunting, and playing hockey, falls for a girl who likes him but also makes sure to attend every game.
Her partner, and the entire hockey team, are none to amused, and regularly threaten and humiliate him physically, thereby intensifying his sense of isolation.
Young Sean Randall (Connor Jessup) tries not to back down.
Having no social outlet for his frustrations besides his leave-things-alone loving yet integrated father, he starts an online journal, venting through revenge fantasies and continues to pursue Deanna Roy (Alexia Fast).
The threats continue, his texts childishly denote violence, the police arrest him, he's locked up, he has to remain for months awaiting trial, he's assaulted and outcasted inside, his lawyer cluelessly recommends a guilty plea to get him out, he's tired of the beatings and the unrelenting anxiety so he agrees even though he's innocent, he's released, now the entire town thinks he's a psycho, he's too in love to follow the restrictions of his restraining order, his mother hardly seems to care, he's locked up again, Blackbird is a worst case scenario.
But it doesn't back away from offering legitimate fictionalized contemporary post-Columbine theorizations.
It takes on difficult sociological subject matter and starkly yet provocatively delivers.
It romantically demonstrates how youthful desire has trouble curtailing its pursuits.
And the ending provides a concrete heartbreaking traumatized apathetic helpless rigid mechanical characterization of strength whose embattled fortitude deromanticizes and cauterizes resistance.
He's just a kid.
You obviously have to worry about kids going Columbine but if you arrested everyone of them who expressed a desire to get back at the bullies who make their lives miserable, you'd have to arrest tens of thousands of people who were likely never going to do anything illegal.
In such instances, I recommend multiple viewings of Revenge of the Nerds.
Disturbing, demented, dissonance.
A chilling look at a non-traditional individual's heartland.
Her partner, and the entire hockey team, are none to amused, and regularly threaten and humiliate him physically, thereby intensifying his sense of isolation.
Young Sean Randall (Connor Jessup) tries not to back down.
Having no social outlet for his frustrations besides his leave-things-alone loving yet integrated father, he starts an online journal, venting through revenge fantasies and continues to pursue Deanna Roy (Alexia Fast).
The threats continue, his texts childishly denote violence, the police arrest him, he's locked up, he has to remain for months awaiting trial, he's assaulted and outcasted inside, his lawyer cluelessly recommends a guilty plea to get him out, he's tired of the beatings and the unrelenting anxiety so he agrees even though he's innocent, he's released, now the entire town thinks he's a psycho, he's too in love to follow the restrictions of his restraining order, his mother hardly seems to care, he's locked up again, Blackbird is a worst case scenario.
But it doesn't back away from offering legitimate fictionalized contemporary post-Columbine theorizations.
It takes on difficult sociological subject matter and starkly yet provocatively delivers.
It romantically demonstrates how youthful desire has trouble curtailing its pursuits.
And the ending provides a concrete heartbreaking traumatized apathetic helpless rigid mechanical characterization of strength whose embattled fortitude deromanticizes and cauterizes resistance.
He's just a kid.
You obviously have to worry about kids going Columbine but if you arrested everyone of them who expressed a desire to get back at the bullies who make their lives miserable, you'd have to arrest tens of thousands of people who were likely never going to do anything illegal.
In such instances, I recommend multiple viewings of Revenge of the Nerds.
Disturbing, demented, dissonance.
A chilling look at a non-traditional individual's heartland.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Still Mine
Couldn't help but wonder what Michael McGowan's Still Mine would have been like had it been made in the States.
The narrative introduces a stern yet friendly do-it-yourself farmer named Craig Morrison (James Cromwell) and his loving wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold), 2 of their 7 children, and the traditional family structure that intergenerationally holds them together.
Craig is 86 and in incredible shape.
When it becomes apparent that his home can no longer safely accommodate Irene, due to her ailing health, he decides to build a new one, on his own, going so far as to cut down the requisite trees, by himself, this guy's hardcore.
But bureaucratic regulations and an intransigent unsympathetic inspector (Jason X's Jonathan Potts as Rick) go to ridiculously meticulous lengths in their adherence to related laws, even after Mr. Morrison yields to their demands, doing everything he can to uphold them, paying hefty fees along the way.
Craig Morrison is exceptional.
He's 86.
He's in better shape than I will ever be.
He doesn't only know how to build a solidly constructed immaculately modest house, he can do it, he starts doing it, he does it.
Still Mine makes a great case for the fact that some individuals possess the necessary skills and knowledge to develop intricate ideas and see them through, on their own land, even though they may not hold related educational credentials and may be unaware of the legal consequences of doing so at first, yet if they are still willing to abide by said consequences after discovering their existence, they should therefore be given some productive leeway by obnoxious young bucks with nothing better to do but cross every t.
Mr. Morrison yields.
He pays.
He plays ball.
Weapons aren't involved, the film's not called The Grandfather Clause, he has the wherewithal, and doesn't go ape shit.
I didn't like how he cut down old growth spruce but that's another matter.
He makes a funny point about how many of the houses built in St. Martins New Brunswick without a National Building Code 200 years ago are still standing.
Still Mine also romantically nurtures a devoted conception of marriage, which is difficult for me to understand after all that Proust.
Not that everyone isn't devoted to marriage in In Search of Lost Time.
They simply employ a counterintuitive methodology in their application of various codes of conduct.
The narrative introduces a stern yet friendly do-it-yourself farmer named Craig Morrison (James Cromwell) and his loving wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold), 2 of their 7 children, and the traditional family structure that intergenerationally holds them together.
Craig is 86 and in incredible shape.
When it becomes apparent that his home can no longer safely accommodate Irene, due to her ailing health, he decides to build a new one, on his own, going so far as to cut down the requisite trees, by himself, this guy's hardcore.
But bureaucratic regulations and an intransigent unsympathetic inspector (Jason X's Jonathan Potts as Rick) go to ridiculously meticulous lengths in their adherence to related laws, even after Mr. Morrison yields to their demands, doing everything he can to uphold them, paying hefty fees along the way.
Craig Morrison is exceptional.
He's 86.
He's in better shape than I will ever be.
He doesn't only know how to build a solidly constructed immaculately modest house, he can do it, he starts doing it, he does it.
Still Mine makes a great case for the fact that some individuals possess the necessary skills and knowledge to develop intricate ideas and see them through, on their own land, even though they may not hold related educational credentials and may be unaware of the legal consequences of doing so at first, yet if they are still willing to abide by said consequences after discovering their existence, they should therefore be given some productive leeway by obnoxious young bucks with nothing better to do but cross every t.
Mr. Morrison yields.
He pays.
He plays ball.
Weapons aren't involved, the film's not called The Grandfather Clause, he has the wherewithal, and doesn't go ape shit.
I didn't like how he cut down old growth spruce but that's another matter.
He makes a funny point about how many of the houses built in St. Martins New Brunswick without a National Building Code 200 years ago are still standing.
Still Mine also romantically nurtures a devoted conception of marriage, which is difficult for me to understand after all that Proust.
Not that everyone isn't devoted to marriage in In Search of Lost Time.
They simply employ a counterintuitive methodology in their application of various codes of conduct.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Wrong
Small talk.
Having the time.
Honestly expressing oneself.
A hard day's work.
The first film that I've seen that takes banal quotidian frustrations and places them generally within a framework resembling something like a bourgeois displacement of Twin Peak's Black/White Lodge, wherein neuroses and hyperanalytic tendencies proceed, full-speed-ahead, even as corporeal and material structures inexplicably change shape and regenerate, the insignificant theoretically becomes essential, and declarations of counterproductive antisocial lassitudes bifurcate, with explanations required and clarifications sought after, a face burned by acid, a formula for hard wiring permanent love, detectives hired to figure out what's already known to have taken place, figure 13-d, it (Wrong) could be qualified as Kafkaesque but the transitions, the hilarious transitions, director Quentin Dupieux isn't only a master of framing confused asymmetrical curious yet despondent facial expressions, again and again and again, it keeps working, he does the same thing when transitioning from scene to scene, meaning that something ornery takes place, the mood becomes anxious, and then we're back to a comfortable pastoral cheery suburban image, overflowing with stability and integrity, happiness and relaxation, there's no job but the bills are paid, let's start again fresh, like you're having a picnic in a meadow, lakeside, surrounded by elk wearing glasses, before hero Dolph Springer (Jack Plotnick) must once again attempt to socially interact, and everyone's notable lack of expertise, or bizarre exhaustive supernatural comprehensions, violently yet sweetly cover things up, like a thunder storm bombarding an idyllic mountain stream.
Pets are important.
Routines are important.
It's important to ask questions.
Scientific exploration has no limits.
Caught somewhere between the anal retentive and the blissfully vacant, Wrong appreciates the ways in which the extroverted ideal (see Susan Cain's informative Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking [I love this book!]) has been adopted by oh so many people who were not born to embrace it, but still adamantly attempt to do so.
The key seems to be to buy a pet.
Love it.
End up crushed when it disappears.
And revel in ecstasy when it returns.
Magic: the magic.
Best comedy I've seen in awhile. Stand Up Guys is just as good, but Wrong does it without star power.
Accept for William Fichtner.
Who is now one of my favourite actors.
Almost forgot about the final song.
Still laughing. I'll be thinking about this film and laughing for months.
Dependability.
Wrong defines dependability.
It does.
Having the time.
Honestly expressing oneself.
A hard day's work.
The first film that I've seen that takes banal quotidian frustrations and places them generally within a framework resembling something like a bourgeois displacement of Twin Peak's Black/White Lodge, wherein neuroses and hyperanalytic tendencies proceed, full-speed-ahead, even as corporeal and material structures inexplicably change shape and regenerate, the insignificant theoretically becomes essential, and declarations of counterproductive antisocial lassitudes bifurcate, with explanations required and clarifications sought after, a face burned by acid, a formula for hard wiring permanent love, detectives hired to figure out what's already known to have taken place, figure 13-d, it (Wrong) could be qualified as Kafkaesque but the transitions, the hilarious transitions, director Quentin Dupieux isn't only a master of framing confused asymmetrical curious yet despondent facial expressions, again and again and again, it keeps working, he does the same thing when transitioning from scene to scene, meaning that something ornery takes place, the mood becomes anxious, and then we're back to a comfortable pastoral cheery suburban image, overflowing with stability and integrity, happiness and relaxation, there's no job but the bills are paid, let's start again fresh, like you're having a picnic in a meadow, lakeside, surrounded by elk wearing glasses, before hero Dolph Springer (Jack Plotnick) must once again attempt to socially interact, and everyone's notable lack of expertise, or bizarre exhaustive supernatural comprehensions, violently yet sweetly cover things up, like a thunder storm bombarding an idyllic mountain stream.
Pets are important.
Routines are important.
It's important to ask questions.
Scientific exploration has no limits.
Caught somewhere between the anal retentive and the blissfully vacant, Wrong appreciates the ways in which the extroverted ideal (see Susan Cain's informative Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking [I love this book!]) has been adopted by oh so many people who were not born to embrace it, but still adamantly attempt to do so.
The key seems to be to buy a pet.
Love it.
End up crushed when it disappears.
And revel in ecstasy when it returns.
Magic: the magic.
Best comedy I've seen in awhile. Stand Up Guys is just as good, but Wrong does it without star power.
Accept for William Fichtner.
Who is now one of my favourite actors.
Almost forgot about the final song.
Still laughing. I'll be thinking about this film and laughing for months.
Dependability.
Wrong defines dependability.
It does.
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