Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category

16
Oct

Un Chien Andalou

Here’s another gem from the stack of weird movies. Get this – both he lead actors in this movie committed suicide. The man by overdosing on Veronal while the woman by setting herself on fire in a public square. That should be enough to get you going since you are already reading this. The link to the movie is a the end of this post if you cannot resist. The movie was shot in 1929, it’s a surrealistic movie by Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It’s a silent movie shot on a black and while film.

The movie starts off with a scene that can lead to some people puking right where they sit and can make others lose their appetite. If you are like me, you would just enjoy it and expect more from the movie. It will live up to your expectations. The film opens with a middle aged man sharpening his razor later calmly testing it out on his own thumb. He opens the balcony door, gazes at the moon and proceeds to… [Read more →]

16
Oct

Darkness/Light/Darkness

Continuing from the previous two posts about weird movies (Primer and Pi) comes Darkness/Light/Darkness, a short film by Jan Švankmajer. A very short film with running length less than 8 minutes. There isn’t much to write about this movie. It’s about limbs – human limbs. They come together and try to put themselves together in a room. Hands, ears, eyes, teeth, tongue – it goes on and in great detail.

Jan is known for his work with stop motion animation. He uses clay models for the movie with weird sounds in the background. Stop motion animation is a pain in the ass. I have tried it in the past after watching a how-to on Discovery’s popular mechanics for kids (wonder how this was mechanics, but anyway) this thing is painfully slow. You keep changing the models every frame, so slightly, as not to lose the persistence of vision, take a picture, change the model again. It a meticulous process done very well in this movie. [Read more →]

15
Oct

Primer

What would you do if you were a frustrated engineer with friends who share your point of view? Start a company in your garage of course. Don’t worry, Primer isn’t another movie to take a bite of an apple and start the Apple. Turns out, these people were much more intelligent. I am currently reading Hyperspace, a book about parallel universes, time warp and the 10th dimension; written by Michio Kaku. I will review that book as soon as I finish it. Reading that book brought back some memories. He talks about possibilities of time travel in that book from a scientific standpoint. Like any other kid of my age the first thought that touched my mind was Back to the Future. It’s a very nicely written movie series, scientifically incorrect yet really exciting and I just enjoy the movies immensely.

There’s another movie, not as popular as Back to the Future, that deals with time travel – Primer. A movie which has been hailed by the critics at Rotten Tomatoes as one of the best science fiction movies for the thinking man, Primer is about the accidental discovery of a means of time travel. [Read more →]

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