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Showing posts from June, 2015

Inside Out

I wonder if the creators at Pixar are unconsciously drawn to subvert the prescribed messages they are surely required to put out. I ask this out of logic: Pixar employees show too much intelligence, too much subversive intelligence, that always can be relied upon to titillate the adult in us even as we accept their mostly requiting us to remember our inner child, to rest without severe qualms if they are requited to a company which overall nullifies itself as any strong nudge for change. I also ask this out of evidence: why else construct this movie, with inside prompters who delight when their subject, eleven-year-old Riley, resounds the same old familiar behavioural notes — yay, once again it’s happy Riley! hockey Riley! goof-ball Riley! — so that it recalls the struggle out of The Truman Show, where as we know exasperation at unfamiliar initiative was not warranted, but rather something that shows up the controllers' overall intention to keep their subject mirroring thei...

Jurassic World

I felt sorry for the monster in this film as soon as I knew this movie would not base its appeal on introducing something new, but in showing itself in opposition to something so monstrously presumptuous, and in curdling back in the lap of already laid out accomplishment in rapturous fealty. The movie begins in suggesting that crowds of viewers were beginning to be bored by just plain dinosaurs, and profit required new, dazzling creations; brazen, even criminally bold, experimentation. But what we feel as we use members of this crowd as our avatars is not exactly boredom but the pleasure in being bored at something that really should bedazzle. We wonder for a moment if a real Jurassic Park was created, if, simply by our experience of watching the films, we might feel so grand — accomplished — to be a bit blasé at the sight of even reptile titans! This is a feeling to want to loiter in, lounge in, not necessarily to cast off quickly to once again be innocents to the unknown. ...

Film reviews: 2013-2015

The Avengers The Hobbit (book review --2014) Ex-Machina American Sniper  (from American Sniper to Triumph of the Will?) American Sniper  (Eastwood's comfort zone) Exodus: Gods and Kings The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies Fury Guardians of the Galaxy Boyhood Lucy Railway Man Transcendence Bad Words Draft Day Nymphomaniac Noah Divergent Non-Stop Pompeii 3 Days to Kill 12 Years a Slave  (it might not have been worth it, Lupita) Oscars  (too late -- we  saw  your boobs) Gravity and 12 Years a Slave  (out of the frying pan and into the fire) Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit Her Wolf of Wall Street  (fork in the road) Wolf of Wall Street  (part two) Wolf of Wall Street  (part one) 12 Years a Slave Ender's Game 2013 films, accompanied by text by Lloyd de Mause Gravity Carrie Don Jon Prisoners The Fami...