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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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IFN and tonight's pick is "Inside Job", a documentary about how the banks orchestrated and profited from the economic collapse of 2008. Now to be fair, a movie about the corruption and greed within the banking industry and Wall Street probably isn't a 14 year old's cup of tea, but he sat through it and had some good questions afterwards. And the film itself was good in a nothing-I-didn't-know already but appreciated the bar charts and infographics sort of way. It was good. Well narrated, with a good soundtrack, some nice awkward moments interviewing the key people, and a proper sense of outrage as you see them all rewarded - in the hundreds of millions of dollars - and with key government positions - for a job truly terribly done. And worth it to see how corruption is spreading itself throughout the US Universities and educational systems. Not a happy film, but a necessary one. And sadly it probably won't change a thing. But we can't say we weren't warned.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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- Hits: 1985
Movie tonight, becoming a bit of a Wednesday routine (the boy calls it IFN, for Independent Film Night). So we see Marwencol - The embedded trailer below. Shot on Super 8, it's a brilliant documentary tracing - in his own words - one man's recovery from a beating that left him brain damaged and unable to function normally. Shot on a Super 8, it probably cost less than $10, 000 to make, and offers easily a thousand times the value of a film that cost a thousand times as much to make. See it while it's still at the Uptown.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1935
A downloaded discovery (and he has more films that I'm not aware of and so will be on the Greenaway kick for a while) - "Nightwatching". It takes the premise that Rembrandt inserted clues that would identify a murderer in his famous Night Watch - and the entire film - par for Greenaway, reflects Rembrandt's use of darkness and light. Now reviews for this are mixed - and for the most part unkind - and Greenaway is not a director you would want to walk in on accidentally. But if you see it, knowing his previous work and style and expecting the density of ideas, the graphic sexuality, the rich, sumptuous imagery, then you probably won't be disappointed.
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Yes, I knew what I was getting into, but I'd shown the boy the original and felt obliged to take him to see the second installment. And what can you say? It's everything you'd expect.
I don't mean that in a good way.
Now because my expectations were low, very low, it would have been an easy thing to pleasantly surprise me. I mean, it's not like there isn't fodder for ideas here: there are the "lifeforms" (holodicketymorphosomethingorother...?) that spontaneously populate the world, but they're only a subplot to show how evil "Clue" (Jeff Bridges) can be. A shame, because there is potential there, as demonstrated by Conway's Game of Life. And while I like Jeff Bridges, he proved his evilness plenty well enough by consenting to come back and make this film.
And there's the idea of transcendence - Transhumanism, of a digital immortality, well, of loads of things...
None of which are touched upon even slightly here. Now it is what it is (not very good at all), so I can take it on those grounds, but - with the effects, with the countless unforseen turns technology has taken, and a decent writer - it could have been an awful lot more. For shame.