a beached whale movie marathon yesterday.
factotum:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417658/
i do not care about bukowski but found myself enjoying this film based on one of his novels. except for the editorial asides about writing. matt dillon is a good bukwoski-but-not-quite. the entire film is suffused with hangover. since one of our number was deeply hung over (not me) it seemed an almost cruel choice.
viva cuba:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477916/
i don know about this film. equal portions of the interesting and the cheesy in terms of writing--kinda cool refusal to maintain an adult viewpoint which means that the film shifts into and out of the subjective space of the 12-year-old main characters--interesting as a road film that takes you across northern cuba. but in the end, i found it very easy to wander away and cook dinner.
fantastic planet.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070544/
but this. o my. go thee hence and get the dvd. this is an amazing animated sci-fi film from the early 1970s. the plot is straightforward but the animation/design and sound are fabulous and make for a deeply hallucinogenic hour and a half. the dvd also includes some of laloux's short films, of which "the monkey's teeth" is the best--just incredible---must see--you, that's right you, must see this.
darwin's nightmare
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424024/
hubert sauper directed this documentary and says in the interview attached to the dvd that he was interested in shooting something on the fishing industry on the shores of lake victoria in tanzania as an index of the "madness of our times"--and he catches that i think--so the film is complex and grim and kinda overwhelming---lake victoria is overrun with this huge predator fish released into the lake by someone about 30 years ago--the fish have eaten everything else in the lake and are not eating themselves--but europeans like them for dinner--so there is a huge industry that has arisen around the fish who are destroying lake victoria. the film is mostly about some of the towns that have grown up in the context of this economy. you watch a detailed and well-crafted portrayal of the sprung rationality of neo-colonial africa. you find that the huge cargo planes that arrive seemingly continuously to pick up loads of fish arrived in tanzania sometimes full of weapons that filter their way to the congo or angola...you watch planeloads of fish taking off for the eu as a famine breaks out in the same region--cargoplanes on fish taking off, un planes of food aid arriving on television. it is crazy, it is depressing, it is, like the director said, the madnes of our times. it is not fun to watch, but it is an important film.
there is a short about the war in eastern congo as well but i was afraid to watch it. it was late and i was sleepy and did not want to dream of massacre with my head already full of the surreal and brutal logic of globalizing capitalism...again...