4.10.2013

holy motors


saw this last week and have been haunted by it every day since. don't want to parse it too much but suffice to say: an amazing study of movies, art and the basic simian need for narrative. and myth. and mythic narrative. You get the idea. One of the few movies I've seen and felt a compulsion afterward to purchase, to own.


4.03.2013

tigers above, tigers below


from p.25 The Wisdom of No EscapePema Chödrön

Shane Carruth interview

I am an enormous fan of Shane Carruth's Primer and now cannot wait to see Upstream Color. in a world flooded with extended improv bits shot on HD and called film, he stands nearly alone, both in approach and voice. (note: not that there's anything wrong w/ HD! merely expressing my aversion for what passes for cinema these days)

watch this trailer
and now please kindly read this 2 part interview wherein he outlines parts of the process in arriving at/making this film as well as graciously and eloquently debunking the common insistence to decode every bit of a narrative, something I kind of pre-emptively am preparing to defend the black sea against as I am certain there are things that people won't 'get'. we'll see when we get there though.

an excerpt:

Speaking of getting the film "in one viewing" is that what you envisaged, or did you design it with an eye to repeat viewings?
My hope is that there will be by the end of one viewing a real emotional experience that's not un-understandable or obtuse: we know what we just experienced in terms of the emotional arc of the film. I think plot-wise, my feeling is that most of it's coming across [first time]. The thing is the storytelling is very dense and the way it's explored is lyrical, and that will tend to be not so on the nose.


part 1 is here

part 2 is here

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edited to add:

discovered this Primer review from Reverse Shot today, which is very worth the read. These sentences say it all: Years and multiple viewings later, the movie seems an inexhaustible resource—and, watched again today, even more miraculous than I remembered. It stands alone, an alien monolith in the landscape, unmoored to a cinematic school or movement, oblivious to fashion or trend.