Off-duty film viewing only. Anything I'm working on, might be working on, or connected to anything I'm working on, won't be mentioned here.
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Maria by Callas 2017
A film that sells itself on its never-before-seen footage, but then proceeds to tinker with that footage in myriad horrible ways: colourised, up-ressed, motion smoothed, degrained, even adorned with pretend sprocket holes. (Stills photography gets in-motion sprocket holes, too, and gate weave – genuinely bizarre.) For a film that claims to present the real Maria Callas, it’s ironic that these manipulations lead her to so often resemble a totally unreal wax doll.
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In a Valley of Violence 2016
Ti West doing kind of an inverse Pearl in that the central performance is underplayed and all of the supporting roles are over the top – which is way too noisy for me.
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Last Night in Soho 2021
You know how the Doctor Who Christmas specials have a bit more extra money to spend, so there's flashier effects and maybe a guest star or two who used to do films, but the whole thing still feels very televisual in its execution and in its acting, and the dialogue doesn't always land because it's trying to simultaneously appease different audience demographics? That's exactly how this feels – and way before Matt Smith shows up.
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Moonage Daydream 2022
Some immediate idle thoughts:
From a conceptual standpoint, I’m not sure if hooking the film primarily to audio from chat-show interviews is going to elicit the deepest of insights, given the format. Bowie was always good value on them, but I doubt he would deem them worthy of extracting any kind of biography, however loose/associative that may be. It also creates a huge gap toward the end as Bowie had moved out of the public eye.
The film relies a…
