(2007) dir. Charles Ferguson
viewed: 01/30/08
“I don’t do quagmires” — Donald Rumsfeld
Iraq is not a quagmire. Iraq is a disaster of mammoth proportions. Charles Ferguson’s documentary No End in Sight details the missteps that the Bush administration made in their war against Iraq and the resulting occupation. It’s damning. These people have created a situation that [...]
Archive of entries posted on January 2008
No End in Sight
Fantastic Planet
(1973) dir. René Laloux
viewed: 01/27/08
René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet is a wonderful anomaly in feature length cinema, from an animation perspective, from a science fiction perspective, from a surrealist perspective,…heck from any perspective. Released in 1973, it is Laloux’s first feature length film (the DVD includes three of his earlier shorts which are also amazing), it [...]
Shoot ‘Em Up
(2007) dir. Michael Davis
viewed: 01/26/08
This is the worst film that I’ve seen in a hugely long time and if I can stop anyone from considering watching it, I will feel that my humanitarian requirements for the year have been met. Instead, watch I Know Who Killed Me (2007) which is also awful, but a lot more [...]
Helvetica
(2007) dir. Gary Hustwit
viewed: 01/23/08
Ubiquitous.
That is the word for helvetica.
Not much.
That is the phrase for how much I knew about this typeface prior to seeing this documentary.
It’s got to be said, a documentary about a typeface is not the sexiest marketability for a film. I’d read in several places that this was, in fact, an [...]
Let’s Get Lost
(1988) dir. Bruce Weber
viewed: 01/22/08 at The Castro Theatre, SF, CA
I didn’t get into jazz until I was 24, though I’d had friends who’d been trying to get me interested in it for a long time before. One of the first discoveries I made, among John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and others, was Chet Baker. And [...]
Cloverfield
(2007) dir. Matt Reeves
viewed: 01/22/08 at Century San Francisco Centre, SF, CA
From producer J.J. Abrams, of television’s Lost fame, we have a Godzilla-esque monster movie, shot in the same technique as The Blair Witch Project (1999), i.e., hand-held camera, as indigenous to the diegesis. What worked for Blair Witch, doesn’t work nearly as well here. [...]
The Weather Underground
(2002) dir. Sam Green, Bill Siegel
viewed: 01/21/08
I’ve long had a ranging interest in the politicalicized and violent movement that The Weather Underground represented. Apparently, I have a semi-distant relative who had been involved at some level in the Underground, and though it wasn’t often spoken of, it had been noted that his visits with family [...]
Sunshine
(2007) dir. Danny Boyle
viewed: 01/20/08
Since his 1994 film Shallow Grave, which I saw in England when it was first released, I’ve wound up following the career of director Danny Boyle, throughout his spotty, yet usually interesting career. His big hit Trainspotting (1996) almost pushed him into the mainstream, though his abysmal The Beach (2000), starring [...]
Pink Flamingos
(1972) dir. John Waters
viewed: 01/13/08
After watching Divine Trash (1998), I felt compelled to go to the true John Waters source material, his epic film of “bad taste”, Pink Flamingos.
It’s actually totally hilarious and outrageous, probably as much so as it was the day it was first shown. Actually, I take that back. How would the world [...]
Bad Taste
(1987) dir. Peter Jackson
viewed: 01/13/08
For some time, I’d intended on watching Peter Jackson’s first feature film, Bad Taste. More noted for his Lord of the Rings films, Jackson first came to my attention when his film Dead-Alive (1992) became the cult video rental of its day. I’d always considered it a bit of Aussie Evil [...]
