Back at work and flying solo
So it seems that after a wonderful break the sobering reality of Wellington and work reappear into my domain. Back at the grindstone I have a project pending doing a little editing of a post-graduate theatre project that was videoed and a database requiring keywords to make it easier to search- how many exploitative television programmes can you think of.
The other couple of things that flow through the mind as I work on these involve the cinema and the fact that my home is quite a lonely place. Naturally for the second I take solace in the Guardian- I noticed this pearler from Charlie Brooker
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/12/charlie-brooker-relationships
The other mystery is in how I seem to find the silver lining in films when all around me people say they're crap. With Richard I went to see The Day The World Stood Still (2008). I went with quite low expectations-
a)remake
b) Keanu Reeves
c) my friend Sean who knows about these things (and bagged it).
However I have to say that I enjoyed it. Funnily enough I had also just seen Southland Tales (2006) on DVD- after waiting to get the Prequel Graphic Novel- and had a similar reaction- again against the grain of many peoples criticisms. And this set me to thinking- why did I have a reaction like these?
Well, my colleagues would have us believe that it is the result of my cultural literacy (or more correctly perhaps my lack of) and perhaps they have something there. I wonder how many people bothered to read the director Richard Kelly's work on the graphic novel which provides a context and frame for the following film. In fact to divorce the two is really to not quite pick up the necessary tools for decoding the story. Similarly my reaction to the Reeves film. While it owes much to its predecessor (and perhaps suffers comparison) it is a movie of our time just as the first was to its time.
Keanu Reeves is suitably wooden in this performance (or is his work so subtle that people don't actually see whats going on- see comments on Adrian Grenier by the creators of Entourage Season One DVD). The film captures perfectly the current debate between science and spirituality that is running rampant through the American media. It is at times Biblical!
But its climax is what struck me- yes I enjoyed the story that brought me there but the characters are, at best, only a mechanism to serve the bigger picture I suggest. At the films climax all the lights go off- and then don't come back on! This fits perfectly with the alternate histories of S.M. Stirling that I am reading at the moment- he is telling an Arthurian story in a world where the laws of physics on Earth have been turned off and then adapted meaning that humans will have to live in orld where they cannot gain greater technology than the horse and cart as gunpowder bno longer explodes and electricity is really a fizzer. The film finishes where these novels starts and that excited me.
Where we are and what we are experiencing does so affect the way we read and interpret the world about us. And then help us at the same time to take the next step- either in our own lives or in the creativity that drives us to our next challenge.
The other couple of things that flow through the mind as I work on these involve the cinema and the fact that my home is quite a lonely place. Naturally for the second I take solace in the Guardian- I noticed this pearler from Charlie Brooker
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/12/charlie-brooker-relationships
The other mystery is in how I seem to find the silver lining in films when all around me people say they're crap. With Richard I went to see The Day The World Stood Still (2008). I went with quite low expectations-
a)remake
b) Keanu Reeves
c) my friend Sean who knows about these things (and bagged it).
However I have to say that I enjoyed it. Funnily enough I had also just seen Southland Tales (2006) on DVD- after waiting to get the Prequel Graphic Novel- and had a similar reaction- again against the grain of many peoples criticisms. And this set me to thinking- why did I have a reaction like these?
Well, my colleagues would have us believe that it is the result of my cultural literacy (or more correctly perhaps my lack of) and perhaps they have something there. I wonder how many people bothered to read the director Richard Kelly's work on the graphic novel which provides a context and frame for the following film. In fact to divorce the two is really to not quite pick up the necessary tools for decoding the story. Similarly my reaction to the Reeves film. While it owes much to its predecessor (and perhaps suffers comparison) it is a movie of our time just as the first was to its time.
Keanu Reeves is suitably wooden in this performance (or is his work so subtle that people don't actually see whats going on- see comments on Adrian Grenier by the creators of Entourage Season One DVD). The film captures perfectly the current debate between science and spirituality that is running rampant through the American media. It is at times Biblical!
But its climax is what struck me- yes I enjoyed the story that brought me there but the characters are, at best, only a mechanism to serve the bigger picture I suggest. At the films climax all the lights go off- and then don't come back on! This fits perfectly with the alternate histories of S.M. Stirling that I am reading at the moment- he is telling an Arthurian story in a world where the laws of physics on Earth have been turned off and then adapted meaning that humans will have to live in orld where they cannot gain greater technology than the horse and cart as gunpowder bno longer explodes and electricity is really a fizzer. The film finishes where these novels starts and that excited me.
Where we are and what we are experiencing does so affect the way we read and interpret the world about us. And then help us at the same time to take the next step- either in our own lives or in the creativity that drives us to our next challenge.
Comments