(Örnek 2003) The Hittites
(Park­er 1999) South Park: Ep.39 ― Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub
(Young 1990) Jeeves and Woost­er: Ep.1 ― In Court After the Boat Race Read more »

Some old friends took me out to the sub­urbs to see the first show­ing of Avatar on an Imax screen. We were over­whelmed. The motion-cap­ture and 3D tech­nolo­gies were employed intel­li­gent­ly, to tell a com­pelling sto­ry, and to cre­ate a kind of Max­field Par­rish beau­ty that under­lined its theme.  Read more »

A fea­ture length doc­u­men­tary on the Hit­tites, nar­rat­ed by Jere­my Irons! I find it dif­fi­cult to believe that there’s a com­mer­cial mar­ket for this. I always liked the Hit­tites, and read what lit­tle was avail­able about them when I was a kid. But the name of this ancient civ­i­liza­tion usu­al­ly draws a blank stare, even among well-edu­cat­ed peo­ple.  Read more »

(Chaf­fey / McGoohan 1967) The Pris­on­er: Arrival [6of1 order #1; orig­i­nal order #1]
(Mar­cus 2001) Mur­der Rooms: The White Knight Stratagem
(Fick­man 2009) Race to Witch Moun­tain Read more »

This 1959 low bud­get sci­ence fic­tion film fea­tures aliens (accom­pa­nied by a mon­ster that appears to be made of shag car­pet­ing) attack­ing a Sami vil­lage in Swedish Lap­land! The film drags bor­ing­ly for the first two thirds of it’s length, fill­ing time with a lame romance, and lots of scenes of ice skat­ing and ski­ing. But when the aliens and mon­ster final­ly appear, there’s lots of fun to be had. The shag car­pet mon­ster knocks over tents, and fright­ens the rein­deer, and does the least amount of dam­age por­trayed in any cin­e­mat­ic alien inva­sion. Some of the cam­era shots are sur­pris­ing­ly good, as if Svend Nykvist took a day off from Bergman to work for Roger Cor­man. If you’ve nev­er heard the agglu­ti­na­tive Sami lan­guage spo­ken, you can do so in the one scene where an old man answers ques­tions in it.

Sami-Nor­we­gian adven­tur­er Lars Mors­en trav­els from Alas­ka to Labrador by dog sled, canoe, skis, and on foot. The route he takes cross­es noth­ing but tun­dra, taiga, and bore­al for­est. That kind of adven­ture is known as “thru-hik­ing”, and this is one of the most extreme exam­ples of it. The jour­ney took two years and sev­en months. There are occa­sion­al stops in out­posts like Arc­tic Red Riv­er, Churchill, and Mis­tassi­ni along the way, but most­ly he is alone with his dogs. He films him­self with a hand­held, and talks to him­self and the dogs (and the occa­sion­al bear), in untrans­lat­ed Nor­we­gian, but if you’ve spent any time in this kind of envi­ron­ment, you nev­er have trou­ble guess­ing what he’s say­ing. This long doc­u­men­tary (280 min­utes — it was split up into episodes for tv broad­cast in Nor­way) won’t be every­one’s cup of tea, but I found it enter­tain­ing. But I was enter­tained by ani­mal behav­iour, his bush savvy, and dif­fer­ences in land­scape and veg­e­ta­tion that oth­ers might not notice or care about. If you like see­ing the nit­ty-grit­ty of being in the bush, with­out any extra­ne­ous nar­ra­tion, then give it a try.

My friend Skye Sepp brought over this enter­tain­ing Dan­ish doc­u­men­tary, a bit of truf­fle for film buffs. Back in 1967, young direc­tor Jør­gen Leth made a short film called “The Per­fect Human”. It was the kind of clever, enig­mat­ic, “arty” thing that appealed to the sen­si­bil­i­ty of the time, then became a chest­nut of short film fes­ti­vals and film schools, much like Nor­man MacLaren’s films, here in Cana­da. Looked at now, you can see that it has an ele­gance to it, most­ly because of the superb per­for­mances of the only two actors, Claus Nis­sen and Majken Algren Nielsen. Nis­sen, appar­ent­ly, impro­vised most of his most effec­tive moments. Watch it online here.

Fast for­ward to 2003. Leth is in semi-retire­ment in Haiti, and his friend/colleague Lars von Tri­er dares him to make five “remakes” of the influ­en­tial short film. In each case, he will demand “obstruc­tions” — absurd restric­tions and demands meant to chal­lenge the direc­tor’s inge­nu­ity. The film cuts between von Tri­er pre­sent­ing his obstruc­tions [“No sets”; “You have to film it in some­place dis­gust­ing­ly hor­ri­ble”; “You have to remake it as a car­toon”; “You have to act in it your­self”…], the result­ing remakes, and frag­ments of the orig­i­nal film. The result is a fas­ci­nat­ing look into how a cre­ative film-mak­er works, with numer­ous moments of spon­ta­neous humour.

(Mac­Far­lane / Ring 2001) Fam­i­ly Guy: Ep.38 — Fish Out of Water
(Williamson 1901) Stop Thief!
(Williamson 1901) Fire!
(1901) The George­town Loop
(Méliês 1902) A Trip To The Moon
(1903) Sky­scrap­ers Of New York City
Read more »

I saw the new Trek opus with artist Taral Wayne, in a the­atre filled, for some rea­son, with Rus­sians, who laughed and cheered when­ev­er the char­ac­ter Chekov spoke. I lat­er learned from a Russ­ki friend that the actor, Anton Yelchin, though him­self a born Russ­ian, was giv­ing the char­ac­ter a broad Pol­ish accent! I was actu­al­ly rather pleased with the film, which man­aged to strike a bal­ance between pro­vid­ing some­thing new and remain­ing with­in the Sacred Canon, and though the plot and events were ludi­crous­ly implau­si­ble, the humour and enthu­si­asm with which the actors por­trayed their roles made one for­get it. An alter­nate time-line gave license for the devi­a­tions from the back-his­to­ry implied in the pre­vi­ous films. Leonard Nimoy per­formed with remark­able dignity.

It’s been fif­teen years since I’ve seen Miloš For­man’s satir­i­cal mas­ter­piece. I found it even more plea­sur­able on sec­ond view­ing. Filmed with an ama­teur cast of real fire­men, in a small North Bohemi­an town, the film con­tains absolute­ly noth­ing overt­ly polit­i­cal. But it’s atti­tude was sub­tly sub­ver­sive in a way that enraged the rul­ing Com­mu­nists, who declared it “banned for­ev­er”, and even threat­ened For­man with ten years impris­on­ment for “dam­age to the state”. For­man was in Paris when the Sovi­ets invad­ed, short­ly after, so he defect­ed and became a pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. He sub­se­quent­ly had a dis­tin­guished direct­ing career, with films such as One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest and Amadeus. But none of these block­busters can equal the vital­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty of this ear­ly effort. It’s dif­fi­cult to explain why this sim­ple, episod­ic piece of nat­u­ral­ism is so effec­tive. You just have to watch it. There are so many scenes where the com­e­dy emerges painful­ly from plain real­i­ty, such as when the cam­era scans the bored expres­sions of the girls being parad­ed before the aging judges in a ludi­crous beau­ty con­test, the bril­liant­ly timed sequence when it’s dis­cov­ered that all the raf­fle prizes have been stolen, or the fire­men mov­ing a crotch­ety old man clos­er to his burn­ing home to keep him warm. This is not bit­ter or accus­ing satire. In fact, the film’s approach is ten­der and for­giv­ing. And per­haps that is what infu­ri­at­ed the cor­rupt Com­mu­nist oli­garchs most of all.