CogBlogged Tagged ‘movie’

One of the side benefits of my new working/house-sharing conditions with Jim Groom is getting a chance to watch some movies together. I have a lot of backlog to catch up to his catalog, but this week we watched two classic films, that almost randomly had eerie amounts of similarity. The first was Blowup, apparently the first English speaking film by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. In this 1960s psychedelic London scene, David Demmings plays Thomas, a busy, almost haggled, photographer, who has an apartment/studio space that is a story unto itself. After we get some insight into his surroundings, and his rather detached gruff behavior with clients and models, he ends up wandering into a park, taking some sneaky photos of Vanessa Redgrave’s character, Jane, encounter with a man there. (I have some quibbles about the photography portrayed- Thomas uses the same camera and lens way too close, to take [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by pocketwiley I had not identified it before, but after watching The Road last night on DVD, I realized I have a fascination with post-apocalyptic films, as one reviewers describes as “near future” views of our world. Maybe it was first watch of the Road Warrior I saw as a teen, but on my flight home from Austin Friday I found myself again watching I am Legend (I think Sam is the real star in the movie). Unlike most science fiction, these movies are easy extrapolations from the world we know today, and ones in which we cannot blame meteors, volcanoes, tornados, aliens for taking away our world- humanity does it to itself. And then there is the wondering, would I survive in this new grim world (doubtful) (but there is only one way to know) (and then I would not be here blogging about [...]

What happened to brave men like Jake W. Burns? I found out tonight, watching my newest DVD, Lonely are the Brave (1962) which, IMHO is a completely under-rated classic. The tag line is “Life can never cage a man like this…” I watched it because, like the star Kirk Douglas, had enjoyed Edward Abbey’s The Brave Cowboy, and Douglas, already then a big star, wanted to make Abbey’s story into a movie, but it took a long time to convince the studios. Douglas wanted to call it “The Last Cowboy” but the studios forced this cheesier title. Douglas’ character, Jack Burns, is the idealized version of Abbey’s self image- a man who lives on the land, at home in the desert or mountains, has no address, no social security card, no license, a loner. I didn’t want a house. I didn’t want all those pots and pans… ‘Cause I’m a [...]