The opening credit sequence of Watchmen is absolutely great ( Read more... )

Part of the trouble with having a large music collection is figuring out exactly what you want to listen to at any given moment when you have thousands of options at your fingertips. I ended up going with this one right now because this album represents exactly the kind of quiet evening comfort that I'm going for right now ( Read more... )

Sometimes no words seem adequate.

Watched The Apartment. Winner of six 1960 academy awards (best picture, best screenplay, best B&W art direction, best editing, best director [Billy Wilder] and one other) and nominated for several others (best actor [Jack Lemmon], best actress [Shirley MacLaine], best B&W cinematography, best sound, best supporting actor [Jack Krushchen]). All ( Read more... )

I've calmed down a lot. I was pretty angry earlier, for a number of reasons I don't feel the need to go into (beyond the obvious). I considered deleting or privatising the last entry, but I think I'll let it stand - one final statement and the topic is put to bed ( Read more... )

Holy crap. I knew Trois Couleurs: Rouge (Red) would be good, but I don't know if I was expecting it to be THAT good. Okay. The story is about a young model, Valentine (Irene Jacob), who accidently runs over a dog (she only slightly injures it, though). When she visits the dog's owner, she finds a lonely (and unnamed) old man, a retired judge (Jean- ( Read more... )

Just saw the second part of Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy, Trois Coloeurs: Blanc (or simply White). This was a very... odd film, but in a very good way. The plot (representing equality as blue did liberty) revolves around Karol Karol, a polish hairdresser (played with great charm by Zbigniew Zamachowski, which I'm not even gonna try to pronounce ( Read more... )

Just watched Trois Coloeurs: Bleu (or simply Blue, si vous prefere) - the first film in Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy. Each film in said trilogy is meant to represent a colour on the French flag (blue, white and red) and the associated meaning of that colour. Blue is liberty, and its story revolves around Julie, the sole survivor of a car crash ( Read more... )

So I had my first encounter with a Takashi Miike film today, in the form of his worldwide breakthrough, 1999's Autdition. That was certianly... interesting, especially in it's structure: the way it just all-of-a-sudden shifts gears out of nowhere from a kinda cheerful romantic drama into... something wholly other. I wasn't expecting such a Lynch- ( Read more... )

Just to make life more hallucinatory, tonight's film was the divisive Oliver Stone (with input from Quentin Tarantino, among others) film Natural Born Killers. Stone's one of those filmmakers that some people love, some people hate. I can kind of take or leave him, but this was... interesting at least. Surreal, certainly. Talk about a fucking HYPER ( Read more... )