it’s been seven years…

since the new millenium started. and i know it’s probably asking too much, considering the cinema is really a child of the 20th century, and all that history just makes it statistically more probable that the lion’s share of the good films would have been made at that time.

but have there been any great movies since 2005′s Goodfellas? (which, i have to agree is a pretty great film).

as for good (meaning critically acclaimed or with some sort of impact on life in general) films I’ve yet to watch, here’s a list, in no particular order:

1. La Règle du Jeu by Jean Renoir
2. The Searchers by John Ford
3. Tokyo Monogatari by Ozu Yasujiro
4. Sunrise and Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau
5. Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl (yes, this is the Hitler propaganda flick, I wanna see this because they say it was such great propaganda… scary…)
6. Ghost World by by Terry Zwigoff (yes! a 2001 film! about a comic book!)
7. M by Fritz Lang
8. Picnic at Hanging Rock by Peter Weir
9. Mon oncle Antoine by Claude Jutra (will probably catch this Canadian film, as well as the other Canadian films on this list when I head back there this year, they should be in the library.)
10. Jésus de Montréal by Denys Arcand
11. Un Zoo La Nuit by Jean-Claude Lauzon
12. Xiaocheng zhi Chun (Spring in a Small Town) by Fei Mu
13. Yingxiong Bense (A Better Tomorrow) by John Woo
14. Memorias de Subdesarollo by Tomas Gutierrez Alea (I actually saw this Cuban film in university, I just need to see it again)
15. Les Enfants du Paradis by Marcel Carné
16. The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al-Aswany
17. Das Boot by Wolfgang Petersen (again another film I’ve seen but need to see again)
18. The Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and Apur Sansar) by Satyalit Ray
19. Bronenosets Potyemkin (The Battleship Potemkin) by Sergei Eisenstein
20. Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal) by Ingmar Bergman
21. The Third Man by Carol Reed
22. Get Carter by Mike Hodges

I’ll post here once I’ve seen these films. And if you’ve any other films that you believe are “must watch”, please let me know.

un autre jour…

Looking through the posts on this blog, I realized that I had already done those little quiz things on this journal. So I’m doing one again this year. Here goes…

You Are 28% Emo

You’re definitely not emo, but you do understand emo people a little. You are introspective, but not to the point of driving yourself crazy.

Are You Emo?

Well, this something I already know. I think if I had taken this test at a much younger age, I may actually qualify for the label.

On another slightly related note, I just picked up A Checkered Past: The 2Tone Collection a compilation of the music I listened to back in high school. At the time, I wore the Doc Martens and the black jeans; I had a plaid shirt and an olive green bomber jacket; My hair was cut real short (though not shaved, too much drama if I went that far haha). When I was in uniform, I would be in a shirt and tie and brogues.  I stopped short of the hat (mainly because I couldn’t find a decent Trilby in the vintage shops on Spadina, hehehe)

We were the ones writing the school paper, and we were the angry, noisy, anti-Establishment voice. And we were also on the Honour Society and the Student Council. But mostly we would tap kegs, slamdance at school parties, and occasionally pick fights with the ginos for the prime spots in the parking lot.

I wonder at times if we’ve all sold out, if Shawn and Dylan are slaving away in an office right now, listening to a compilation album…

Because I may doing this now. But I haven’t sold out to anyone or anything. This is my life, and I got exclusive rights to how it goes.  Non Serviam, baby.

Heath

They finally find an actor who I think is decent enough to play the Joker…. and he kicks the bucket after one movie.

I never really got to see his other movies. Brokeback was dragging… and his earlier movie, something about knights in armour and whatnot was well, fluff… But I liked him in Brothers Grimm, and The Patriot. And to think he died in the middle of filming a Terry Gilliam movie.

Well, they say he ODed on pills. I really don’t know what was going on in the last minutes of his life, but I guess I’d like to thank him for standing out from the drek that populates many Hollywood studios nowadays.

Till your next life, buddy.

Cheers.

Ennui

I interestingly enough first came across this word during the times my friends and I would play the roleplaying game (RPG) Vampire: The Masquerade.  It was a trait a vampire possessed that essentially portrayed one as phenomenally bored with the passing of centuries of unlife.  Ennui, in game term, essentially left the character as one with an almost inhuman point of view, an annoyance with the ephemerality of the world around them, and a sense that, when one looks at it all, immortality isn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Why do I bring this up?

In a certain sense, I’m terribly bored with the way things are.  As a student of history (my university major) one realizes humans essentially just end up committing some mistakes (war, for one) over and over again.  The adage those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, rings true even in this day.  And well, it’s just so frickin’ boring.  Worse part is, these things have happened (and will probably continue to happen) in my life too.  Is it human nature to be perpetually stupid in that regard.  Is this the price for the blistering pace of progress?  That although we can innovate at frightening speed, we’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over in other areas?

Such an existence is marked by a lack of… I don’t know… discernment?  consciousness? honesty?  Or maybe life just moves so fast that we fall back on old patterns of behaviour when confronted with new situations.

I think some time to take stock and really see how I’ve been living my life.

duuuude…

John Cho, who played Harold in the critically acclaimed (yeah right! hehehe) stoner film Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, has been cast as Hikaru Sulu in the latest Star Trek film.  Offhand, the new flick directed by J.J. Abrams (of Lost and Alias fame) and produced by the Lost team of Abrams and Lindelof, is well I dunno…

Couple of other casting bits:

• Chris Pine is Kirk.  Well I don’t really know the guy.
• Zachary Quinto (yes! aaaah!!! Sylar!!!) is Spock.
• Eric Bana is the bad guy.  His name as released is Nero, so he’s what? Romulan?  Will he have a fiddle?
• Karl Urban, Eomer from LOTR will play Bones McCoy ( “Dammit Jim, if you don’t shut up, I shall whack you with a sword!”)
• Winona Ryder plays Spock’s human mom, Amanda Grayson. (oooh. nice.)

So I don’t know.  From the get-go this Star Trek movie comes off as… nicely weird.

new year, not so new blog

So, i’ve rediscovered this blog, which places my introduction to the “blogoletariat” a lot earlier than I had thought.  I’ll probably be posting a lot more here, now that I know where it is again.  I’ve decided to make 3×5 my more laid-back counterpart to this blog, so I do hope you drop by here too.

Happy New Year, all.