Jan/100
Apocalypse Now.
I'm heading up a lengthy, two class seminar on Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, showcasing how the Movie was adapted from Conrad's Novella. Although inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the film deviates extensively from the source material. The novella, based on Conrad's real experiences as a steam paddleboat captain in Africa, is set in the Congo Free State during the 19th century. This scene sets up Willard's mission into the Cambodian jungle and showcases Coppola's killer talent for great film making.
Kurtz and Marlow (who is named Willard in the movie) both work for a Belgian trading company that brutally exploits its native African workers. When Marlow arrives at Kurtz's outpost, he discovers that Kurtz has gone insane and is lording over a small tribe as a god. The novella ends with Kurtz dying on the trip back and the narrator musing about the darkness of the human psyche: "the heart of an immense darkness."
Oct/092
Is this really it, MJ?
Michael Jackson – arguably the most famous man in world history and easily the greatest entertainer of all time, died this past summer.
Oh, you’ve heard?
The aftermath and mourning of his passing included this past Tuesday’s release of “This Is It”, a documentary-style film that followed Jackson as he rehearsed in the weeks before what was going to be his curtain call - a string of 50 sold out concerts for over one million people, taking place in London’s O2 Theatre, beginning in July of this year.
Oct/093
A movie that will keep you up at night.
There is always something somewhat overbearing about the hype machine – the thing that makes mediocre sound like amazing and the ordinary extraordinary. The hype machine works and how? Simply by repeating the same thing over and over again, back and forth until we all want to spend the money to buy into the hype. Advertisements, commercial spots and various tweets are all vehicles of the hype machine – the thing that helped G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra make $100 million dollars at the box office and the same hype machine spawned a season of the Ultimate Fighter with a man named, yes, Kimbo Slice.
Oct/093
California is going down.
Here's a full five minute clip of the movie '2012', which opens in November. It looks pretty entertaining, but then again, so did The Day After Tomorrow.
In case you don't have time to watch the whole thing:
- John Cusack tells his kids and wife to pack
- they don't
- they drive through carnage
- fly through carnage
- watch California 'go down' as it were.
Sep/091
Comrade Moore takes on capitalism.
Michael Moore's new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, premieres this Sunday at the Venice Film Festival. In it, the firebrand filmmaker offers an indictment of the entire capitalist system, calling it "an evil, and you cannot regulate evil."
Whether or not you like Moore, his politics, or his films, what's interesting about the idea behind this film is that it's trying (I think) to show audiences that capitalism (an economic model) and democracy (a political one) are not inextricably tied together. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of alternatives he proposes, if any, as well as what kind of smears are leveled at him from his fellow (largely right-of-centre) citizens.
Sep/096
Disney buys Marvel Entertainment Inc. for a cool $4 billion dollars.
The Walt Disney empire is to buy the superheroes stable Marvel Entertainment for $4bn (£2.5bn) in a star-studded Hollywood deal that unites family names such as Mickey Mouse with lucrative characters including Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men.
Disney hopes to put Marvel's 5,000 characters to work on its television channels and in video games, theme parks and movies. The agreed takeover is for a mixture of cash and stock, with Disney shares accounting for roughly 40% of the buyout price.
The tie-up unites two companies with similar business models – they both take characters which capture the popular imagination and promote them vigorously around the world on every possible media platform and through third-party licensing deals.
Aug/092
Still alive in District 9.
Clicking through to YouTube to see the HQ version is recommended.
Alive in Joburg is a science fiction short film directed by Neill Blomkamp, released in 2005 by Spy Films. It runs approximately six minutes long and was filmed in Johannesburg, South Africa. The film explores themes of apartheid, and is noted for its visual effects as well as its documentary-style imagery. Blomkamp's 2009 feature film District 9 expands themes and elements from this short film.
I'm off to see District 9 tonight. Has anyone seen it yet? What are your thoughts?
PH0T0ADAY.
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