Picking Winners for Worthless Awards
Mar 7, 2010 movies
Ginny says my posts are gibberish, so here’s a more straightforward one: my picks (not predictions) for the 2010 Oscar winners. Best picture: A Serious Man Best actress: Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia Best supporting actress: Mo’Nique for Precious Best actor: n/a Best supporting actor: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds Best animated feature: Fantastic [...]
Tags: Coens, Ginny, Oscars, Tarantino, Wes Anderson
2009 Movie Recap
Dec 31, 2009 movies
I saw 169 films for the first time this year, about 70 of which were films actually from 2009, and 30 of which were foreign films. 37% of my total were dramas, 28% were documentaries, 18% were comedies, and 17% were thrillers or action flicks. Most Overrated: 1. Invictus: moralizing, expositional, tension-free… strong performances couldn’t [...]
Decade Recap
Has this been, like, the worst decade ever or what? Time Magazine seems to think so. They don’t hold back: “Call it the Decade from Hell, or the Reckoning, or the Decade of Broken Dreams, or the Lost Decade. Call it whatever you want  just give thanks that it is nearly over.” I’m surprised [...]
Tags: Afghanistan, Eisenhower, Michael Haneke, NYT, Obama, Slavoj Zizek, war
You, the Living
Nov 28, 2009 movies
One of my favorite films is a little-known Swedish tragicomedy called Songs From the Second Floor, made by first-time director Roy Andersson in 2000. His ostensible sequel (there’s supposed to be a trilogy) was released in 2007 but still not widely available. This second outing is entitled You, the Living (Swe: “Du Levande”), named after [...]
Tags: absurdism, Cannes, Du Levande, existentialism, Goethe, humiliation, Lethe, Michael Haneke, Roy Andersson, Scandinavia, Songs From the Second Floor, Sweden, The White Ribbon, Woody Allen, You the Living
World Film Festival: Part II
Nov 16, 2009 movies
Well the World Film Festival was kind of a bust for me. I couldn’t come up with a good schedule and ended up with one very stacked on the last 4 days… which turned out to coincide with me getting sick. I’ve got a couple gripes with how things were run too, all confirming my [...]
World Film Festival of Bangkok
Nov 13, 2009 movies
The 7th annual World Film Festival of Bangkok kicked off a week ago, but for a variety of reasons I’ve only managed to see three movies so far, including two today. The three films have also delivered three odd coincidences, which I’ll detail as we go along. As usual, I’ll use (perhaps with slight editing) [...]
Tags: anarchism, Bangkok, film, France, Henri Lefebvre, Marxism, May 1968, Paragon, Switzerland, Walter Benjamin
Where the Wild Moon Hungers
Nov 2, 2009 movies
Last week Mike & I went to a theater on Camp Foster to see Where the Wild Things Are. I had pretty mixed feelings about it — I was mostly frustrated with how uneven the film is. I’m glad it’s not a “kids movie” and I’m glad it’s devoid of both moralism & paternalism. Yet [...]
Tags: Bobby Sands, Charlie Kauffman, Dave Eggers, Gondry, hunger strike, IRA, Ireland, Jonze, Maurice Sendak, moon, Sam Rockwell, sci-fi
It Felt Like a Trap
Oct 16, 2009 movies, politics, videos
I’ve spent the last couple of days of soaking up more films by Adam Curtis, one of the best living documentary filmmakers. Last year I watched The Power of Nightmares; earlier this year I saw The Century of the Self; lately I’ve been working through his two most recent: The Trap (2007) and It Felt [...]
Tags: Adam Curtis, Algeria, anthropology, Blair, Bush, Cambodia, capitalism, CIA, Clinton, Cold War, communism, conservatism, consumerism, Damon Albarn, documentaries, economics, free market, game theory, Hayek, ICM, John Nash, Lee Harvey Oswald, logic, neo-conservatism, poker, Prisoner's Dilemma, psychiatry, psychology, rationality, Reagan, revolution, Saddam Hussein, selfishness, Thatcher
B.I.F.F. Day 5
Sep 30, 2009 movies
Just got home from the last film of the Bangkok International Film Festival and still bummed I knocked out all the best films straight off, though Everyone Else was minor redemption in my otherwise consistent slide to the bottom. Tonight’s full house screening of Mammoth was no exception, sadly. Mammoth (trailer) Country: Sweden Director: Lukas [...]
Tags: Bangkok, New York, Olongapo, Philippines, Phuket, Sweden, Tagalog
B.I.F.F Day 4
Sep 30, 2009 movies
I had a pretty mixed experience yesterday at the Bangkok International Film Festival. I only saw two movies, one shitty and one great, but mostly kept wishing I could re-watch I Killed My Mother. Tonight is my final film, Mammoth, which will probably play to a very packed house. It’s been really fun to attend [...]
Tags: Bangkok, bourgeoisie, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, love, lust, melodrama, prostitution, sex
B.I.F.F. Day 3
Sep 29, 2009 movies
Last night’s films were quite a change from the bing-blang-blaow extravaganza that was Dogtooth, A Prophet, and I Killed My Mother. These two were also different in that both had Q&A sessions afterward with the film’s director. I’ve also used some forward-thinking and bought tonight & tomorrow’s tickets ahead of time so I can stop [...]
Tags: Bangkok, China, documentaries, France, Iran, Iraq, war
BFF With BFF
Sep 27, 2009 movies
I’ve been serendipitously dropped in Thailand just in time for the Bangkok Farang Festival Film Festival. Kick off was last Thursday with an invitation-only screening of Bad Lieutenant and runs until this coming Wednesday. I’ve still been fighting the same cold from Argentina, only this past week it ramped up to bona fide H1N1 proportions [...]
Tags: Bangkok, Canada, Cannes, France, French, Greece, Quebec
Sawasdee Krap, Amigos
Sep 20, 2009 Argentina, movies
This is the obligatory I-made-it-safely-to-Thailand post. My trip was 33 hours door-to-door; flights mostly via Malaysia Arlines, but a quick jaunt at the end from Kuala Lumpur on Thai Airways. Here’s my flying steel tube parked in Cape Town, South Africa: My leg from BsAs to Cape Town was maybe 8 hours and my row [...]
Dangerous Knowledge
Jul 26, 2009 movies, philosophy, politics
I guess I’m on a philosophy film kick. The latest was the BBC’s Dangerous Knowledge, a documentary on mathematicians Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing — four geniuses whose neuroses drove them fatally mad. It’s debatable the extent to which their respective theories made them insane — the film obviously plays this [...]
Tags: fascism, Georg Cantor, Germany, Godel, Hitler, logic, Ludwig Boltzmann, mathematics, modernism, Nazism, philosophy, postmodernism, Prussia, Third Reich, Turing, WWI, WWII
Examined Life
Jul 25, 2009 movies, philosophy, politics, videos
I finally got to see Examined Life, a pseudo-intellectual documentary that aims to make philosophy a tad more accessible. The film uses some of academia’s rock stars to talk shop outside of normal confines, which is interesting, but probably still of limited appeal. We get, in order: Cornel West on philosophy Avital Ronell on alterity [...]
Tags: alterity, Avital Ronell, Cornel West, cosmopolitanism, deconstruction, ecology, ethics, feminism, Judith Butler, justice, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Otherness, Peter Singer, philosophy, politics, revolution, Slavoj Zizek, social contract, Socrates
The Reader in the Striped Pajamas
Feb 17, 2009 movies
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is celebrated every January 27th. The day often re-ignites discussions over what should be done with the old Nazi death camps: should Auschwitz and Dachau be left to rot, reclaimed by nature, or actively maintained as a memorial to victims of the Holocaust? Survivors, whose opinions here should trump all, have [...]
Tags: Germany, Hollywood, Holocaust, Nazism, The Reader
Films Seen in 2008
Jan 1, 2009 movies
Below is the full list of the movies I watched for the first time in 2008. There were 127 total (roughly 1 new-to-me movie every 3 days): 61 were documentaries (48%) 35 were dramas (28%) 18 were action/thrillers (14% ) 12 were comedies (9%) First movie I saw: Juno Last movie I saw: Slumdog Millionaire [...]
Tags: documentaries
End of America
Oct 27, 2008 movies, politics, videos
I watched The Rape of Europa the other night, a documentary about the Nazi theft of art during WWII. I was struck by how hard it is to learn lessons from the Third Reich. Compare anyone or anything to Nazi Germany and the conversation is effectively over (see: Godwin’s Law). I think part of the [...]
Tags: fascism, Hitler, McCain, Naomi Wolf, Nazism, Obama, racism
Constantine’s Sword
Last night I watched Constantine’s Sword, based off the James Carroll book of the same name from seven years ago. It chronicles Christianity’s role in perpetuating antisemitism and our disgraceful ties to violent regimes. The story and critique is mostly clear-eyed, and powerful when it takes a personal bent (Carroll has led a very interesting [...]
Tags: antisemitism, Auschwitz, Dresden, Goethe, Hiroshima, Jesus, militarism, Nagasaki, Nazism, peace, terrorism, war
Donk me
Work saps my energy to blog. This is unfortunate. I watched Helvetica the other week which was funny because I work at a very Helvetica-esque company. Trust me… it’s hard to keep my credentials as an anarchist when I’m working as a corporate drone. Plus, not being a bum means I have to pay taxes. [...]