January 2011
39 posts
4 tags
Millennium Actress (2001)
Millennium Actress is an animated feature by the recently deceased director Satoshi Kon. After Paranoia Agent and this is probably my second favorite Satoshi Kon feature. This film is about a TV interviewer who is granted an interview with a withdrawn former Japanese actress who was regarded as one of the greatest in Japanese cinema. Through the course of the interview, the interviewer...
6 tags
December 2010
48 posts
3 tags
4 tags
Millennium Actress (2001)
Millennium Actress is an animated feature by the recently deceased director Satoshi Kon. After Paranoia Agent and this is probably my second favorite Satoshi Kon feature. This film is about a TV interviewer who is granted an interview with a withdrawn former Japanese actress who was regarded as one of the greatest in Japanese cinema. Through the course of the interview, the interviewer...
4 tags
7 tags
GZA Cold World
4 tags
4 tags
GZA Cold World
3 tags
All About Lily Chou Chou (2001)
All about Lily Chou Chou is a Japanese film by Shunji Iwai. The film gives an interesting story about the extremes of Japanese high school students. This story is told against the backdrop of a fictional Japanese pop singer’s music. Throughout the story there are posts on the singer’s blog echoing the lives of two best friends through Jr. High School that come to grow apart during high school....
7 tags
Madvillian Eye
3 tags
Frost/Nixon (2008)
Frost/Nixon is a docudrama directed by Ron Howard. I love period films and this is quite an entertaining one, in that the forgotten facts highlighted in this film are historical stunning. The very choice of Robert Frost was a highly interesting one to be granted the interview to the only president who had been impeached at the time. The premise was that he was a British man...
“The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the...”
– Lazlo Moholy-Nagy
4 tags
Madvillian Eye
7 tags
3 tags
Love Exposure 愛のむきだし (2008)
Love Exposure is a Japanese film by Sion Sono. This is a film where one can honestly say they have never seen anything at all like it. It is an extremely fast paced film that incidentally clocks in at just under 4 hours. I seriously wasn’t going to write about this one because it is over the top in its absurdity, but it is for this reason that over the course of the four hours that it works....
7 tags
4 tags
4 tags
3 tags
The Only Son ひとり息子(1936)
“Life’s tragedy begins with the bond between parent and child.”
-Ryunosuke Akutagawa
This quotation begins Ozu Yasujiro’s The Only Son setting up perfectly the film’s theme. This along with Tokyo Twilight is perhaps (to this point) the two darkest films I have scene by Ozu Yasujiro. The story is as the title suggests about an only son and his widowed mother. The mother works hard and the son...
6 tags
Chris W. The Long Decline
A song performed by...
3 tags
Chris W. The Long Decline
1 tag
7 tags
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The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)
The Assassination of Trotsky is a British film by Joseph Losey. Losey’s career can be characterized as a victim of the times. He was blacklisted from the time his career started in Hollywood and subsequently had to live and work in England in exile. His career took years to resume upon which he heavily delved in art cinema making several notable films. I came across this film on...
3 tags
Robert Capa: In Love and War (2003)
In Love and War: Robert Capa is a documentary on the life and times of photographer Robert Capa. This is the single most comprehensive documentary of Capa from his life to his tragic death. His style was a striking one as he shot in 5 different wars, going directly for the action. His saying was, “if your picture isn’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” Many of his photos contain...
4 tags
3 tags
“Hell is other people”
– Jean-Paul Sartre
5 tags
5 tags
The Age of Reason (1945)
The Age of Reason is a novel by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. This is the first part of Sartre’s Roads to Freedom trilogy. The series was originally intended to be a teratology, but was never completed. The major influence on this series was WWII and the Nazi occupation of France, because it is written by Sartre, existentialism is the prevailing theme throughout the...
7 tags
John Coltrane Lush Life…in still
4 tags
John Coltrane Lush Life…in still
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La Pointe Courte (1956)
La Pointe Courte is a French film by Agnes Varda. This was her debut film coming out in 1956, in what started out as a photography project for a terminally ill friend. The friend wanted photos of her hometown and upon completing the project Varda decided to make a film out of it. In all the film’s budget came out to about 14,000 USD, a fourth lower than the first films of the French new wavers...
3 tags
“The cinema substitutes for our gaze a world more in harmony with our...”
– Andre Bazin
3 tags
All About Lily Chou Chou (2001)
All about Lily Chou Chou is a Japanese film by Shunji Iwai. The film gives an interesting story about the extremes of Japanese high school students. This story is told against the backdrop of a fictional Japanese pop singer’s music. Throughout the story there are posts on the singer’s blog echoing the lives of two best friends through Jr. High School that come to grow apart during...
3 tags
Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
The Passion of Joan of Arc is a silent film by French director Carl Dreyer. This is one of those films that I knew was good, but never got to it. After a recent viewing of Vivre Sa Vie, there is a scene where Nana watches this film within Vivre Sa Vie and it really captivated me and so I set out to seriously getting this film. What an amazing film, it instantly helps one understand why it is one...
7 tags
3 tags
La vie de Boheme (1992)
La vie de Boheme is a French film by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. Shot in classic black and white this certainly is an offbeat film. I say classic black and white because on first glance it is quite difficult to discern when the film could have been made, as it certainly doesn’t look it could have come out in 1992. With that said, the story is a retelling of the famous novel...
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Police, adjective (2009)
Police, Adjective is a Romanian film directed by Corneliu Porumboiu. This a minimalistic film about a policeman who is investigating a high school student suspected of using marijuana. The officer begins to question the rational of the case, as we see him going through the motions of a police procedural. Complete with stake outs, report writing, and the collecting of evidence,...
3 tags
Love Exposure 愛のむきだし (2008)
Love Exposure is a Japanese film by Sion Sono. This is a film where one can honestly say they have never seen anything at all like it. It is an extremely fast paced film that incidentally clocks in at just under 4 hours. I seriously wasn’t going to write about this one because it is over the top in its absurdity, but it is for this reason that over the course of the four hours that it works....
3 tags
The Only Son ひとり息子(1936)
“Life’s tragedy begins with the bond between parent and child.”
-Ryunosuke Akutagawa
This quotation begins Ozu Yasujiro’s The Only Son setting up perfectly the film’s theme. This along with Tokyo Twilight is perhaps (to this point) the two darkest films I have scene by Ozu Yasujiro. The story is as the title suggests about an only son and his widowed mother. The mother works hard and the son...
7 tags
3 tags
Le Mepris (1963)
Le Mepris is a French film by Jean-Luc Godard. This film was based on an Italian novel by Alberto Moravia. Released during the new wave this was one of Godard’s more subdued films. This was the only film that I hadn’t seen from his new wave work, and it is an interesting film because of its sharp contrast from the films that came before and after this. The film is a seemingly simple one as it is...
5 tags
The Age of Reason (1945)
The Age of Reason is a novel by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. This is the first part of Sartre’s Roads to Freedom trilogy. The series was originally intended to be a teratology, but was never completed. The major influence on this series was WWII and the Nazi occupation of France, because it is written by Sartre, existentialism is the prevailing theme throughout the...
1 tag
“Hell is other people”
– Jean-Paul Sartre
4 tags
3 tags
Beauty and Sadness 美しさと哀しみと (1964)
Beauty and Sadness is a novel by Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasunari. There is something extremely delicate about Kawabata’s stories in their slow unfolding manner. This story is one about the past and a resignation to accept and live with it. It is about the aftermath of an affair between a married man and a teenage girl, set twenty four years later. We slowly understand...