Kurosawa called Ozu’s aesthetic “too rarified”. Tokyo Story, Ozu’s opus, really hammers home what Akira-sensei meant.

In only-just-postwar Japan a retired couple decide to visit their sararīmen children in Tokyo. The first act establishes the extreme social rigor, the crushing burden of politeness, that this action necessitates. It plays without non-formal dialog.

The second act begins with a misbehaving child — the eldest grandson is upset that his desk has been moved to make tatami room for the grandparents, disrupting his careful study schedule.

The wife of the oldest, most successful, son spends all of act two cleverly pawning the visiting relatives off on other branches of the family using guilt and gifts — the turning point of the act is her scheme to have everyone pool enough money to send the grandparents to a spa. It turns out to be one they don’t enjoy (I don’t know if that was intentional on the daughter-in-law’s part).

In the final act the grandparents come to terms with their disappointment in their children, deciding that they are “slightly above average”, and then die.

This film is pornography for people with OCD and Japanese horror for autistics. It’s the kind of film that is best reserved for a heavy late-night grass session so you can noodle along with the banal strangeness of its psychological cruelty.

… but can it possibly be that good?

I’m trawling Spike Lee’s catalogue. Inside Man is wicked neo-Noir. The 40s whipsaw back into present reality and Denzel ends up a Black Bogart complete with crisp cream fedora. Femme Fatale Foster, Ms. White*, flips the color palette nicely — perhaps this is better termed a film blanche.

* cf Tilda Swinton in The Limits of Control. Lee and Jarmusch seem to dovetail — both were also behind the indie film movement in the 80s in NYC, and as we all know: two points is enough for a trendline.

Anyway, it’s on the official tip now: I’ve just been accepted into an Advanced Filmmaking program out East, starting this September. Coursework includes writing, production, directing, editing, cinematography, and something called “history of Canadian narrative”.

I had to talk my way past a lapsed admission deadline and my lack of, you know, actual qualifications, but now I’m on my way. The program is a 45 week intensive master’s certificate and ends either with an internship at a production company or a thesis film.

Nolan might be my new favorite working Hollywood director. Inception shows an impressive command of the medium, in the sense that (no spoilers) the story makes use of the time dilation effect of jump cuts* as part of the plot, not just as a convention.

Juno’s part, however, is kinda weak. She’s there as the audience-proxy — the newbie to whom the mechanics of the fictive world are explained — and for nothing more besides some light comic relief. I suspect she was bolted on later in development because she feels like a plothack.

All-in, and given the stellar reviews this picture is receiving, I’m left with the feeling that I’m able to see too easily how films are put together. Like comedians who no longer laugh at other’s jokes, or a vegetarian butcher, I wonder if dissecting movies is leaving me unable to completely enjoy them.

But the only way out is through. Hopefully a higher, perhaps archetypal, aesthetic awaits (oh, nice combination of The Shadow and The Lover)!

* EXT. Street — DAY

He SCREAMS.

Jarmusch’s newest film. It’s beautiful, with non-standard pacing. It very well could have been shot without dialogue. Tarantino’s stylized, overwrought gangster opera-speech becomes, in Jarmusch’s hands, airily perfunctory: dialog with subtext, but not context.

But I’m a fanboy. Definitely a film to zone upon.

Hey man, I’ll take all the generically-phrased good advice I can get.

The ways of the psychic world are strange, and Georgia Nicols, via Monday Magazine, seems talented at interpreting them.

She even gives astrological movie recommendations! This week: Invictus.

I just gave the first episode a watch. It has the hallmarks of indie production, which is to say that the supporting cast is of the “talented amateur” variety and the CG is of the “that’s a weirdly stylized way to do CG” flavour. But it’s nothing you wouldn’t see l8tnite on SyFy (except for the uneven sound quality). There are even a couple of stand-out performances (I was watching for them to answer the “is there such a thing as a good indie actor?” question buzzing in my head).

An archetypal Sci-Fi “incident” occurs which Mulder and Skully of the FBI an agent and his female science-kick for Homeland Security must investigate. The real question for me is whether the story can bear more than two episodes of similar length without stretching the plot incredibly thin. The “what’s going on?!?” mechanic only goes so far with me: it’s your job to tell us!!!

It turns out that free torrent-based TV is at least as dependent on cliffhangers as oldmedia TV. You gotta end on a tension hook so a film-budget-sized chunk of the long tail’s righteous citizens brigade kicks in a buck for the next one.

The Take, which you can watch all of starting with part one of nine here, is a Naomi Klein documentary about groups of anarcho-socialist workers who are reinventing the political economy of post-economic-collapse Argentina.

The film makes the implicit case that the state monopoly on violence exists to suppress protest and direct political action in the name of protecting private property.

This is the “everyone’s a consultant” economy I’ve dreamed of, that I want to exist here, actualized. Except let’s call it a “cooperative” economy, or, better, a “bossless” economy.

Because a house divided against itself cannot stand*, and once you divide management from production you create an us-versus-them dynamic that, eventually, will ruin everything. Best to just keep the people that actually do the work.

* This is my liberation theology talking — it’s not very anarchist of me, and the film takes an explicit “no kings, no saviors” anarchist stance.