Month: July 2015
TSP2009: Io sono l’amore
(July 31, 2015)Io sono l’amore. Luca Guadagnino. 2009. This film starts off extremely well, and then gets all sweaty. At then end they go full Sirk, and it’s glorious, but the middle part is problematic. I love the soundtrack by John Adams. (The blu-ray I bought didn’t have Enligsh subtitles, so I had to pirate a copy … Continue reading TSP2009: Io sono l’amore
TSP2009: The Limits of Control
(July 31, 2015)The Limits of Control. Jim Jarmusch. 2009. I didn’t mean to re-watch this film (I saw it last summer), but it was just too good. That Jarmusch guy, man. And Isaach De Bankolé! He’s so enjoyable to watch. I think all films I’ve seen with him in have been great? Chocolat, White Material, Coffee and … Continue reading TSP2009: The Limits of Control
TSP2008: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
(July 31, 2015)The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. David Fincher. 2008. If some director were to design a movie purely culculated to be nominated in all Oscar categories, it would look just like this turd. Whaddayouknow. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
My New Concert Blog
(July 28, 2015)TSP2008: Burn After Reading
(July 25, 2015)Burn After Reading. Joel and Ethan Coen. 2008. This was hilarious. Easily the best Coen film I’ve seen. It was slightly let down by its last third when some things turned all serious, which didn’t suit the film at all. Third act syndrome. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2008: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
(July 25, 2015)So teal. Very colour correct. Very hair product. Finally! Half a minute of Swinton! Did I mention the hair? The battle scenes are so real. Much. Miaow. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Andrew Adamson. 2008. I quite liked the first Narnia film. It was just like I remembered from reading that book at ten. … Continue reading TSP2008: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
TSP2008: Julia
(July 25, 2015)Julia. Erick Zonca. 2008. This is a good film, but it’s kind of excruciating to watch. Swinton’s amazing, of course, but it’s at least half an hour too long. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2007: Michael Clayton
(July 25, 2015)Michael Clayton. Tony Gilroy. 2007. After watching a string of European films, it’s always a struggle to readjust to American acting. American acting is so stylised and unreal. You can always imagine any of these actors dropping into a McDonalds’s commercial or a four camera sitcom and behaving exactly the same way. They conform to … Continue reading TSP2007: Michael Clayton
TSP2007: The Man From London
(July 24, 2015)The Man From London. Béla Tarr. 2007. Somehow, I’ve never seen any films by Béla Tarr before. And if I squint a bit, I could easily see this as being a French & Saunders parody of Bergman or Tarkovski. If it had moved slightly faster and had more women in it. So I have no … Continue reading TSP2007: The Man From London
TSP2007: Faceless
(July 24, 2015)Faceless. Manu Luksch. 2007. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2007: Strange Culture
(July 24, 2015)Strange Culture. Lynn Hershman-Leeson. 2007. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2007: Sleepwalkers
(July 19, 2015)Sleepwalkers. Doug Aitken. 2007. This art documentation video can be found on Youtube. I wanna visit New York again soon, anyway. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2006: Galápagos
(July 19, 2015)Galápagos. BBC. 2006. I haven’t really watched a nature documentary since I was a teenager or something. I always feel that documentaries just waste my preciouses time. “Give me a ten sentence summary! I mean five! Stat!” But this is rather brilliant. It’s all slo-mo/time lapse hi-def video (especially on Blu-Ray), with fake foley sounds, … Continue reading TSP2006: Galápagos
TSP2006: Stephanie Daley
(July 18, 2015)Stephanie Daley. Hilary Brougher. 2006. This is mostly not very good, but the final scene is a great twist. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2005: Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
(July 18, 2015)Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Andrew Adamson. 2005. I read the book when I was like ten. (Several times.) This film is just like what I remember the book being like. For better and for worse. So I can’t really fault the film. My ten year old self would have loved it. … Continue reading TSP2005: Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
TSP2005: The Somme
(July 18, 2015)The Somme. Carl Hindmarch. 2005. It’s not that bad, really, but the sentimental music underscoring every. single. thing. did my head in. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2005: The Absent Presence
(July 18, 2015)The Absent Presence. Hussein Chalayan, Martin R. Davison. 2005. This short film can be found on Vimeo. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2005: Broken Flowers
(July 18, 2015)Broken Flowers. Jim Jarmusch. 2005. I’d seen this film before, but I didn’t realise that that was Tilda Swinton. Her part lasted for half a minute, though. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2005: Constantine (Video Game)
(July 18, 2015)I don’t have any gaming consoles, but I found an old laptop that had Windows installed! So I downloaded the .rar file off of a totally legal site. Sure. Even if it’s infested with viruses, I don’t care much, because the laptop isn’t interweb-connected. Cool! Boo! Boo! Hm. This is Windows 7… Oh! Instructions! Game … Continue reading TSP2005: Constantine (Video Game)
TSP2005: Constantine
(July 18, 2015)People read slowly. Sure. It’s Keanu! Again! Constantine. Dylan Beale. 2005. This is a pretty confounding film. It almost seems like they’re making a parody of something? No scenes connect. It’s weird. And not in a good way. The director of this film went on to fuck up the The Hunger Games series. This post … Continue reading TSP2005: Constantine
TSP2005: Thumbsucker
(July 17, 2015)2005!? Keanu! Three wolf moon! I’ve got that t-shirt! Thumbsucker. Mike Mills. 2005. I’ve seen this film before, somehow. It’s still pretty good. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2003: The Box
(July 17, 2015)The Box. Luke Losey. 2003. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2003: The Statement
(July 17, 2015)Much photoshop. Very budget. So eh? He agrees. Oh, whatever. There!!! Oh, Michael Caine. I can’t quit you. Uh-oh, missy! So there! Properly chastised. Tell me more. EEEVIL! Je pense. A lot! Equations… The Statement. Norman Jewison. 2003. This is the kind of film where the dialogues go: “Why wasn’t I told this earlier?” “I’m … Continue reading TSP2003: The Statement
TSP2003: Young Adam
(July 17, 2015)Young Adam. David Mackenzie. 2003. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
I feel so grown up now
(July 17, 2015)TSP2002: Adaptation.
(July 11, 2015)Adaptation.. Spike Jonze. 2002. The first two thirds of this film are extremely entertaining. Metafictional tomfoolery to the max. And then, in the last third, it turns into a normal American action movie, and it’s incredibly boring. Which is a metafictional thing, too, because within the film, Kaufman is advised that people only remember the … Continue reading TSP2002: Adaptation.
TSP2002: Teknolust
(July 11, 2015)Teknolust. Lynn Hershman-Leeson. 2002. This is a very amusing film. There’s a lot about it I liked. So I really feel bad about this roll of the die: Edit: I’ve now watched the commentary track, and I feel even worse about the die. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2001: Vanilla Sky
(July 11, 2015)Vanilla Sky. Cameron Crowe. 2001. This film is so much worse than The Beach that I regret giving The Beach a ⚀. But I don’t have a die with a skull and crossbones, so it’ll have to do. THIS IS AWFUL!!!?!1!!! This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2001: The Deep End
(July 11, 2015)The Deep End. Scott McGehee. 2001. This started off as a run-of-the-mill spiralling-into-complications film, but then it took a more original turn. It’s weird seeing films from this area, though. Cell phone usage was prevalent, but script writers didn’t want to acknowledge that, because it makes all the traditional “person who can’t be reached” plot … Continue reading TSP2001: The Deep End
TSP2000: Possible Worlds
(July 11, 2015)Possible Worlds. Robert Lepage. 2000. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP2000: The Beach
(July 10, 2015)The Beach. Danny Boyle. 2000. This was excruciating. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
Kongsberg Jazz 2015
(July 10, 2015)TSP1999: The Protagonists
(July 10, 2015)The Protagonists. Luca Guadagnino. 1999. Absolutely fascinating. The levels of meta on display here are mind-boggling. And the different versions of the murder (the shouty American TV carjacking vs the European art movie killing) were… er… I mean. This is a film for film nerds, but it’s a playful, interesting and affecting one. It’s slightly … Continue reading TSP1999: The Protagonists
TSP1999: The War Zone
(July 10, 2015)The War Zone. Tim Roth. 1999. Feel-bad movie of the year. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP1998: Love is the Devil
(July 10, 2015)Love is the Devil. John Maybury. 1998. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP1997: Conceiving Ada
(July 6, 2015)Conceiving Ada. Lynn Hershman-Leeson. 1997. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP1996: Female Perversions
(July 6, 2015)Female Perversions. Susan Streitfeld. 1996. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP1994: Remembrance of Things Fast: True Stories Visual Lies
(July 6, 2015)Remembrance of Things Fast: True Stories Visual Lies. John Maybury. 1994. I was unable to locate this film anywhere for my Tilda Swinton project. If somebody knows where it can be found (either in some physical format or online), please let me know.
TSP1990: Das offene Universum
(July 6, 2015)One of the reasons for doing this blog series was to poke at the “well, everything is available now” thing (spoiler warning: it’s not), but then you have things like this movie: Made in 1990, and then largely unavailable for three decades, before suddenly becoming available on Vimeo. That’s a hopeful sign, perhaps: A couple … Continue reading TSP1990: Das offene Universum
TSP1993: Blue
(July 6, 2015)Blue. Derek Jarman. 1993. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
TSP1993: Wittgenstein
(July 6, 2015)Wittgenstein. Derek Jarman. 1993. This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.
BD80: Tardiesque
(July 4, 2015)Hugo Pratt and José Muñoz are probably the two cartoonists who influenced most European comics in the late 70s/early 80s. It rare to flip through a black-and-white album from that period and not see some influence from those two. (And a bit later, from Moebius.) But there’s another artist that seems to have been a … Continue reading BD80: Tardiesque
BD80: Anna nella jungla by Hugo Pratt
(July 3, 2015)Anna nella jungla by Hugo Pratt (1959) Hugo Pratt was 32 years old and living in Argentina when he got his first opportunity to make his own comics. He’d illustrated a bunch before, but Anna in the Jungle is the first one he’d written, too. I re-read all the Corto Maltese albums the other week. … Continue reading BD80: Anna nella jungla by Hugo Pratt
BD80: Jonathan by Cosey
(July 2, 2015)Souviens-toi, Jonathan… by Cosey (1975) I remember the Jonathan series as a meandering, hippy-ish series with gorgeous drawings from Tibet. It turns out that I remembered correctly, but there was also bits I had forgotten completely. Cosey, born in Switzerland in 1950, worked as an assistant to Derib (also a Swiss guy (Swissish? Swisserese?)) in … Continue reading BD80: Jonathan by Cosey
BD80: Annie Goetzinger & Pierre Christin
(July 1, 2015)La Demoiselle de la Legion d’Honneur by Annie Goetzinger & Pierre Christin (1980) Annie Goetzinger and Pierre Christin have created a long list of works together, and this is the first one, published in 1980. It’s the story of a woman who drifts aimlessly through her life, controlled by various men (and their families). It’s … Continue reading BD80: Annie Goetzinger & Pierre Christin