Knight of Cups. After I watched it I wrote some snarky tweets rolling my eyes at this movie having beautiful people walking aimlessly. I meant it, and I also still liked it. The interiority that’s getting stronger in his films is interesting for me. Not so much just watching the characters but riding along with them. Also, he’s the only person making weird idiosyncratically Malickian movies with big names, whenever he feels like it. However he’s getting it done, respect. Filed under: Terrence Malick.
The Grey
The Grey. I wish the poem at the heart of the movie was better. For me, there’s not quite enough there for the melodrama it’s asking for. I think maybe it would have been better without knowing the reasons our hero is so dour. But of course I like the survival bits. The surprises and set pieces are all great.
Miami Vice
Miami Vice. I love this movie. The pathos was stronger this time around, the resignation. On each watch I also become a little more resentful that Foxx doesn’t have a bigger role. His relationship with Crockett has something to offer the story, but we don’t see it much. I’d be up for another 12 minutes with the two of them on screen. Filed under: Michael Mann.
Punch-Drunk Love
Punch-Drunk Love. I put this one off for a long, long time. I started very skeptical, but it won me over. Brings out sides of Sandler I never knew were there, and gotta respect a movie that drifts so freely from convention when it feels right. My PT Anderson power rankings:
- The Master
- Hard Eight
- Punch-Drunk Love
- There Will Be Blood
- Magnolia
- Boogie Nights
Cameraperson
Cameraperson. Man I loved this one. A collage of footage from director Kirsten Johnson’s work on other films. It works as an experience of the lives she documents and as seeing through her own eyes, and as wrestling with the choices of what or what not to show and how or how not to tell these stories. Highly recommended.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I remember having the biggest crush on Dr. Elsa Schneider as a kid and feeling very conflicted about it. It’s a fun ride, but also felt a little frustrating sometimes when they’re playing for laughs.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I forgot how weird this movie was, is. Breakneck zany with no patience for sitting around asking questions.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark. It holds up the best of the original trilogy. I feel Iike the Marion Ravenwood character still hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves – Karen Allen is great. Watching as an adult you realize that Indy is… often not very good at what he does. Still gorgeous and fun and it’ll be that way for years to come.
How I Got My Attention Back – Backchannel
It’s not Wikipedia that we binge on all day.
Robert Eggers, Director of ‘The Witch,’ on the Horror Right in Front of Us | | Observer
“Because modern horror is usually this masochistic titillation bullshit, a lot of people in interviews will tell me [The Witch] is not a horror film, it’s a psychological suspense thriller with supernatural elements,” he said, putting on a tone of faux-snobbery. “And I’m like, ‘O.K., that’s cool.’ But then fucking Edgar Allan Poe isn’t horror, either. “What’s important to me about horror stories,” he continued, “is to look at what’s actually horrifying about humanity, instead of shining a flashlight on it and running away giggling.”
Robert Eggers, Director of ‘The Witch,’ on the Horror Right in Front of Us | | Observer
The Witch
The Witch. Second viewing. Incredible movie, and my appreciation grows and grows the more I think and read about it.
Blue Ruin
Blue Ruin. Second viewing. I wasn’t as gobsmacked as I was the first time I watched it, but it holds up really well.
Stormy Monday
Stormy Monday. I like its stylishness, the moody, cynical, compact story. Also enjoyed Mike Figgis’ Internal Affairs.
Love & Friendship
Love & Friendship. If you like Jane Austen and/or Whit Stillman, you can’t go wrong here. Chatty, witty, gossipy. Things really pick up when Sir James Martin appears. It’s like someone tossed a confetti bomb into the room. I should watch more chamber pieces.
Inside Llewyn Davis
Inside Llewyn Davis. I liked it but I feel like I was missing a little something. It’s just not the Coen way to get super sappy. Can’t help but see this movie as the two of them trying to work out how they’d carry on without the other. I’d rank this one third out of their movies I’ve seen, behind No Country for Old Men and Fargo and way ahead of The Big Lebowski.
Genevieve Bell: ‘Humanity’s greatest fear is about being irrelevant’ | Technology | The Guardian
I’m interested in how animals are connected to the internet and how we might be able to see the world from an animal’s point of view. There’s something very interesting in someone else’s vantage point, which might have a truth to it. For instance, the tagging of cows for automatic milking machines, so that the cows can choose when to milk themselves. Cows went from being milked twice a day to being milked three to six times a day, which is great for the farm’s productivity and results in happier cows, but it’s also faintly disquieting that the technology makes clear to us the desires of cows – making them visible in ways they weren’t before. So what does one do with that knowledge? One of the unintended consequences of big data and the internet of things is that some things will become visible and compel us to confront them.
Genevieve Bell: ‘Humanity’s greatest fear is about being irrelevant’ | Technology | The Guardian
Paris Review - William Gibson, The Art of Fiction No. 211
There was a lot of inherent cultural relativism in the science fiction I discovered then. It gave me the idea that you could question anything, that it was possible to question anything at all. You could question religion, you could question your own culture’s most basic assumptions. That was just unheard of—where else could I have gotten it? You know, to be thirteen years old and get your brain plugged directly into Philip K. Dick’s brain!
That wasn’t the way science fiction advertised itself, of course. The self-advertisement was: Technology! The world of the future! Educational! Learn about science! It didn’t tell you that it would jack your kid into this weird malcontent urban literary universe and serve as the gateway drug to J. G. Ballard.
And nobody knew. The people at the high school didn’t know, your parents didn’t know. Nobody knew that I had discovered this window into all kinds of alien ways of thinking that wouldn’t have been at all acceptable to the people who ran that little world I lived in.
Resentment might start with a wrong done to you
Resentment might start with a wrong that’s done to you, but harboring it in silence is a wrong you do to others.
On Digital Minimalism - Study Hacks - Cal Newport
Be wary of tools that solve a problem that didn’t exist before the tool. GPS helped solve a problem that existed for a long time before it came along (how do I get where I want to go?), so did Google (how do I find this piece of information I need?). Snapchat, by contrast, did not. Be wary of tools in this latter category as they tend to exist mainly to create addictive new behaviors that support ad sales.
The Neon Demon
The Neon Demon. If divisiveness was Refn’s goal, it seems he delivered. Lots of hate and eye-rolling for this one, and I get it to a degree (especially when the director is kind of a troll). But I liked it. I appreciated Lauren Wilford’s perspective. Movies are not just the stories they’re about, but also the way they are about it. Gotta make space in the world for demented fever-dreamy impressionist movies, too.