With a title like I Wake Up Screaming, it should have been so much better. I’ve noticed that a lot of these old soundtracks tend to loop and repeat and reprise the same melody over and over. In this case it’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. But there were some nice shots:
I also have a new crush on Carole Landis.
A recent screening: Gun Crazy, continuing my old-school kick after watching Laura and The 39 Steps a while ago. I didn’t like the female lead character in this one much, but the guy was cool. Some of these old movies still feel so weird in how they just END. There’s not a lot of the modern-day closure process that I’m used to.
Trouble the Water is the second Katrina documentary I’ve seen this year. The Axe in the Attic was not nearly as good as this one. I was a bit reluctant to go because I’ve had hurricane burnout lately, but this was worth seeing. Trouble the Water starts out with some homemade videos of a stranded couple that couldn’t make it out. They were stuck in the 9th Ward. You see them getting ready, then holing up in the house, then moving to the attic when the levee breaks a few blocks away from their home and their house fills with water, then escaping to even higher ground, then finally leaving New Orleans, and coming back years later. It goes astray with some too-obvious, too-easy critiques of the political bumbling toward the end. The criticism is well-deserved, of course, but not nearly as interesting as seeing their stories unfold, seeing them meet strangers and help each other out, and how they find strength in each other and in their faith. The protagonists are pretty lovable. Go see it in your neighborhood.
King Corn is a documentary about 2 guys that move to Iowa to grow an acre of corn. With today’s agro-tech, the actual farming takes just a few minutes. The bulk of it is their interviews and exploration of the food chain from seed to cobs to cattle to what we get in stores and restaurants. Highlights include some fun stop-motion animated interludes, their really funny interview with a PR flack at a high fructose corn syrup factory (and their attempts to make HFCS at home), and the generally straight-shooting commentary from the local Iowans.
Here’s the trailer for King Corn, and an Boing Boing interview with Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, the filmmakers.
I watched Koyaanisqatsi this weekend. It’s got a lot of cool footage and overall it was worth watching. But part of the problem with the message (that we live a “crazy life,” a “life out of balance”) is that it’s so dependent on the soundtrack.
A lot of it made me think of those time-lapse videos I saw on kids TV when I was little. Seeing a factory in fast motion was cool, not cause for worry. I was glad I found this Koyaanisqatsi: Redux which matches a portion of the film to a goofy, upbeat soundtrack, and contrasts it with a more dramatic string arrangement in the middle (musical transitions are around the 2-minute and 4-minute marks). I like parts of Philip Glass‘ original soundtrack for the film, and I think it’s kind of spooky-cool how the soundtrack can direct your response to what you’re seeing. But it’s too much of an emotional shortcut.
There are a lot of excerpts from the film on YouTube, like the original trailer, the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing in St. Louis, scenes from New York, and the famous closing scene that reprises the opening.
I watched the Woody Allen film Sleeper this past weekend and still can’t get over the scene with the giant food.
Just got back from the local Helvetica screening (presented by AIGA-Atlanta, sponsored by the Art Institute of Atlanta). It was good, but not great. Pretty cool for a relative noob like myself to see Helvetica’s role in design over the past half-century. But I wish there was a little more nitty-gritty talk about how it came about, and less personal testimony and philosophizing about its ubiquity. One nice bonus was the post-film Q&A with director Gary Hustwit and type designer Matthew Carter. I didn’t take a whole lot of notes, so you’ll have to trust me on its overall worthwhility. But I do remember the three books that Carter most highly recommended: Letters of Credit by Walter Tracy, Modern Typography by Robin Kinross, and Robert Bringhurst’s Elements of Typographic Style.
A few days ago I watched La Jetée (on Google Video). It’s almost entirely composed of still photographs, just a half-hour science fiction montage with narration. Not bad.
Mark Larson 