(2007) dir. Anton Corbijn
viewed: 11/27/07 at Opera Plaza Cinemas, SF, CA
Shot in black-and-white, though I have read that it was shot in color and transferred black-and-white, here is the story of Ian Curtis, singer of the band, Joy Division. Black-and-white is an odd issue for me with the film, actually. I mean, I’ve been a [...]
Archive of entries posted on November 2007
Control
Manufactured Landscapes
(2006) dir. Jennifer Baichwal
viewed: 11/26/07
Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary about Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky rises above the standard for the form, instilling her camera and approach to adhere to yet supplement Burtynsky’s own aesthetics, social criticism (overt or covert), and the landscapes and peoples that his work addresses. Not that Thomas Riedelsheimer’ documentary about the work of [...]
The Darwin Awards
(2006) dir. Finn Taylor
viewed: 11/24/07
This hackneyed, horribly written, piece of garbage of a romantic comedy…how did it get made? How did director Finn Taylor manage to get so many rather uncanny celebrity cameos in this completely lame-ass film?
Based on a concept/website/book about people who do such stupid things that they take themselves out of the [...]
The Mist
(2007) dir. Frank Darabont
viewed: 11/23/07 at AMC Van Ness 14, SF, CA
The Mist wasn’t on my list. The Mist could have been missed. But circumstances changed all that. A day on my own, opportunistic timing, and a movie that I only had mild interest in became my latest cinematic experience.
Adapted from Stephen King, as apparantly [...]
The Long Riders
(1980) dir. Walter Hill
viewed: 11/19/07
This was meant to be the last of my little Jesse James cycle, Walter Hill’s 1980 take on the James gang. However, I stumbled on a couple others, so I may write about a couple more. Still, for the goal of looking at the Jesse James story as told by four [...]
Beowulf
(2007) dir. Robert Zemeckis
viewed: 11/19/07 @ AMC Loews Metreon 16 with IMAX
This film has gotten a lot of press in regards to its production and presentation, fully animated via motion-capture, with hyper-realism as its goal, the film is also presented in the current height of digital 3-D presentation. It’s the first of several films that [...]
The True Story of Jesse James
(1957) dir. Nicholas Ray
viewed: 11/17/07
It’s been quoted, though I can’t say how accurately, that Jean-Luc Godard once said “Nicholas Ray is cinema”. And as I became interested in film studies as a path in graduate school, one of the first books I read was a semi-critical overview of Ray’s life and work. Several of his films [...]
I Shot Jesse James
(1949) dir. Samuel Fuller
viewed: 11/16/07
Director Samuel Fuller’s take on the Jesse James legend is typical of the director, a perspective more on the pathos of James’ killer, Robert Ford, than on the notorious outlaw himself. Whereas Henry King’s film on James (Jesse James (1939) was a portrait of James’ whole career, Fuller’s film seems more of the [...]
Jesse James
(1939) dir. Henry King
viewed: 11/14/07
After having seen Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), I have decided to go on a little Jesse James jag. The legend is the question in Dominik’s film, the making and construct of legend of an outlaw hero, the story that became such pop culture [...]
No Country for Old Men
(2007) dir. Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
viewed: 11/13/07 at Century San Francisco Centre, SF, CA
The Coen brothers have long been favorites of mine. I am pretty sure that I saw Blood Simple (1984) back in the day, but my frist awareness of them came probably with Raising Arizona (1987) and on and on it’s been. And [...]
