This is the first digital image ever made or seen. The bloke Kirsch, a computer scientist, converted a photo of his child into binary form with some kind of scanner.
It’s a terrifying image. The whole affair reminds me of that baby at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
Further reading:
https://petapixel.com/2010/11/04/first-digital-photograph-ever-made/
This came out of nowhere, YouTube losing the plot every so briefly. And it looks crack-a-lacking. Val Kilmer is so far incognito, but Wikipedia informs he does indeed feature. As nostalgia goes, this trailer is dynamite. High-concept 1986 all comes flooding back: Tom Cruise in his macho infancy, Kenny Loggins in his jammies, blokes wearing Aviator shades indoors, motorbikes, ‘inverted’ chat, and … blokes playing volleyball to … Kenny Loggins. Incredible scenes.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/top-gun-maverick-plot-cast-release-date-tom-cruise-sequel/
Visions of A Clockwork Orange (1971) every time I run the Balgreen gauntlet for the tram to York Place, Alex DeLarge and his droogies bashing in a poor drunken hobo for kicks. Such ultra-violence has probably happened half a dozen times in this foreboding underpass, but without the costumes and long eyelashes.
Scorching Edinburgh.
Took this snap on a sweltering Friday afternoon in Edinburgh. For days I was trying to pinpoint why I was having … visions of a semi-obscure movie from the late ’90s. Then it finally came to me along with the following almost poetic narration:
‘9:13, Personal Note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn’t know if my eyes would ever heal. I was terrified, alone in that darkness. Slowly daylight crept in through the bandages, and I could see, but something else had changed inside of me. That day I had my first headache.’
Darren Aronofsky’s π (1998), which is as stylish a movie one could ever make about mathematics. It’s quite something.
Further reading/viewing:
https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2018/07/10/pi-finding-order-in-chaos-20-years-later
https://www.polygon.com/2017/3/14/14923532/darren-aronofskys-pi-pi-day
Calton Road this afternoon. It struck me today that I’ve never once snapped this Mark-Renton-gets-run-over spot, the manic laugh he offers to the driver an iconic snippet from Trainspotting (1996).
I was an employee (an actual ‘trainspotter’, no less) of East Coast Railways a decade ago and used to sneak out the back of Waverley Station to this Renton hideaway for a cheeky fag and a can of Monster, my walkie-talkie in hand just in case my absence was noted. Come to think of it, 30% of my ‘working day’ consisted of either this filmic interlude or listening to Kanye West tunes in the ScotRail bogs.
“Where are you?”
“Just having a shite, I’ll be on the platform in a minute.”
Those were the days.
I recall the incident well – HMV, Princes Street came to a standstill as the trailer was broadcast on a Sunday afternoon. “Jesus fucking Christ, this looks epic,” I said to myself. The matter is, I did indeed think it was a belter of a movie, viewing it four times that summer of ’99.
The overwhelmingly negative reaction to the movie is perhaps the first case of fanboys going ape, sending shockwaves through an industry a bit slow to catch on to the power of the internet with its bloggers and keyboard warriors.
It’s 2019 and I legit believe it’s not a bad film, and some moments in it are up there with the first two movies: the pod race, Anakin’s farewell to his mother, the climactic Darth Maul brawl, cracking scenes underpinned by substantive character development. You take out Jar Jar and it’s immeasurably better. And I don’t get why fans were complaining about this childish Binks cretin yet conversely whinged on the detail dedicated to taxation and trade wars, an adult domain buttressing the magic and the wonder.
I treasure it as a nostalgia piece, a cinematic madeleine cake taking me back to a time when my standards were low and I was easily amused.
Further reading:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/23/the-phantom-menace-at-20-star-wars
I was mightily impressed with this, and it’s most refreshing to watch a flick without a one-liner or a wooden numpty in a cape. No pointless dialogue, no heavy exposition, no pretensions; just life-and-death struggle in a daunting environment, and Mads Mikkelsen’s terrifyingly alluring cheekbones. What a strange occurrence those things are.
The movie reminded me of The Grey (2011) with Liam Neeson, except this one without a sadistic pack of looney wolves.
Leon (1994) is a Sergio Leone aesthetic with a chunk of Lolita chucked in the works. The dodgy-as-fuck paedo spectacle aside, its images are pure art, Widescreen as perfection. Luc Besson is an aficionado for the inchoate screenplay, but as a pure thriller this really reaches the summit. And seldom has a movie set in New York City had literally nothing to do with New York City; it could be set in Marseilles, Edinburgh, Reykjavik. There’s something to be said for that, such are filmmakers’ obsession with the place. Personally, I don’t get it. I’ve been twice and wasn’t overly impressed; it felt like a cauldron of reprobates. And loud people roam the streets clutching fast food. Awful.
It’s just a cool-as-milk film, visuals off the scale. It doesn’t matter that the ‘Italian’ assassin sounds like Charles de Gaulle on methadone; it’s all about the framing. And Gary Oldman off his tits.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/leon/review/
https://www.tumblr.com/search/movie%20leon
Scorsese’s last movie of the ’90s is curiously his weakest work. It’s a lazy narrative that seems enamoured with MTV standards/trends of cinematography. It also suffers from ‘The Affliction’: the liberal use of popular music tracks to paper over deficiencies in the script.
It’s a promising concept: Nicolas Cage’s paramedic, physically and emotionally drained, drives around an early ’90s Manhattan – by all accounts a crack-strewn cesspit at that time – in search of the high of saving a life, and a broader redemption as he’s haunted by those he couldn’t save.
By the one-hour mark the picture sadly has nowhere to go. There are a few moments of transcendence, particularly the final shot, but it’s all rather boring, from the cartoon character supporting roles to Cage’s … bored performance. One suspects it could have worked better as a small-scale picture, Mean Streets (1973) with a defibrillator.
The life of an ambulance driver has never looked so torporific. One of the very few Scorsese pictures I’ll pass on should it ever crop up again.
Saw this in the cinema when I was 16 and thought it was incredible, my generation’s bit of peak Bertolucci or something. It’s been a long hiatus but I caught it again the other day. My god, it’s fucking appalling, an arty-farty piece of silly, trivial gibberish, and unbelievably racist. The characters are one-note, self-obsessed twats, and the picture depicts the Japanese as a mass of hysterical idiots. About 20 minutes in I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It’s concocted anthropology à la Nanook of the North (1922). Never again. Sad!
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 