also i have been watching jia zhang ke films and i recommend his films if you want to know about modern china and it's transition from communism to capitalism in the last couple of decades. i was watching his film 'platform' and it's synopsis will tell you it's about a travelling theatre group in 1980 semi-rural china but from what i could tell it was more about that transition. it was really cool and interesting - i couldn't watch the end of the film though because of that fucking subtitle thing i mentioned on the last page. what a bummer. everything i've seen by him deals with the theme of modernisation to some extent. i've seen still life and the world too. of those two i think i liked still life better. the world kind of lost me a little, even though it's premise is pretty on the nose: it's a story about the lives of people who work in the beijing world park, which is a park where they recreate all the most famous landmarks and buildings from around the world so you can see the world without ever leaving beijing. still life is good, you should see that.

his films are kind of hard to describe in a few sentences because they are long and include all kinds of things. i've enjoyed them all, i'm gonna see more of them.
 

I lied I didn't see any movies

I watched Commando yesterday, because I was in the mood for a brainless explosion movie. I'm not in those moods often.

"IT" I don't know why people call this scary. I guess when you're twelve it might be. Or before playing Silent Hill. This movie was just plain silly and hilarious.

My recent cyberpunk kick has sort of transitioned into a Japanese gore kick, so I watched The Machine Girl yesterday. Starts off slower than Tokyo Gore Police, but it gets the job done by the end. I also realized I had both Tetsuo movies here, but for some reason I'd only watched the first one and about fifteen minutes of Body Hammer. I'll rectify that after band practice tonight.

I was explaining/recommending Tokyo Gore police and The Machine Girl to a friend of mine last night, and her response was "sounds cool, but it's anime, right?" My reply was "No, that's the best part. They're live action!"

The Dude Apparently a lot of people are just terrified of clowns. I never found IT that engaging as a horror flick, but I had a couple of friends who literally could not watch it.

I watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence or whatever it's called.

It's got John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, so that automatically means it's awesome. It's also got the guy who voiced Friar Tuck from the original Disney Robin Hood.



Other than that, it's really not a very good movie. It's really boring and it's basically just a stage play that had a camera in front of it.

i just watched the harder they come which is a jamaican film from the 70's. it was the first film ever produced by jamaica, apparently! also there was some stuff about it helping to popularize reggae music which i can see because the music in the film was really good.

anyway i liked this film alot. it's about a gunman going on a romantic crime spree (and it's not that romantic), but i liked the amount of attention that was paid to how empty his tantrum really was. the main character is a poor guy called ivan who just arrives in the city at the beginning of the film. he starts off with the idea of being a musician and recording hit songs, but that doesn't work out so he starts to deal drugs and then goes nuts and shoots a bunch of policemen, then he is on the run and the city is obsessed with him, which he loves because all he wanted was to be famous and important. he milks it by putting up graffiti saying 'i am everywhere!' and taking photos of himself in cool poses. he is a total scumbag but is pretty charasmatic so i didn't get bored watching him be horrible.

it was good.

oh yeah, i forgot about this. this is directed by John Krasinski, right? I'm not sure if i give a flying hoobastank what he's got to say but i guess i am interested in a david foster wallace adaptation even though i made it about what 60 pages into infinite jest on my most valiant attempt before succumbing to the thickness in my right hand (i'll do it one day. definitely!). i remember thinking the trailer looked bad. very JOKEY or whatever, in a predictable way. i haven't read the book so i didn't really have any right to expectations but i thought the book was gonna be like a series of interviews with Charlie 'The Black Hole' Sheen

i'll probably see it soon now that it's out.

ya and he makes an appearance as this complete jerk. i don't think it was a complete failure. it was probably just doomed from the start since a film adaptation of dfw fiction kind of contradicts his whole approach.


watched Lost in Translation again

watched the last half of Little Big Man. great movie. i had seen it before and it's the sort of movie that i get immediately sucked into when i start watching it.

it's kinda like forrest gump if forrest gump wasn't a gigantic waste of time with nothing useful to say. definitely worth watching.