"In a rare public appearance, photographer Gregory Colbert talks about the creation of his exhibit "Ashes and Snow." Colbert's work, which he calls "a 21st-century bestiary," captures the poetic beauty in our relationship to the animal kingdom. Colbert shows an 8-minute film, from the exhibit, of his epic swim with whales off the coast of the Azores."

You really need to experience these in motion to see why they are so special.

 

I'm going to be posting shorter updates until the end of May as I have a whole load of exams coming up. I'll mostly be sharing links to some of the sites and things I've found recently, just like this.

In The Trap he looks into ideas of social control, such as game theory, and how they have been applied by elites over the past thirty years or so; examining their practical implementation and subsequent economic and sociological effects. Game theory is a mathmatical model of decision making that was first applied on the political stage during the cold war to try and balance the superpowers to create an environment of safety in the west through rationality and fear; it is based on the idea that humans are ultimately self seeking individuals, out purely for their own good. He claims that this mistaken assumption has led to practical applications of the theory having dire consequences, citing examples from the 80s through to the present day.

He also explores the idea that there are two different types of freedom, as pioneered by Isaiah Berlin, these are defined through concepts of positive and negative liberty. The gist of it is that negative liberty is the freedom to be able to do what you want, to not be coerced against your will; whilst positive freedom allows the individual to "fulfill their potential". For example, positive freedom is often demonstrated through revolutions, like the Russian revolution, in which an individual or a group overthrows the establishment to make a new Utopian society through implementing a new social ideal; throughout history this process has often ended in disaster, primarily due to the corruption of the leaders once they get into power. Negative liberty is what we exercise today in the west, a concept of liberty that grew out of the "clash of ideals" during the cold war. Curtis looks into these two types of freedom and explains how he sees them implemented over the past few decades. Fantastic stuff.

So I turned up not really knowing what to expect, I had seen the trailer and justifiably assumed it would bear little resemblance to the actual substance of the film (time travel? right.). I was blown away, this is truly the greatest film I have seen in a very long time; afterwards I felt as though a wave had washed over me, my mind buzzing and spinning with the depth of the experience, the new ideas it had awoken inside of me. The film takes the single event of a death and zooms in on it to such a point that it turns into a whole lifetime, a whole age of evolution. I can't recall any other film I have seen that has adopted this viewpoint, The Hours has a similar central theme, but doesn't delve into the pure emotion and humanity of the experience, or expand it out in the way The Fountain does.

The majestic score is provided by Mogwai and Clint Mansell (who scored Aronofsky's other two films) and really breathes a whole new dimension into the pictures. The whole film has a beautiful, rich, golden, organic feel to it which is sometimes complemented by full orchestration and at other times juxtaposed with distortion-filled electronica. Particularly of note is the final credits music which is incredibly sensitive to your feeling at the end of the movie and really pins you to your seat allowing you to meditate over the events of the film.

It is more "arty" and more directly philosophical than his other two films, and isn't going to be for everyone (as the reviews have shown), but if you come at it from the right place then it has the potential to really flourish.

The Reflecting Pool

Documentary

Needless to say, I turned up to the theatre with high hopes.

I wasn’t disappointed. From the opening sequence until the rolling credits at the end I was captivated, I knew I had seen a film that was going to be up there amongst my favourite movies for a long time to come.

For those of you not familiar with the book, It is based in California a few years in the future where the police are losing the war against drugs. The film/book looks at the lives of a small group of people who have become reliant on a popular drug known as “Substance D” or “Death”; it centres on one member of the group called Bob Arctor who is working as an undercover cop to try and infiltrate the drug trade, but in the process has become a user himself.

However, the film is really about the experience of Arctor and his friends losing their grip on reality and descending into psychosis from using the drug. The brilliance of the original book was the way it got inside Arctor’s head, following him as he slowly became more and more confused about what is going on around him. I think Linklater has managed to bring across a lot of this feeling from the book, although obviously it is slightly different in the form of a movie. I really feel Linklater has understood what Scanner is all about, what Dick was trying to portray through the novel; he has without doubt done the most accurate ”Dickian” adaptation to date. He changed a few plot details from the book, and left a few things out, but I think this was appropriate for the adaptation to film as it makes the story a bit less confusing for viewers who haven’t read the book.

Keanu Reeves plays Arctor, and although perhaps not the world’s best actor, he is well suited for the part. Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochrane are also good, however the real star of the show is Robert Downey Jnr. as Barris, he plays the intense, hyper, yet deeply disturbing character perfectly, really bringing the paranoia of the story alive.

One of the most talked about aspects of the movie is the visuals which are produced using a technique called rotoscoping (animating over live footage), similar to that used on Linklater’s other film Waking Life. Some find the animation distracting which I can understand, but I really felt it added to the movie; it creates a sense of unease throughout, with some aspects of the environment not quite fitting in, and allowing hallucinations that would not be possible with pure live action. This is most evident when we are introduced to the “Scramble Suit” which is a camouflage that cycles through millions of images of people, creating an ever changing montage of faces and bodies, rendering the wearer unrecognisable.

Scanner, like any film, has its faults. The plot could be quite confusing for someone who hasn’t read the book, and the changes between styles (comedy, despair, suspense) can be rapid at times. I felt the score wasn’t outstanding, although there is a few flashes of brilliance, most of the time the music takes a back seat to the speech; it would have been nice to have some more moments when the sound really came through powerfully.

Overall I would give Scanner an enthusiastic thumbs up. I felt that although it was close to the book, it gave me a very different experience in the form of a movie; Linklater gave the story a slightly different emphasis but still managed to get across most of the best things about the book. It is intelligent yet beautiful, complex yet accessible and moving yet subtle; my favourite film of the year so far.

All of which is not to predict that Scanner is going to be Linklater’s best film yet, but it might be his most revealing one.

Here’s hoping so. It looks like it is shaping up to be the best Philip K Dick adaption to date.

Adam Curtis’ acclaimed series examines the rise of the all-consuming self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty.

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

It provides a really good insight into how the culture we are now living in has developed, what particularly struck me was the massive amount of power just a few people have exercised in bringing about radical changes to the mindset of the entire western world. We all think we are in control of our own lives, that we are choosing what we do, but who or what is really influencing our choices and decisions?

http://www.naqoy.com/forum/forum.asp

Naqoyqatsi is also one of the best films ever, well worth a watch.

New A Scanner Darkly Trailer:
http://www.themoviebox.net/movies/2005/STUVWXYZ/Scanner-Darkly,A/trailer.php

http://earthacademy.org/interview01.html