Star Trek

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Star Trek. This is more space opera than intellectual scifi salon, for better or worse. The best comparison I can think of is Rise of the Planet of the Apes: It’s not an all-time great movie, not really even close, but it’s great at what it does. Silly adventure that’s nice to look at. The cameo is dopey. But I do hope that movies following this reboot are a little more nerdy.

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and the history of the hillbilly in America. - Slate Magazine

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The hillbilly figure allows middle-class white people to offload the venality and sin of the nation onto some other constituency, people who live somewhere—anywhere—else. The hillbilly’s backwardness highlights the progress more upstanding Americans in the cities or the suburbs have made. These fools haven’t crawled out of the muck, the story goes, because they don’t want to.

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and the history of the hillbilly in America. - Slate Magazine

Millsin' About: Jiro Dreams of Errol Morris

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millsinabout:

I know too little about film or production to say much about this, either, but: the film used a lot of shot-techniques or whatever that I recognize from promos for films and reality TV shows. Here is the staff of the restaurant, arranged just so, staring into the camera; it is slightly slow-mo, the camera slightly pans to give dimensionality, but nothing is really happening. This is how you make ads and music videos, not documentaries, which ought to have something to impart beyond “tune in!” or “this! this! this!”

Yep. Jiro is fun to watch and makes you hungry and it’s also a complete letdown if you’re hoping to *learn* anything. Like Mills says furthermore:

A documentary about an artist which fails to even discuss what is unique about him or his work, how he works, what he is good an bad at, with what he struggles, what the nature of his excellence is: such a documentary must be a failure.

Millsin' About: Jiro Dreams of Errol Morris

Miami Vice

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Miami Vice. It’s not nearly as good as his best, but it’s good corny fun. I mean, it’s Miami Vice. Visually, it’s also the most Michael Mann-ish thing I’ve seen (see Pinnland Empire on Mann’s motifs). It’s also got the typical cop/criminal dynamic he loves. Best analogy I read somewhere was this movie would happen if Malick decided to make a cop film (from the general reverie to the looser, drifty handycam shooting). Sadly, the score is merely functional, but Mann knows when to turn the music down and let it ride. I feel like if I watched it again, I’d like it even more. I really, really like this dude’s movies. Updated Michael Mann rankings:

  1. Heat
  2. Thief
  3. The Last of the Mohicans
  4. Manhunter
  5. Miami Vice
  6. Collateral

The King of 78s: Joe Bussard

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The King of 78s: Joe Bussard. This guy has 15,000 records and hilariously cantankerous taste in music. Although maybe that passion and nerdery foments and requires this kind of dismissive focus:

Q: Is there a music genre that you avoid?
A: Rock-n- roll. Period. Any of it. Hate it. Worse thing that happened to music. Hurt all types of music. They took blues and ruined it. It’s the cancer of music….ate into everything. Killed Country music, that’s for sure.
Q: A lot of people would claim the complete opposite. that Rock-n-Roll re invented and recharged music. What is it about rock-n-roll that annoys you so much?
A: Don’t like. Just my personal taste. Don’t like the sound of it, the meaning of it…doesn’t promote anything beautiful or meaningful. Idiotic noise, in my opinion.
Q: So artist like Miles Davis, John Coltrane don’t deserve your time?
A: Oh my god, you gotta be kidding me. None of that music moves me.

Solaris (2002)

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Solaris (2002). I really liked the Tarkovsky version of the novel, and Soderbergh’s is very good, too. It’s more trim and spare. What I really loved was the sound throughout. Footsteps, rustle of clothing, breath. And that soundtrack! Cliff Martinez to the rescue again (see: Drive; Contagion). So perfect. That said, the script is a little painful here and there. What are you gonna do? At least the ideas about memory, empathy, regret, etc. are evergreen. There’s not a single dud in any of the Soderbergh films I’ve seen lately. Looking forward to more. My current rankings:

  1. Haywire
  2. Out of Sight
  3. Solaris
  4. Contagion
  5. Ocean’s Trilogy, which I don’t remember all that well, honestly.

The Five Obstructions

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The Five Obstructions. A documentary in which Lars von Trier puts his hero/mentor Jørgen Leth to the test. Leth has to recreate his own surrealist film, The Perfect Human, five times with five different sets of constraints, dreamed up off-the-cuff by Von Trier, who’s really just trying to get Leth to make something that sucks. Interesting to see the back-and-forth here. Rumor has it that Von Trier and Scorsese are going to do a similar project. My Lars Von Trier rankings:

  1. Melancholia
  2. Dancer in the Dark
  3. The Five Obstructions
  4. Antichrist

Why does the return journey feel quicker? - The Irish Times

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Childhood holidays seem to last forever, but as you grow older time seems to accelerate. “Time” is related to how much information you are taking in – information stretches time. A child’s day from 9am to 3.30pm is like a 20-hour day for an adult. Children experience many new things every day and time passes slowly, but as people get older they have fewer new experiences and time is less stretched by information.

Why does the return journey feel quicker? - The Irish Times