It has been a week of strange, slow-paced sci-fi from the 70s at the Ganzeer cinema this week for some reason:

1. WORLD ON A WIRE (1973)

Second screening for me. The first time I was probably too young and immature to pick up on what it was actually about. This time around, I was actually surprised to discover that it dives into simulation theory, the core premise of the entire film! What with simulation theory kind of being the topic du jour in 2026, the movie is way ahead of its time having been released in 1973! I was always under the impression that it was 1999's THE MATRIX that first introduced the idea in popular culture. The internet tells me that the first “formal” proposition of a computer-based simulation hypothesis was not until Oxford philosopher put it in a 2003 paper titled “Are you living in a computer simulation?”

Though German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse seems to have laid the groundwork in his 1969 book, CALCULATING SPACE, arguing that the entire universe operates like a giant computer, a slight difference to suggesting that we were in fact potentially living inside a giant computer. Philip K. Dick though certainly kicked around very close ideas in a bunch of his stories.

Albeit slow, with stunted and often times laughable performances, WORLD ON A WIRE is still worth the watch (and worth keeping in your library) for the gloriously aesthetic 70s-era ultra-modern interiors alone.

2. SILENT RUNNING (1972)

Based on the premise, I expected to be into this one more than I actually was. The ecological ethos of the film is probably more urgent and relevant now than at the time of release, but the ending is just too much of an unnecessary downer to warrant sitting through the excruciating slowness of the entire movie. Really great production design though.

3. SOLARIS (1972)

Slowness is to be expected with Andrei Tarkovsky at the helm. Not great, but again, great production design, and so different and far more philosophical than Steven Soderbergh's 2002 adaptation, which Sanislaw Lem (author of the original novel upon which both films are based) loathed, surprising of course no one. Lem was known for his scathing essays critical of the standard flare of American sci-fi (and this is in regard to novels let alone movies), often citing formulaic tropes and low-quality trash that lacked any sense of philosophical inquiry (singling Philip K. Dick as a rare exception). I should probably get around to reading more Lem soon.

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OneDrive have notified me that autosyncing with my camera app will be discontinued in a couple days, so I am now scrambling to transfer all media from my phone to an external harddrive. Some 20,000 photos and videos that I have to archive in batches of 500 or so, because my newly downloaded Photosync app crashes otherwise. This will probably take me all goddamn day. Going forward though, I should be able to set it to auto-archive (and delete from phone!) on a monthly cycle without any hiccups.

Looking forward to ridding myself of the various cloud-storage services, just as I have with streaming.

#journal #film

Season 3 of SILO ended with the media equivalent of being blue-balled.

Got around to watching PROJECT HAIL MARY with my significant other for the first time, and we might as well have put on a Disney cartoon.

Halfway through Iain M. Banks' USE OF WEAPONS, and it's fun and entertaining enough but I'm honestly a little surprised it's talked about as some great touchstone of sociocultural commentary and forward-thinking ideas. But perhaps I ought to wait until I finish it before jumping to any conclusions.

#radar #TV #film #reads

Someone at the conference took a jab at TRANSCENDENCE, a film I had never heard of and thus decided to watch despite its horrendous ratings.

I quite enjoyed it! It does falter terribly in the third act, but its first half is pretty darn good. It is almost certainly every delusional techno-optimist's wet dream; It isn't hard to picture our feudal tech overlords frothing at the mouth through most of it (it's even got a 2-second cameo of Musk). But, there is something there.

In other news, Xi Jinping landed in Egypt yesterday, a visit that was much publicized and can likely be taken as a clue of what's to come. Interesting times.

#radar #film

19 films that explore art and erotica: 1. The Dreamers — Bernardo Bertolucci 2. La Belle Noiseuse — Jacques Rivette 3. The Pillow Book — Peter Greenaway 4. Camille Claudel — Bruno Nuytten 5. Henry & June —Philip Kaufman 6. Portrait of a Lady on Fire — Celine Sciamma 7. Caravaggio — Derek Jarman 8. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus — Steven Shainberg 9. A Bigger Splash — Luca Guadagnino 10. Artemisia — Agnes Merlet 11. The Artist and the Model — Fernando Trueba 12. Anatomy of Hell — Catherine Breillat 13. Lust for Life — Vincente Minelli 14. Surviving Picasso — James Ivory 15. The Libertine — Laurence Dunmore 16. Goya's Ghosts — Milos Forman 17. The Dying Gaul — Craig Lucas 18. Factory Girl — George Hickenlooper 19. Claire's Camera — Hong Sang-soo

Some of these I've watched and loved, some I have yet to see. For future reference.

#film #screening

Watched the most bizarre take on War of the Worlds last night; a Polish film on Mubi called THE WAR OF THE WORLDS: NEXT CENTURY. Not so much an adaptation as much as it is informed by War of the Worlds. And not just by the story itself, but by the story's lore, the fiasco surrounding Orson Welles' radio adaptation of piece in that THE WAR OF THE WORLDS: NEXT CENTURY utilizes the premise of an alien invasion to create a film about media and propaganda. It's like a War of the Worlds iteration filtered through an Eastern European Philip K. Dick. Bizarre stuff.

#film #screening

Re-watching RUN LOLA RUN for the first time in over 20 years. So much stranger than I remember, with many odd narrative choices. Its cool factor is still very cool, but it's also incredibly ridiculous. The fact that the entire premise of the film stems from the anxiety of not being on time, makes it funnier than its meant to be, and also very German.

Still a lot of fun to watch, and oddly refreshing somehow.

On a completely different note, I recently discovered that before landing on BLADE RUNNER for a title, Ridley Scott considered calling his movie ANDROID. While not as inventive a title, it would've been particularly cool after having just come off a movie called ALIEN.

#journal #watches #film

SCAVENGER'S REIGN on Netflix is very fucking good.

Also watched THE NINTH GATE which I thoroughly enjoyed. First film I've seen set in the world of antiquarian booksellers. Surprised to find it scoring so low across the internet, but I suspect that must have much to do with the director's name. I mean, clearly not something that would have mass appeal, but it's the sort of offbeat, eccentric film that would typically develop a cult following I think.

Or perhaps I just have strange taste.

#watches #film

Passed out almost immediately after child was picked up by his mother yesterday, leaving much laundry, dishes, and other messes to deal with this Monday. Not an ideal way to start the work week. Managed to ink a page of TSG nonetheless. On the second-to-last chapter as we speak. In that so-close-yet-so-far stage of finally completing the book.

Went to see Garland's CIVIL WAR not once, but twice. It is very, very good. Some of its flaws are rather noticeable the second time around, but it is still very good, very powerful. Manages to suggest a great deal despite a rather simple, straightforward plot. Something I oughtta learn to do myself sometime.

#journal #work #film #watches

There's a side character in SNOWPIERCER, the movie, who is an artist. Living in the tail-end car, he does depictions of his fellow tailenders and what they go through. I couldn't help but picture a scenario where that same character's art was instead wholly different. Either:

a) Completely abstract line-work, things first-class passengers could precure and display in their car without it looking the slightest bit out of place.

b) Escapist stuff; him and his comrades rescued by mythical space heroes, or perhaps a family of tailenders fighting off all the other tailenders in the car who had for some reason been turned to zombies.

If we, as an audience, were to see that that's the kind of art this character was making, we would most certainly scream: What the fuck are you doing, man?

And that tells you everything you need to know about the state of [most] art today.

#journal #film #art

Woke up in the middle of the night and decided to crack open the volume of HITCHCOCK TRUFFAUT that's been jeering at me unread from my shelf for a while now. A few pages in and I was prompted to beam Mernau's DER LETZTE MANN on the projector, which both Hitchcock and Truffaut express their admiration for. First minute into this 1924 silent film and I was hooked! The framing and shots are just absolutely gorgeous, and the story intense, told entirely without words got me thinking about the big vacuum left unfilled by the absence of silent visual storytelling in today's world. The potential to reach people across borders regardless of language or culture is immense, especially if phones/social-media were to be utilized as the delivery mechanism. But that would necessitate coming up with short ultra-condensed narratives of about one minute or a minute and half tops. Which in itself is something of an attractive limitation.

#journal #reads #film