The Master - It was shot very well, and the acting was incredible at times, but overall...it was just all right. It told its story quite well, but I don't think it was a story that needed to be told, or that really grabbed me and made me wanting more. It was interesting setting up the story of this man, and his interactions with The Master, but it does not leave me wanting more or needing to see it again and further deconstruct the film.

That film was mentioned in one of my foreign policy text books.

Since you liked that so much you should watch fitzarraldo.

Fuck yeah Fitz for life. For some more Herzog weirdness, watch Stroszek.

Sonic the Herzog

I thought it would be entertaining going into it, but Looper exceeded my expectations. Rian Johnson is creating a name for himself, as I was a fan of Brick as well. A terrific script that struts in the center of popcorn entertainment, confident time jumping narration, and surprising morality flirtations. The closest point of reference I can think of is the also great Source Code. Thank the gods we have another sci fi film to genuinely enjoy. Takes a shit all over Prometheus and then some.

Brick
8.3/10

The Brothers Bloom
8.4/10

Looper
8.6/10

Anybody round here seen Dredd? I recall seeing someone briefly mention it a while back.

dude Prometheus was aight and Source Code sucked the sweat off my balls

Looking forward a lot to Looper though.


Btw for our class yesterday on 'Aesthetics of contemporary cinema' I attended a screening of Café Lumière. The film was great, but there was too much light in the classroom because the curtains were taken down earlier that day. So it kinda felt like I only watched half a film. Fuck. But still amazing.

Source Code and Looper are two of the best mainstream sci-fi films of the last ten years. Up there with District 9, imo.

Also not very good imo. The last part of that movie was pretty cool and the film was an interesting take on the genre. But on second watch the film really didn't have any effect on me.

Give me Star Trek, Moon and Super 8.

I don't really rate films like Super 8 and Star Trek the way I'd rate Looper, Source Code and Moon. Star Trek in particular is a big space opera and Super 8 is just big blockbuster fun. Looper, Source Code and Moon are more hard science fiction, and I think District 9 is somewhere in between. I also wouldn't really classify Moon as mainstream, but that's subjective. Love all of these films, though.

Krzysztof Kieslowski - Blue

While I do want Drew to come to Pittsburgh, I do not want him to come with a gun and the intent to kill me, so here is the stream of thoughts I wrote down after watching:

Car accident. Attempted suicide, which is aborted. Aimless drifting, loneliness. Finally purposive movement in her composing, returning to composing. So much is left a mystery: who was she, who will she be? We see her in transition. She was someone we never see. We see only enough to know she was someone. And she will be someone we also never see. We get hints that tell us she has a purposeful future. But its shape? That is indefinite. We only see the in-between state. It is not insignificant that in so many shots the backgrounds is blurred. There is a restless, strange surface (or a stone surface, if we think of her face and not the plot) but we never see the roots that anchor it (or the restlessness that comes through so composedly, so set). Who is she?

<3

Completely forgot about Rise of the Planet of the Apes. That film was great.