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(March 2005)

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Jeremy's journal

All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

— Bokonon


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The Movies

I never realized quite how much movies mean to me until recently, when I subscribed to Netfilx and started watching the classic movies I really enjoy more frequently.

Films

READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

🦋 Another Narnia movie

Sylvia and I saw Prince Caspian tonight -- we enjoyed it and I would recommend it to people who are fans of the books. I don't think I'd recommend it as a movie to somebody who is not predisposed to like it; I guess my reaction to it was a little bit like Ebert's reaction to the latest Indiana Jones movie.

Good things: the talking animals, great; Trumpkin, great; the beautiful scenery and handsome actors were candy for my eyes. The camera work in the opening sequence was really startlingly good. Not so good: There wasn't really anything to distinguish this movie as a different film from the previous one -- where the two books are quite distinct from one another. A lot of the battle footage in particular, which made up a huge proporiton of the film, seemed like it could easily just have been lifted out of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Sylvia had a good time identifying the differences between the movie and the book, which I guess means the movie was faithful enough to the book, for them to stand out.

posted evening of May 25th, 2008: 2 responses
➳ More posts about The Chronicles of Narnia

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

🦋 Little Dieter Needs to Fly

This is a good movie without, I think, being in the same league as Herzog's best stuff. The main two good things in the movie are: the personality and charisma of Mr. Dengler, who is kind of a natural ham; and the camera work and composition of shots. It is a good decision of Herzog's, to let Dieter talk through most of the film. Herzog's narration is not very useful; and his decision to have Laotians and Vietnamese in the film but completely without speaking parts and frequently posing as statues, just seems bizarre to me. I think I'm going to take a pass for now on watching Rescue Dawn.

posted evening of May 22nd, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Werner Herzog

🦋 Two movies to look forward to

Today I read about two movies -- neither one will be coming out for a while yet, but they both sound like something to look forward to.

  • David Lynch is collaborating with Werner Herzog on My Son, My Son: a "horror-tinged thriller" based on Œdipus Rex. This has every potential to be a fantastic movie; or it could also possibly stink.
  • Jonathan Demme is going to be directing a biography of Bob Marley, taking over from Martin Scorsese, who is leaving the project. This is just fine with me; I like Marley and I think Demme makes the best movies about music. (Scorsese's are good too, but I prefer Demme's.)

posted afternoon of May 22nd, 2008: Respond

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

🦋 Box Set

My package arrived in the mail today! -- Well it arrived Monday, no-one was home to sign for it; I picked it up at the post office this morning. (WTF? There is now overnight parcel service from Shanghai to New Jersey! This totally boggles my mind. Makes the large sum the seller was charging for postage seem much more reasonable.)

And, well, it seems legit. I have not yet popped a disc in the player to watch it; but all the dvd's are there, and marked as region 0. It weirds me out a little that I can't find any reference to this collection (The Master of Cinema: Werner Herzog Collection) anywhere on the web except for Chinese e-bay auctions. It's a pretty recent collection, includes a movie from 2005. This seems like it might be a signal of piracy but I can't figure out what the incentive is for pirates to produce a 24-dvd collection of Werner Herzog, with obscure titles and professional-looking packaging and everything -- the target audience seems tiny. (Also weirding me out is the inclusion of disc #23, My Best Friend by Patrice Leconte. Which one of these dvds does not belong?)

Well unless somebody convinces me it's unethical, I will be buying more box sets from this seller -- s/he has collections of all the classic directors I'm interested in.

Title list below the fold.

Update: Note if you're thinking about buying this, many of the titles will not play on a US region DVD player -- the seller claims they are region 0 but this is false in many cases. Also some of the discs have screwed-up aspect ratio.

posted morning of May 21st, 2008: 1 response

Friday, May 16th, 2008

🦋 Rats

Looks from this article like the movie Blindness is going to be really dreadful. That's so disappointing! The book could absolutely be made into an excellent movie -- it is "cinematic", visual detail is such a key part of it. But Dargis' description gives me a sense of exactly how Blindness should not have been made into a movie -- with overt concentration on the allegorical aspects of the story. Saramago really played this down, except for the cathedral scene and a couple of spots while the characters were interned, and of course the very end -- but the end should be surprising, should take your breath away. If Meirelles is using blinding light effects throughout the movie, I can't imagine the end is going to feel meaningful at all.

posted evening of May 16th, 2008: 1 response
➳ More posts about Blindness

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

🦋 Pills

(Žižek is speaking of the choice offered, in The Matrix [and note, I haven't seen that movie], between a blue pill that will make the protagonist wake up to reality and a red pill that will bring him into the fantasy permanently):

But the choice between the blue and the red pill is not really a choice between illusion and reality. Of course, Matrix is a machine for fictions; but these are fictions which already structure our reality. If you take away from our reality the symbolic fictions which regulate it, you lose reality itself.

I want a third pill. So what is the third pill? Definitely not some kind of transcendental pill, which enables a fake fast-food religious experience, but a pill that would enable me to perceive... not the reality behind the illusion, but the reality in illusion itself.

...Also, a really nice digression in the fourth segment, about movie characters grappling with "the autonomous undead object" -- the red shoes, Dr. Strangelove's right hand, the ventriloquist's dummy in Dead of Night. "The lesson is clear: the only way for me to get rid of this autonomous partial object, is to become this object."

posted evening of May 15th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

🦋 Hmm, this is a great deal...

...If it pans out. I just bought from an e-bay seller located in Shanghai, a 24-dvd box set of Werner Herzog's movies, for about $1.50/disk. (Plus $1/disk shipping.) Thing is I can't find info about this particular box set at Amazon, which has various other 6- and 8-dvd sets of Herzog. But, well, the photo looks legit. The price is low enough and the product (cross fingers) good enough that I decided to gamble on it.

(It makes the gamble seem like more of a likely one, that the seller has numerous positive feedbacks. FWIW.)

posted afternoon of May 15th, 2008: 1 response

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

🦋 The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire; it tells you how to desire.
I just found out about this documentary today from A White Bear. Looks fantastic! You can watch it on YouTube, albeit broken up into 10-minute chunks. Slavoj Žižek is also the subject of the documentary Žižek!, which you can also watch broken up.

(This YouTube user Mariborchan, from Maribor, Slovenia, has uploaded plenty more Žižek videos and other philosophical lectures.)

posted evening of May 14th, 2008: Respond

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

There is a comparison to be made between Into the Wild, and Vagabond -- the structures of the two films are not identical but they have a similar project in mind. Sean Penn is (obviously) no Varda, oh well. I am interested to read Krakauer's book; my expectation is that a lot of what came off in the movie as sappy, was Penn's additions.

posted evening of May 11th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Into the Wild

Friday, May 9th, 2008

🦋 Mindless Entertainment

Tonight we watched Crash. It's funny -- it reminded me in certain key ways of Lush Life, which I just finished reading; and my reaction to it was similar to my reaction to that book: it's a pretty gripping, entertaining story as long as you avoid thinking about the deficiencies in the plot and characterizations. If you just watch, don't think: a good movie. (In the end, not nearly as well-done a story as Lush Life, which despite having some similar defects is much more coherent.)

A.O. Scott's review is absolutely spot-on. Here is a nice line: "Metaphor hangs in the California air like smog."

posted evening of May 9th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Lush Life

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Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.

What's of interest:

➪ Kieran at Crooked Timber has posted a video well worth watching. One or two crucial steps beyond Terry Gilliam.
➪ Patrick Nielsen Hayden links to Bob Rossney linking to a video that I need to watch.
➪ Elizabeth Royte has a great piece in today's NY Times about public drinking fountains.
(Other links of interest at my Google+ page. It's recommended!)

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