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Closed-eye vision for the information age.

But while Stan the Man sought to free perception from the modern onslaught of words and signs by returning to the purity of preverbal imagination, contemporary video artists like Kopko seem to posit that such a return is no longer possible for us (if it ever was to begin with). In a era where the average mind's eye is so constantly and pervasively colonized by outside transmissions, where image and reality have become so…

Every '90s Kid knows that if you miss your old familiar friends, they're waiting just around the bend. But unlike nearly every other reboot, revival, and ripoff in this gilded age of pop culture dumpster diving, the new season of Twin Peaks acutely recognizes that "just around the bend" can only ever be a shallow and fleeting fantasy, never a real place to which we can actually return. It doesn't matter how much of the original cast and crew you…

A fun idea, but the first and last segments are the only ones that really work, mostly thanks to the admirably game and good-humored performers and at least in the latter segment a surprisingly artful and ambitious crew (if you've ever wondered what it might look like if Maya Deren made shoestring made-to-order fetish porn, wonder no more). Chatman himself certainly isn't doing much of the heavy lifting here, his script generally far more interested in getting the actors to…

An ambitious and promising debut. I'm particularly impressed by Sheng's insight into group social dynamics; the way he keenly observes how his characters occupy physical space with each other, exposing the various emotional subtleties embedded in those minute interactions and exploring the tragic tendency among kids and adults alike to instinctively deflect or sublimate any complicated feelings that may arise within such microscopic expressions of intimacy.

More impressive still is the film's quietly brain-crackling Moebius-strip plot structure, by which the…