Cinemateca

All photos are screen shots from Tarkovsky's Stalker

I'm doing some house keeping on the blog. Here are some of the films I watched in 2008. I got lazy and didn't put every film up. From this short list the films I especially enjoyed or that left a lasting impression are: Crimes and Misdemeanors, Viridiana, The Thin Red Line, The Dark Knight, Lawrence of Arabia and El espíritu de la colmena.

I was introduced to Russian film maker Anderi Tarkovsky this year and I like his aesthetic. I watched most of Solyaris with my dad (I fell asleep, which I later learned is normal for a Tarkovsky film) and I saw Stalker for a philosophy class (I think you would like it Stalker Dad; in the same way you like Dune and 2001, which means you should watch them on the road since mom would hate them). Both films are extremely slow paced and have long curves of continuity. Watching his films is sometimes like meditating or contemplating a painting that occasionally moves. It's an experience similar to watching one of Malick's films. In both cases cinematography is foregrounded and much more important than it is in conventional Hollywood cinema.

Hopefully this year I'll keep my list better updated. I've toyed with the idea of having a seperate blog just to write about film. I'm hoping to start practicing writing movie reviews soon. An old friend of mine that majored in film studies in college started writing film reviews again and I've rather enjoyed reading them. I'll try not to get too technical.

The Science of Sleep (Gondry)
Derrida (Dick, Ziering Kofman)
Il Postino (Radford)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen)
Ghost Dance (McMullen)
Wall-E (Stanton)
Viridiana (Buñuel)
The Thin Red Line (Malick)
The Dark Knight (Nolan)
The Apartment (Wilder)
Stalker (Tarkovsky)
Soldados de Salamina (Trueba)
Minority Report (Spielberg)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
El ángel exterminador (Buñuel)
El orfanato (Bayona)
El espíritu de la colmena (Erice)
Being There (Ashby)
Bananas (Allen)