El Mismo Amor, La Misma Lluvia.
Part 1.
China’s Ghost Cities and Malls – fascinating short documentary about abnormalities in China’s real estate market
(via Open Culture)
A short film about a sign guy on Oxford Street.
h/t Kat Brown.
Creeping Through The Criterion: Ugetsu (1953.)
My favorite shot in the film — and I’ve attached the segment of the film to the post — starts four minutes, twenty-four seconds in and runs slightly past the five minute mark.
Creeping Through the Criterion: Walkabout.
There is an itchy sense to the music in Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout. (I watched the VHS ‘Director’s Cut.’) Too full of syrup in too many places — though that could be claimed to be some sort of meta-irony/echo with the radio and some of the foot-tapping pessimism of the film — especially given how I read the path of Roeg’s visual patterning (which — in some instances — seemed wildly uneven.) And while I did not have the thunderstruck reaction as exemplified by —
Some years ago, I screened Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 film Don’t Look Now for a group of international students who were learning English. Rarely have I seen an audience more engaged by what they were watching.
or —
Roeg was a cinematographer before he was a director, and this is one of the best-photographed films ever.
— it leaves me curious enough to make my way through the rest of Roeg’s work — and to return to this at a later date.
Creeping Through the Criterion: Hobson’s Choice.
I liked this. It’s like Babbitt crossed with this at-first secretly emerging, then roaring dose of social humanism. Made in ‘53. Managed to sneak in some interesting shots — Mr. Hobson chasing the moon out of the frame of a puddle with a whistle jumping up off the score sheet when the moon left the frame, the latter’s visions produced by the DT’s, Willie buying for time while his wife changes in the bedroom on their wedding night, and the shot of the water that’s in the clip I’ve posted above.
You get to see a young Prunella Scales in it, and I also like the fact the surrounding architecture still feels like England in ‘53. They don’t try and hide the time period by cropping their shots at uncomfortable angles, which I feel like I’ve seen too much of already.
Extra: wikipedia of the film / of the phrase / Armond White’s article at Criterion’s web page / a blog by someone who had the same idea I did.
Five Links:
- Global Voices in Jamaica.
- Ed Ward, On Music from Vietnam: http://n.pr/djd6tS
- John Huston’s The Battle of San Pietro.
- Man single-handedly building Metro rail.
- Boston Bay State Banner: Haitian delegation returns; disappointed with progress: http://tinyurl.com/2wjoufe
An interview with João César Monteiro.
Parts 2, 3, and 4.
