B12 Solipsism

“Bob le Flambeur - Criterion Collection” (Criterion)

[Netflix page]

A Criterion Collection release of a 1955 Jean-Pierre Melville movie, this one I rented on the strength of Touchez Pas au Grisbi some time ago [Netflix page] (and the magic of the Netflix suggestion engine)

The plot to the Bob Le Flambeur¹ could be explained in ten lines², but that isn’t really the point of the film. Ambiance is. The ambiance of French cafés and nightclubs, jazz, neon signs, glistening streets, characters who go to sleep at 6 AM, and arise by noon, casual sex, gambling, and gamblers, and male friendship. You get the idea. Certainly worth looking for if you haven’t seen it before, and worth a re-watch if you have.

Roger Ebert reviewed Bob le Flambeur as part of his “Great Movies” series:

Before the New Wave, before Godard and Truffaut and Chabrol, before Belmondo flicked the cigarette into his mouth in one smooth motion and walked the streets of Paris like a Hollywood gangster, there was Bob. “Bob le Flambeur,” Bob the high-roller, Bob the Montmartre legend whose style was so cool, whose honor was so strong, whose gambling was so hopeless, that even the cops liked him. Bob with his white hair slicked back, with his black suit and tie, his trenchcoat and his Packard convertible and his penthouse apartment with the slot machine in the closet. Bob, who on the first day of this movie wins big at the races and then loses it all at roulette, and is cleaned out. Broke again.

Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Bob le Flambeur” (1955) has a good claim to be the first film of the French New Wave. Daniel Cauchy, who stars in it as Paolo, Bob’s callow young friend, remembered that Melville would shoot scenes on location using a handheld camera on a delivery bike, “which Godard did in ‘Breathless,’ but this was years before Godard.” Melville worked on poverty row, and told his actors there was no money to pay them, but that they would have to stand by to shoot on a moment’s notice. “Right now I have money for three or four days,” he told Cauchy, “and after that we’ll shoot when we can.”

This film was legendary but unseen for years, and Melville’s career is only now coming into focus. He shot gangster movies, he worked in genres, but he had such a precise, elegant simplicity of style that his films play like the chamber music of crime. He was cool in the 1950s sense of that word. His characters in “Bob” glide through gambling dens and nightclubs “in those moments,” Melville tells us in the narration, “between night and day … between heaven and hell.”

[From Bob le Flambeur :: rogerebert.com :: Great Movies]

and offers this brief bio of the director:

Melville (1917-1973) was born Grumberg. He changed his name in admiration for the author of Moby Dick. He was a lover of all things American. He went endlessly to American movies, he visited America, he shot a film in New York (”Two Men in Manhattan”), and Cauchy remembers, “He drove an American car and wore an American hat and Ray-Bans, and he always had the Armed Forces Network on his car radio, listening to Glenn Miller.” He inhaled American gangster films, but when he made his own, they were not copies of Hollywood but were infused by understatement, a sense of cool; his characters need few words because so much goes without saying, especially when it comes to what must be done, and how it must be done, and why it must be done that way.

One unrelated note, I wish Netflix compiled a list of all the Criterion Collection films they offer. I did suggest it to a Netflix staffer years ago, but they haven’t gotten around to doing it yet. There are user-generated versions, but these are decidedly less useful.

1. Flamber (verb, French): To wager not only the money you have, but the money you don’t have. [↩]
2. as Daniel Cauchy exclaims in an included interview [↩]

Who knew a ten percent improvement was so difficult?

THE “NAPOLEON DYNAMITE” problem is driving Len Bertoni crazy. Bertoni is a 51-year-old “semiretired” computer scientist who lives an hour outside Pittsburgh. In the spring of 2007, his sister-in-law e-mailed him an intriguing bit of news: Netflix, the Web-based DVD-rental company, was holding a contest to try to improve Cinematch, its “recommendation engine.” The prize: $1 million.

Cinematch is the bit of software embedded in the Netflix Web site that analyzes each customer’s movie-viewing habits and recommends other movies that the customer might enjoy. (Did you like the legal thriller “The Firm”? Well, maybe you’d like “Michael Clayton.” Or perhaps “A Few Good Men.”) The Netflix Prize goes to anyone who can make Cinematch’s predictions 10 percent more accurate. One million dollars might sound like an awfully big prize for such a small improvement. But in fact, Netflix’s founders tried for years to improve Cinematch, with only incremental results, and they knew that a 10 percent bump would be a challenge for even the most deft programmer. They also knew that, as Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, told me recently, “getting to 10 percent would certainly be worth well in excess of $1 million” to the company. The competition was announced in October 2006, and no one has won yet, though 30,000 hackers worldwide are hard at work on the problem. Each day, teams submit their updated solutions to the Netflix Prize Web page, and Netflix instantly calculates how much better than Cinematch they are.

…

But his progress had slowed to a crawl. The more Bertoni improved upon Netflix, the harder it became to move his number forward. This wasn’t just his problem, though; the other competitors say that their progress is stalling, too, as they edge toward 10 percent. Why?

Bertoni says it’s partly because of “Napoleon Dynamite,” an indie comedy from 2004 that achieved cult status and went on to become extremely popular on Netflix. It is, Bertoni and others have discovered, maddeningly hard to determine how much people will like it. When Bertoni runs his algorithms on regular hits like “Lethal Weapon” or “Miss Congeniality” and tries to predict how any given Netflix user will rate them, he’s usually within eight-tenths of a star. But with films like “Napoleon Dynamite,” he’s off by an average of 1.2 stars.

The reason, Bertoni says, is that “Napoleon Dynamite” is very weird and very polarizing. It contains a lot of arch, ironic humor, including a famously kooky dance performed by the titular teenage character to help his hapless friend win a student-council election. It’s the type of quirky entertainment that tends to be either loved or despised. The movie has been rated more than two million times in the Netflix database, and the ratings are disproportionately one or five stars.

[Continue reading The Screens Issue - If You Liked This, Sure to Love That - Winning the Netflix Prize - NYTimes.com]

I’ve never watched Napoleon Dynamite [Netflix], but currently the Netflix rating system thinks I might like it:

Average of raters like you: 3.3 stars, from your 1198 ratings.

I’m skeptical, I could only watch the first reel¹ of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy [Netflix]. From my perspective, Napoleon Dynamite is from the same mold of satire, and not something I much care for.

Anyway, I use the Netflix suggestion engine sometimes, but depend more upon other sources² to keep my queue stuffed with possibilities.

Some Computer Scientists think the “Napoleon Dynamite” problem exposes a serious weakness of computers. They cannot anticipate the eccentric ways that real people actually decide to take a chance on a movie.

The Cinematch system, like any recommendation engine, assumes that your taste is static and unchanging. The computer looks at all the movies you’ve rated in the past, finds the trend and uses that to guide you. But the reality is that our cultural tastes evolve, and they change in part because we interact with others. You hear your friends gushing about “Mad Men,” so eventually — even though you have never had any particular interest in early-’60s America — you give it a try. Or you go into the video store and run into a particularly charismatic clerk who persuades you that you really, really have to give “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” a chance.

As Gavin Potter, a Netflix Prize competitor who lives in Britain and is currently in ninth place, pointed out to me, a computerized recommendation system seeks to find the common threads in millions of people’s recommendations, so it inherently avoids extremes. Video-store clerks, on the other hand, are influenced by their own idiosyncrasies. Even if they’re considering your taste to make a suitable recommendation, they can’t help relying on their own sense of what’s good and bad. They’ll make more mistakes than the Netflix computers — but they’re also more likely to have flashes of inspiration, like pointing you to “Napoleon Dynamite” at just the right moment.

“If you use a computerized system based on ratings, you will tend to get very relevant but safe answers,” Potter says. “If you go with the movie-store clerk, you will get more unpredictable but potentially more exciting recommendations.”

Another critic of computer recommendations is, oddly enough, Pattie Maes, the M.I.T. professor. She notes that there’s something slightly antisocial — “narrow-minded” — about hyperpersonalized recommendation systems. Sure, it’s good to have a computer find more of what you already like. But culture isn’t experienced in solitude. We also consume shows and movies and music as a way of participating in society. That social need can override the question of whether or not we’ll like the movie.

“You don’t want to see a movie just because you think it’s going to be good,” Maes says. “It’s also because everyone at school or work is going to be talking about it, and you want to be able to talk about it, too.” Maes told me that a while ago she rented a “Sex and the City” DVD from Netflix. She suspected she probably wouldn’t really like the show. “But everybody else was constantly talking about it, and I had to know what they were talking about,” she says. “So even though I would have been embarrassed if Netflix suggested ‘Sex and the City’ to me, I’m glad I saw it, because now I get it. I know all the in-jokes.”

1. a reel is usually the first 20 pages a script, translating to about 20 minutes of film, and usually sets up the story, basic characters, protagonist, yadda yadda [↩]
2. film reviews, suggestions of friends, blogs, those inevitable lists of best-of, and my own fluctuating interests [↩]

“Bunny Lake Is Missing” (Otto Preminger)

Certain films are nearly great.

Director Otto Preminger’s dark film portrays the horror that befalls Ann (Carol Lynley), a single mom recently transplanted to London who shows up one day at her daughter’s nursery school to find she’s completely disappeared. Nobody seems to know the girl’s whereabouts, nor that she even exists, which leads the police (with Sir Laurence Olivier in the role of chief) to believe Ann is delusional. Can she convince everyone that she’s not insane? [Netflix Bunny Lake Is Missing]

Bunny Lake is Missing swerves on the edge of being a great, taut thriller, but doesn’t quite make it. Otto Preminger quickly disowned the film, I guess he only did it for the money. Fancy that.

I quite enjoyed watching the film, yet certain scenes were eye-rolling. Also the hysterical woman paradigm slightly over-played. I can understand why there is a remake in the works, since society was a wee bit more innocent about child-snatching in 1965, necessitating certain elisions in plot, and yet, I would not be surprised if the remake is too maudlin to be interesting.

The Zombies play on a state-of-the-art 23 inch television, at a local pub. Here’s a low-quality trailer on YouTube:

And maybe I’m crazy, but the final crazed conclusion, the main characters eyeballs were so dilated, I’d swear they were dosed on something. 1965 “Swinging London“? Hmmm, wonder what substance it could be?

“The Lady from Shanghai” (Orson Welles)

I do love this scene in The Lady From Shangai

Not the best Orson Wells film, the melodrama a bit thick, and the plot is slightly muddled, but there are several great moments. The final reel¹ alone is worth the price of rental. If you haven’t seen it recently, give it a whirl (Netflix). Rita Hayworth probably would have looked slightly more delicious as a red-head, but maybe not. Everett Sloane is no relative to Marty Feldman, as far as I can ascertain.

From the Wikipedia entry:

The Lady from Shanghai was filmed in late 1946, finished in early 1947, and released in the U.S. on June 9, 1948. Release was delayed due to heavy editing by Cohn’s assistants at Columbia, who insisted on cutting about an hour from Welles’s final cut. The film was purported to have links to the Black Dahlia murder at the time as the scenes cut from the film made significant references to the murder, months before it happened. The studio was also located near two areas (one a restaurant) the victim often frequented before she was murdered.

Welles cast his then-wife Rita Hayworth as Elsa, and caused controversy when he made her cut her famous long red hair and bleach it blonde for the role.

and Wells apparently just pulled the idea of the film out of his hat, under pressure. Must have been a hell of a talker:

In the summer of 1946, Welles was directing a musical stage version of Around the World in Eighty Days, with a comedic and ironic rewriting of the Jules Verne novel by Welles, incidental music and songs by Cole Porter, and production by Mike Todd, who would later produce the successful film version with David Niven.

When Todd pulled out from the lavish and expensive production, Welles supported the finances himself. When he ran out of money at one point and urgently needed $55,000 to release costumes which were being held, he convinced Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn to send him the money to continue the show, and in exchange Welles promised to write, produce, direct and star in a film for Cohn for no further fee. On the spur of the moment, he suggested the film be based on the book a girl in the theatre box office happened to be reading at the time he was calling Cohn, which Welles had never read.

Too bad over an hour of the finished work was eradicated by Harry Cohn.

1. the last 20 minutes of the film, more or less [↩]

Netflix Apology, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Bonus rental. We didn’t even really notice: summer time usually means many fewer movies watched a week.

We still love you, Netflix…

Text reads:

Due to the technical problems we experienced last week, there was an error processing your DVD shipment. As a result, we notified you that we had shipped a DVD to you, when in fact, we had not. We did ship another DVD from your Queue today (Wednesday), and the DVD we should have shipped is now back at the top of your Queue.

We’re sorry, and to make up for this, we will be giving you a bonus rental to use at your convenience. The bonus rental will automatically be applied to your account. To redeem the bonus rental, log into your account and access your Queue. Then click the “Use the Bonus Rental” button located at the top of Your Queue.

We pride ourselves in delighting you, and we’ve let you down. We apologize, and we will issue a 25% credit to your account in the next few days. You don’t need to do anything. Your credit will be automatically applied to your next billing statement.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1-888-638-3549.

-The Netflix Team

“The Big Clock (Universal Noir Collection)” (John Farrow)

Watched the Big Clock recently

1948.

Crime magazine publisher Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton) tries to pin the murder of his own mistress on the magazine’s editor, George Stroud (Ray Milland), when he discovers George coming out of the woman’s apartment. Things fall into place as all the signs increasingly point to George as the killer, making it that much easier for Earl to set up the editor to take the fall. Based on the novel by Kenneth Fearing.

[Netflix: The Big Clock]

An enjoyable little noir film. Nothing too groundbreaking, and clunky occasionally, but still fun. Seems like I wrote a longer review somewhere, but don’t remember where. Probably on twitter, which means it was only 140 characters long anyway.

This has been another edition of “Reviews That Should Have Been Longer, But…”

I agree with Roger Ebert: there can never be enough discussion of Werner Herzog. As I’ve burbled before, not every Herzog film is great, but they are all interesting, worth watching, and worth thinking about.

I received an intriguing communication from a reader, the art critic Daniel Quiles, about Werner Herzog. Yes, there has been a lot about Herzog on the site recently, but in my mind there can never be too much. He and a few other directors keep the movies vibrating for me. Not every movie needs to vibrate, but unless a few do, the thrill is gone.

Herzog seems to react strongly to subjects he wants to make a film about. You never hear him saying someone “brought me a project,” or his agent sent him a screenplay. Every one of his films is in some sense autobiographical: It is about what consumed him at that moment. The form of the film might be fiction, might be fact, might be a hybrid. The material dictates the form, and often his presence in the film dictates the material: It would not exist if he were not there. In a way, that’s what Quiles is writing about in connection with “Encounters at the End of the World.”

[Click to read the rest of the discussion of Herzog and the forms of madness - Roger Ebert's Journal]

I still haven’t seen either Rescue Dawn nor Wild Blue Yonder. Soon, soon. Looks like Herzog is filming a movie about New Orleans currently called Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

There’s also Encounters at the End of the World, which sounds intriguing:

Read the title of “Encounters at the End of the World” carefully, for it has two meanings. As he journeys to the South Pole, which is as far as you can get from everywhere, Werner Herzog also journeys to the prospect of man’s oblivion. Far under the eternal ice, he visits a curious tunnel whose walls have been decorated by various mementos, including a frozen fish that is far away from its home waters. What might travelers from another planet think of these souvenirs, he wonders, if they visit long after all other signs of our civilization have vanished?

Herzog has come to live for a while at the McMurdo Research Station, the largest habitation on Antarctica. He was attracted by underwater films taken by his friend Henry Kaiser, which show scientists exploring the ocean floor. They open a hole in the ice with a blasting device, then plunge in, collecting specimens, taking films, nosing around. They investigate an undersea world of horrifying carnage, inhabited by creatures so ferocious, we are relieved they are too small to be seen. And also by enormous seals who sing to one another. In order not to limit their range, Herzog observes, the divers do not use a tether line, so they must trust themselves to find the hole in the ice again. I am afraid to even think about that.

Herzog is a romantic wanderer, drawn to the extremes. He makes as many documentaries as fiction films, is prolific in the chronicles of his curiosity and here moseys about McMurdo, chatting with people who have chosen to live here in eternal day or night.

Looking forward to a visit from the Netflix fairy soon

“Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? (Documentary)” (Harry Moses)

What a great film¹ . An epic culture clash between the mumble-frackers and the regular 18-wheeler-driving Janes (so to speak)

When brash trailer park resident Teri Horton bought a secondhand painting for five bucks, little did she know it could be a genuine Jackson Pollock worth millions. This film documents Horton’s volatile 15-year journey into the heart of the art world’s elitist establishment to have the painting authenticated. The clash between stuffy art dealers and the cussin’, beer-drinkin’ Horton is funny, eye-opening and utterly unforgettable. [From Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?]

Teri Horton, a truck driving, trailer park resident with a stubborn streak is annoyed by the stuffed shirts of the New York art world, and refuses to give up when they tell her the painting she owns is not authentic. To a non-member of the art gallery crowd, her evidence seems solid (for instance, a fingerprint smudged on the back of her canvas that matches a fingerprint found on a paint can in Jackson Pollack’s studio, and on the back of another authentic painting), but the various experts, such as Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, disagree. The film, released in 2006, doesn’t have a happy ending (she refuses the offer of $9,000,000 from a Saudi sheik), but doesn’t have an unhappy ending either.

Ben McGrath, of the New Yorker, wrote a small article on the topic² recently, which begins:

The art world, we keep hearing, is in a fine mess, awash in money and bereft of direction, and a recent documentary, “Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?,” seems to prove the point. In it, a retired truck driver in California named Teri Horton buys what she considers to be an ugly painting as a gag gift for five dollars at a thrift store, is later told that it looks like a Jackson Pollock (the title refers to her initial reaction), and then struggles to convince anyone who matters that it could be the real thing. The film pits old-fashioned art authenticators (Thomas Hoving, the former Met director, runs his fingers over the painting before declaring, “It’s dead on arrival”) against a forensic scientist in Montreal, Peter Paul Biro, who finds what he believes to be Pollock’s paint-stained fingerprints on the back of the canvas. Horton says she has turned down an offer of nine million dollars for the painting from a Saudi collector.

The other day, at Cipriani Dolci, in New York, Kevin Jamison, a graduate student in government and politics at St. John’s, and the co-founder of a fledgling art consultancy, flipped through a copy of Ellen Landau’s “Jackson Pollock,” comparing the reprints in the book with a pair of images stored on his iPhone. These were of paintings he’d bought, for twenty-five dollars apiece, at an antique shop in Norfolk, Virginia, this summer, and they looked, to an untrained eye, like plausible Pollocks, at least in the sense that they were abstract and drippy. “They were under a stack of paintings about this tall,” Jamison, who has a baby face masked by stubble, said, pointing at the tabletop. One is seventeen inches by twenty-one inches, and painted on rice paper, using only white and gray. The other is twenty-six by twenty-six, on canvas, and much more colorful: green, yellow, red, white, and black.

Jamison watched “Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?” upon returning from Virginia, and then set about finding what he hoped could be useful forensic details, which he also showed on his iPhone: a flake of gold paint, visible only under magnification (Pollock used gold spray paint in his studio); rusty vintage staples; and a peculiar screwlike indentation that he found on the left side of the larger painting, which he believes could match a similar mark that he spotted in Pollock’s “One: Number 31, 1950,” at MOMA. (A caveat: referring to the painting’s left side “depends on what someone considers the top or the bottom,” Jamison said. “I’ve been looking at it for a couple of months and hanging it different ways.”)

“As of now, what they’re worth is what I paid for them,” Jamison said. But Peter Paul Biro, the forensic expert, has agreed to examine the paintings in person early next month, and Jamison has also corresponded with Richard Taylor, a professor of physics at the University of Oregon, who examined fractal patterns in some of the contested Herbert Matter Pollocks (two dozen paintings discovered in a Long Island locker) currently on exhibit at Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art.

“Jackson Pollock” (Ellen G. Landau)

great fun: essential viewing for anyone at all interested in the art world and/or forensic science.

1. The film’s title is probably Who the Fuck is Jackson Pollack, but good luck finding a copy that prints the full title, even in our post-Carlin world [↩]
2. which is why I rented the film, duh. [↩]

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (Julian Schnabel)

Another film based on a book, though a true story this time.

In 1995, author and Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered a stroke that put him in a coma; he awakened mute and completely paralyzed. Mathieu Amalric stars in this adaptation of Bauby’s autobiography, which he dictated by blinking. Julian Schnabel was nominated for the 2008 Best Director Oscar and won the Golden Globe in the same category for his poignant film about the strength of the human spirit.

[From Netflix: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly]

A powerful film. Not sure if it was the late night viewing, or other maudlin reasons, but was immensely engrossed by this film. A meditation of life, and death, family relations, and the wheel of samsara. Well, not really the rebirth thing, more a ‘life flashing before one’s eyes right before death‘, expanded over a years time, with one of the eye being sewn shut. I had hesitated viewing the movie, since the premise is a bit unnerving (and a real fear of mine - such a horrible thought to be cognizant, 42 years old, trapped in a body that no longer functions), yet couldn’t stop once I started. Innovative cinematically: the Point of View is nearly always through the blinking eye of the narrator (which some exceptions later on).

The director, Julian Schnabel, who also directed Basquiat, filmed on location in Calais, France, using several actual hospital employees, and the movie is better for those choices. Seems authentic, non-Hollywood, as a result.

Johnny Depp chose to be in the dreck, Pirates of the Caribbean, instead of in the Diving Bell, his loss, as one film will be played for years, and one cartoon movie will just make Disney a lot of money. Mathieu Amalric was wonderful in the role, emoting without moving his face muscles at all. Max von Sydow was also magnificent as the dying father of Jean-Do.

From the book jacket:

We’ve all got our idiosyncrasies when it comes to writing–a special chair we have to sit in, a certain kind of yellow paper we absolutely must use. To create this tremendously affecting memoir, Jean-Dominique Bauby used the only tool available to him–his left eye–with which he blinked out its short chapters, letter by letter. Two years ago, Bauby, then the 43-year-old editor-in-chief of Elle France, suffered a rare stroke to the brain stem; only his left eye and brain escaped damage. Rather than accept his “locked in” situation as a kind of death, Bauby ignited a fire of the imagination under himself and lived his last days–he died two days after the French publication of this slim volume–spiritually unfettered. In these pages Bauby journeys to exotic places he has and has not been, serving himself delectable gourmet meals along the way (surprise: everything’s ripe and nothing burns). In the simplest of terms he describes how it feels to see reflected in a window “the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde.

“No Country for Old Men” (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)

Finally got around to watching No Country for Old Men yesterday. Have never read the book it was based upon, so no comments about the faithfulness (or lack therof) to Cormac McCarthy’s novel.

Shipped on 06/23/08.

A hunter (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon a dead body, $2 million and a stash of heroin in the woods. He absconds with the cash, but brutal thief Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) comes looking for it, with a local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) on his trail. The roles of hunter and prey blur as the violent pursuits of money and justice collide. Joel and Ethan Coen direct this dark morality tale, which won four Oscars in 2008, including Best Picture. [Netflix: No Country for Old Men]

A slightly atypical Cohen Brothers film, not very much cynical humor. A mashup of MacGyver¹ and a drug deal/serial killer film, set outside of El Paso. D couldn’t watch it, too high of a body count. I thought it was enjoyable fun, however. Not this best film I’ve seen all year, but worth watching.

You wanted to fly without wings, you wanted to touch the sky, you wanted too much wealth, you wanted to play with fire.

Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem were both excellent, and Josh Brolin reminds me of a few dudes I knew back in Texas. Woody Harrelson played a smirking character we’ve seen a few times before, but wasn’t cringeworthy or anything.

1. note: I’ve never actually seen MacGyver, I only know it from the Simpsons making fun of it. [↩]

“Baraka” (Ron Fricke)

Hope this film is interesting as it sounds.

The relationship between humans and their environment is the subject of this mesmerizing visual study from Ron Fricke, the cinematographer and editor of Koyaanisqatsi. The images — which Fricke gathered from 24 countries — range from the daily devotions of Tibetan monks and whirling dervishes to a cigarette factory and time-lapse views of the Hong Kong skyline. Diverse world music accompanies the visuals.
[From Baraka]

and from Larisa Moore

The word Baraka means “blessing” in several languages; watching this film, the viewer is blessed with a dazzling barrage of images that transcend language. Filmed in 24 countries and set to an ever-changing global soundtrack, the movie draws some surprising connections between various peoples and the spaces they inhabit, whether that space is a lonely mountaintop or a crowded cigarette factory. Some of these attempts at connection are more successful than others: for instance, an early sequence segues between the daily devotions of Tibetan monks, Orthodox Jews, and whirling dervishes, finding more similarity among these rituals than one might expect. And there are other amazing moments, as when sped-up footage of a busy Hong Kong intersection reveals a beautiful symmetry to urban life that could only be appreciated from the perspective of film. The lack of context is occasionally frustrating–not knowing where a section was filmed, or the meaning of the ritual taking place–and some of the transitions are puzzling. However, the DVD includes a short behind-the-scenes featurette in which cinematographer Ron Fricke (Koyaanisqatsi) explains that the effect was intentional: “It’s not where you are that’s important, it’s what’s there.” And what’s here, in Baraka, is a whole world summed up in 104 minutes

“Logan’s Run” (Michael Anderson, Ronald Saland)

For some reason, watched this film earlier today for the first time.

Life in the year 2274 is a carnival of pleasures — until you hit age 30. An all-powerful state kills those who reach their third decade, and cop Logan 5 (Michael York) is in charge of capturing “runners” who try to escape their fate. It’s a nice gig until he reaches the “golden age.” Logan’s Run offers an inventive vision of a dark paradise.

[From Netflix: Logan's Run]

Moderately amusing, 1970s cocaine and free-love film. Not sure how Logan’s Run won any Oscars, must have been an off-year for special effects.

Farrah Fawcett-Majors is an absolutely horrible actress, at least in this film. I mean, embarrassingly bad. Yikes. Nobody’s performance is really good, but she is cringeworthy.

The censors at MGM cut out most of the orgy scene, and the Hallucimill sequence, subsequently Kirk Kerkorian threw out the footage.

As I sat through some of the more eye-rolling sequences, I thought Logan’s Run would be a good candidate for a modern update. The premise was sort of interesting, but the execution was weak. Current social mores wouldn’t have a problem with the free-love aspect, nudity, nor the drug use, if handled with precision and humor. Apparently, I don’t have to write a treatment, as the remake is already in the works. [IMDb entry]

In a future where the masses are systematically put to death upon reaching a certain age, those who attempt to cheat death are dubbed “runners” and pursued by formidable operatives known as Sandmen. Logan is a Sandman who is fast approaching that fateful age, and when he decides to run the stage is set for the ultimate chase. Former commercial filmmaker Joseph Kosinski makes his feature directorial debut with a low-tech sci-fi thriller written by Tim Sexton, and inspired more by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s 1967 novel than the 1976 feature starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter.

“Logan’s Run (Logan)” (William F. Nolan, George Clayton Johnson)

A YouTube preview (several minutes long)

Contains deleted and alternate footage. The primary audience for this long preview were theater owners.