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29 June 2010
The Minnesota Trip (2010)
Eugene and I will be canoeing in Minnesota early July, starting from Boundary Waters Canoe Area Entry Point #57, Magnetic Lake. I haven’t gone canoeing up in the Boundary Waters in a long time, and am really looking forward to it. Below is an image of our route:
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20 June 2010
Prick Up Your Ears (1987)
The story of Joe Orton and his partner, Kenneth Halliwell, tracks the latter’s relationship with the former’s burgeoning success. It is, of course, tragic, but the tragedy is less a reflection on being gay than an attempt to understand the symbiotic relationship between two men when that unanimity becomes encumbered. Personally, I’ve come to see [...]
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9 June 2010
Er shi si cheng ji [24 City] (2008)
Zhang Ke Jia maps the changing lives of contemporary Chinese and with 24 City, his target is Chengdu in Sichuan province, where factory 420 is being shut down to be converted into state-of-the-art condominiums. Basically, the film is a drama that is masked as a documentary, where we spend time listening to people whose lives [...]
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7 June 2010
The Ladykillers (1955)
To see Alec Guinness in The Ladykillers must be like what it will be like for a youngin’ to see Ewan McGregor pull the condom off in Trainspotting, which is to say, impressionable and revealing. I’m anxious to see Star Wars again, actually, having experienced this Ealing Studios black comedy where he is no less [...]
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23 May 2010
Angels & Demons (2009)
Tom Hanks getting a haircut made for a much better movie. Note though, that better does not mean good. The Da Vinci Code was so languid and expository that, really, Angels & Demons could not have been worse, but it could have been better. Is it just Dan Brown’s fault? Think about it – this [...]
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16 May 2010
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Synecdoche, New York is a film that resonates with a lot of my education. I like framing it within that prism because while I remember sitting in class, reading Derrida and Bahktin and everyone else in between, the experience of it is a little fuzzy. And if I position myself in that desk, paging through [...]
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9 May 2010
Les plages d’Agnès [The Beaches of Agnès] (2008)
Les plages d’Agnès is a documentary about French new-wave filmmaker Agnès Varda. I haven’t seen any of her work, but conceptually as a filmmaker crafting her autobiography in film, this is an exquisite portrait that sometimes falls into the realm of hagiography. She sets herself up as an enigma, and the film’s structure reflects the [...]
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30 April 2010
Es kommt der Tag [The Day Will Come] (2009)
MoMA’s annual Kino! film festival is a venue for modern German films to be seen and often receive their premieres in the U.S. This year, I got to see Es kommt der Tag, which is a film exploring karma and its personal and weighty effects on relationships among loved ones. The first twenty minutes side [...]
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26 April 2010
An Education (2009)
An Education is one of those films that plays against itself, hyper aware of what it is and so constantly works to make you believe its charlatan and be charmed by him. This works largely because of Carey Mulligan, who is incredibly charming as the naive British girl caught up in the sophistication she craves. [...]
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18 April 2010
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans (2009)
Werner Herzog is quite the auteur, and so I couldn’t help but wonder why, while watching this film: why Werner? Why TBL:PoC:NO? What is this film’s reason for existence? The original, which I have vague memories of but am not convinced I’ve seen it in its entirety, is a complete conviction to excess, with all [...]