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Playtime - Jacques Tati (1967)
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 918
A masterpiece, surreal-absurdist-comedy, every frame of this picture a portrait of people lost in a dystopian past/present.
While the Wikipedia offers spoilers it might also help you to figure out where you are in the film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playtime
Like the central charcter - ish - Monsieur Hulot - you'll periodically find yourself lost in the labyrinth of glass, reflections & concrete. Lots to unpack here and rest assured you didn't unpack it all in the first viewing. Brilliant in it's photography, location choices, lack of meaningful dialogue - the background conversations that tune in and out, direction it took to have quite literally dozens of people walking and performing on cue, it reinvents cinema and yet - the reinvention ends here.
I'd highly recommended this.
Fall
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 800
Turned leaves are now largely fallen, snow slowly creeps down the mountain, the chipmunks shaking down the nuts onto the pedestrians and cars. Don't loiter underneath the taller trees. Chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, acorns, dozens I can't identify, they seem to change brands street to street, every conceivable nut, which ones are edible? Which aren't? I haven't a clue. But fall is done, time to do a sweep up of leaves from the yard before the snow settles, and - there's no new place on the horizon.
Grim, grim, grim.
Goltzius & The Pelican Company - Peter Greenaway
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 950
2012, classic Greenaway. From "https://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=4184&menu=4"
In the winter of 1590, Duch printer Goltzius seduces the Margrave of Alsace into paying for a printing press to make and publish illustrated books. Goltzius promises him an extraordinary book of pictures of the Old Testament Biblical stories. Erotic tales of Lot and his daughters, David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah and John the Baptist and Salome,stories in which themes of incest, adultery, female entrapment and necrophilia abound. Margrave's court is completely seduced by Goltzius' titillating storytelling, and swiftly sinks into a pit of lechery and religious politics, until the court is forced to buy its way out, and Goltzius can begin his ambitious endeavor.
Greenaway always brilliant, but this was not to my taste - probably me more than the film. And Greenaway's films do demand a larger screen.
To see what else he's been up to (a surprising amount, really, just not all film) read the wiki on him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Greenaway
The Villainess - 2017, Jung Byung-gil, Korea
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 799
More kills in the first six minutes than the entire John Wick Trilogy. Amazing choreography (The first 6 minutes - shot as if it were from the POV of a first-person shooter game - amazing.)
The plot, a little convoluted, and I have a hard time believing that any country, let alone "gang" could reproduce as fast as the kills keep coming. Although - I'd warn you, the Korean films are substantially more graphic / bloody than their American counterparts. Amazing choreography & stunts.
Absolutely no meaning whatsoever. 5 Stars.
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