Lost in the Movies: #WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/28 - 8/31

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/28 - 8/31


Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for more arresting images. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

This is what creative block looks like
Ryan (2004), dir. Chris Landreth
viewed August 28, 2013

Someone to watch over her
Submission (2004), dir. Theo van Gogh
viewed August 28, 2013

Road rage from a parked car, with a smile
Two Cars, One Night (2004), dir. Taika Waititi
viewed August 28, 2013

RoBoerCop
Tetra Vaal (2004), dir. Neill Blomkamp
viewed August 28, 2013

Daydreaming on the chilly seashore
Finding Kate (2004), dir. Katherine Brooks
viewed August 28, 2013

Come in, Mickey said, I'll give you shelter from the storm
The Klondike Kid (1932), prod. Walt Disney
viewed August 31, 2013

Crystallization as hallucination
Liquid Crystals (1978), dir. Jean Painleve
viewed August 31, 2013

The vegetables are beautiful, the voice is annoying
Carrots & Peas (1969), dir. Hollis Frampton
viewed August 31, 2013

Sleek, soft, sumptuous, and slightly sinister
Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), dir. Kenneth Anger
viewed August 31, 2013

Not as compelling as Mask of the Phantasm (Batman himself is barely a character here)
SubZero (1998), prod. Benjamin Melniker, Michael Uslan, Randy Rogel, Boyd Kirkland
viewed August 31, 2013

4 comments:

STinG said...

Speaking as a former Muslim and a member of a family where I am the only non-Muslim, I found Submission as a film too abstract to be nonsense, but to caricaturized to be an accurate criticism of Islam. I would argue largely that my mother raised me more than my father, both did so strictly Islamically, and I was disciplined more to respect and never abuse people in general, women included obviously, as we as a family always considered them to be people.
I understand that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was also a former Muslim and that especially many nations (Islamic are put in the spotlight, but there are other countries all around) seem to need to establish a tyranically patriarchal society where women have little say or value, but she comes off as a venomous person in general (And she is, after all, married to Niall Ferguson).

At the same time, I found Theo van Gogh's murder absolutely horrific and unwarranted on any basis whatsoever. There's no argument for it, he made a film, he used his free speech to criticize whether with merit or not, something he had a right to and he was killed for it. In Islam, we are not supposed to talk negatively against the religion, God or the prophets (which is of course what you are meant to do when you follow a religion, respect it), but Theo van Gogh was not a Muslim, he was not held to the same restrictions Muslims choose upon themselves and he certainly did not deserve any harm to him for a movie, of all things.
Stuff like Theo van Gogh's death makes me extremely angry.

STinG said...

too caricaturized*

Joel Bocko said...

Thanks for the comment, STinG. In fact, this a difficult film to respond to (so many minefields) - I just wrote & deleted a much longer comment because it seemed too jumbled. To be short, then, I'll say that I found the photography of the film more effective than the cutting. The abstraction of the staging and eerie symmetry of the compositions, really brought home the theme of women treated as objects or foreign, strange creatures, even as the voiceover humanized them and brought us within their perspective.

I haven't read the Koran or had much direct experience with Islam, so I'd be really interested in reading about your own background with the religion, if you've written about it elsewhere. Have you seen Not Without My Daughter? That's another film where the left-wing value of feminism and the right-wing value of xenophobia condition very awkward, uncertain responses. For the reason that it's both traditionalist (something the right usually defends) and foreign-to-the-West (something the left usually defends), Islam has a very bizarre place in Western political discourse. And it seems like often those with the loudest opinions - pro or con - don't have a great deal of personal experience with it, unfortunately.

Joel Bocko said...

Forgot to continue my aesthetic critique of the film. I was going to write that the editing, contrary to the photography, seemed too shock-oriented and stylized making the propaganda value of the movie seem a bit cheap. I would have rather lingered on many of those frames, allowing the sinister vibe and strangeness of the milieu to sink in. That would have been both more subtle as art and arguably more effective as propaganda, too.

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