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Currently a PhD candidate in astronomy and astrophysics, and have been a serious Wikipedia reader and am trying to become a serious editor/contributor.
Among the eighteen works listed in Theo Angelopoulos's filmography, five of them do not have corresponding Wikipedia articles, and at least the same number of movies have articles that are stubs. The eventual goal is to expand all of them to the C or higher Class, but the first step is to create articles for movies that have none and to expand the stubs. I am currently working on creating an article for Days of '36. Please leave message on the talk page if you would like to join force!
This project is inspired by the Eternity and History—The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos film series[1] at Harvard Film Archive.
Even though several Wikipedia articles touch on “perceived grayscale luminance,” there is no article with the title. I'm considering building one, or adding related topics to relative luminance.
Do you know? The “perceived grayscale luminance” (related to, but not exactly, relative luminance) is different from any of the following: the brightness in the definition of the HSB color space, the lightness in the definition of the HSL color space, or the intensity in the definition of the HSI color space. Allegedly, the “perceived grayscale luminance” can be calculated by the following equation[2]
No color maps registered in matplotlib by default has a constant “perceived grayscale luminance.”[3] I'm building a few new color maps in Python with constant “perceived grayscale luminances,” and eventually a tool for users to select hues to create color maps of “perceived grayscale luminances” of their own. Please leave comments in the talk section if you would like to collaborate!
Do you know? After a few decades of using the term “star forming core” (see the Wikipedia article on star formation and protostars), the physics leading up to the formation of cores is not yet fully clear to astronomers.
Recently Watched
The stars after each title is my personal score for that film, with five stars as the perfect score. (Quarter stars are awarded.) The numbers following the stars are scores on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes upon the entry date, if they exist. Since the scores (and my comments sometimes) tend to change over time, each entry is signed every time it is edited/updated. This list does not mean to be comprehensive (and thus “Recently Watched” instead of “All the Watched”), and I would very much like to make it a list of the selected, so please leave your comments in the talk section if you have any titles in mind that you think should make to any sensible list of films. The list is composed loosely based on when I watched the film, with the more recent ones on top.
Do you know? The scores (given in stars) on Netflix for unwatched titles are scores “guessed” by the Netflix machine learning algorithm, and are user-dependent. The algorithm bases its guesses on the scores each user gives to the other films and the similarity between the films. It also compares users with similar interests.
April and the Extraordinary World (★★★½☆; Rotten Tomatoes—98%). "It's 1931. The world is still stuck in the steam age." The beginning introduction to the stage where the story is set hints strongly that April and the Extraordinary World would be a feast for the steampunks. Said to have a visual style based on Jacques Tardi, the movie pays obvious tribute to Hayao Miyazaki's works, particularly strikingly Castle in the Sky, Howl's Moving Castle, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. It is not hard to notice that, like Miyazaki, Tardi was born in the 1940s(, except that Tardi was born one year after the end of the World War II, while Miyazaki was already four and a half when his home town was air raided in 1945). The plot line, fortunately, is non-linear enough to intrigue creative wondering about the alternative world, where science was hold back by the kidnapping done on the scientists by a gang of talking lizards. On the other hand, Tasha Robinson[4], while noticing similarity to Miyazaki's style, notes that April and the Extraordinary World is in fact more linear than many of the Franco-Belgian comics.[5]Maybe it is time to explore some of those Franco-Belgian worlds?
The Beekeeper (★★★★½; IMDb—7.4/10; Rotten Tomatoes—N/A) is, together with The Station Agent, the best two road movies I have watched so far. (I have not yet had the chance to watch much of Wim Wenders, though. Shame on me!) While The Station Agent is a road movie without moving (much) in the physical space, The Beekeeper is, on the contrary, constantly moving (or, departing) yet without showing much of what actually/physically happens during the trips. This is probably why the movie has been called a "metaphysical road movie". The departures in The Beekeepr run along both the spatial and the temporal axes—the past keeps coming back in one way or another when Spyros moves forward on his journey to "find the spring" for his bees. Instead, Spyros dives only deeper into the past, so much so that the eventual climax on the stage of "Pantheon" leaves him only lonelier, if not also more entangled in the past.
When compared to Angelopoulos' earlier works, The Beekeeper demonstrates that the director has become adept at his signature—a long, almost static still shot, with subtle movement that eventually brings the audience to another amazingly composed scene. During this movement, the relative position and the proportion of the figure are kept constant on the screen, fitting into what Angelopoulos seems to think of history—a long, sometimes painful and surely lonely, procession (and processing) of the past.
Days of '36 (★★★¼☆; IMDb—7.0/10; Rotten Tomatoes—N/A). The kind of topic and the kind of camera use that I should have liked, but Theo Angelopoulos was not very close to be good at handling them (yet?). The characters are unintentionally flat, and so is the cinematography. The story is too fragmented for anyone with less than expert knowledge of Ioannis Metaxas's rise to power on the eve of the 4th of August Regime (and his purge of the communists and his political enemies) to fully comprehend. The only surprisingly good part is the experiment with lighting and a rotating camera just before the climax of the story (when the mysterious Sofianos was shot).
Limelight (★★★¾☆; IMDb—8.1/10; Rotten Tomatoes—97%). Written, directed, and produced by Charlie Chaplin, with music also written by himself, this movie emotionally summarize the life of a comedian. The story is comically intriguing, with unquestionable delivery from Chaplin himself. However, I personally would question the assigned lengths of various episodes in the story, some of which seem unreasonably long, while others, including ones introducing critical turns in the narrative, are so momentary that they seem unnatural and false. Limelight is also the leading actress, Claire Bloom's debut in cinema (previously being a stage actress), which might explain the slightly stiff performance and her being not used to the cameras. An interesting fact: many of the actors, although mostly playing only minor roles, come from the Chaplin family, making the movie overwhelmingly a Chaplin production.
This movie was included in the Robert Aldrich series (2016) at Harvard Film Archive, because Aldrich was the assistant cinematographer. In the programs, Limelight is said to be an example where "(a)pparently, Chaplin balked at Aldrich’s suggestions of more inventive camera movements and careful maintenance of continuity."[6] The leading cinematographer was Karl Struss, who has been the co-cinematographer in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and the sole cinematographer in the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Struss is also a renowned photographer, whose works include arguably one of the most famous studies of nude using photography in the early 20th century. Karl Struss nude
The Fits (★★★½☆; IMDb—6.2/10; Rotten Tomatoes—100%). The easiest explanation would be that The Fits is a symbolic approach to the teenage identity problem (and solution), but the movie, being Anna Rose Holmer's feature fiction debut, provides more in the suspenseful narrative. With a relatively short running time of 72 minutes, Anna Rose Holmer adeptly takes advantage of the small and enclosed space in the community center and creates a peculiar atmosphere not far from witchery. The witchery is then completed with music and cinematography, as well as performance delivered by the young actors.
Biutiful (★★★★¼; IMDb—7.5/10; Rotten Tomatoes—64%). Despite often less noticed among the general audience than Iñárritu's other works including, for example, Babel, Birdman, and The Revenant, Biutiful is no less worth watching. On the contrary, it might best represent the power of narration in Iñárritu's hands. As Iñárritu's many other works, Biutiful runs longer than two hours, and Iñárritu takes his time unveiling the somewhat mysterious and fragmented beginning of the story. This then grows into an entangled but clear and intriguing storyline, and contrasts with the fast-paced development later on. Many critics and producers, including Werner Herzog, compare Biutiful to a poem, which, in my opinion, largely owes to the decision Iñárritu made to leave details out of the screen. This decision keeps the movie in an enclosed and intimate space, despite fast unraveling of a series of surprising events, particularly toward the end. This is further complemented by the amazing performance by Javier Bardem, and by the cinematography done in cooperation with Rodrigo Prieto, who, by the way, has often cooperated with Iñárritu as well as Pedro Almodóvar and Ang Lee.
At a time when the anxiety around immigration intensifies in most parts of the Western world, Biutiful reveals (and predicts!) the complexity often too deep behind the media scene to be even included in political conversations. This makes Biutiful the deepest, the darkest, yet the warmest installment among Iñárritu's works. And among the few I have watched, I dare say that Biutiful is the best, and the most beautiful, too.
Dogtooth (★★★★☆; IMDb—7.3/10; Rotten Tomatoes—92%). A must-watch, in particular for those who have thought Yorgos Lanthimos' work intriguing but lacking. Coming almost seven years before Lanthimos' English-language debut, The Lobster, Dogtooth perfectly showcases the world view of Lanthimos, and explains the reasons why Lanthimos often decides to let his characters dive into monologues.
Battleship Potemkin (★★★★★; IMDb—8.0/10; Rotten Tomatoes—100%). Needless to say, but this is one of the top movies, and an important and influential one in the movie history. The iconic “Odessa Steps” is the first montage ever made in a film, and inspires scenes in a dozens of other also influential movies. The narrative is composed in a way that makes the silent movie, which would seem daunting to most modern audience, much more exciting than other titles in the sound era. The insertion of still shots before critical moments in the narrative are also impressive. Highly recommended.
The Fallen Idol (★★★★☆; IMDb—7.8/10; Rotten Tomatoes—100%). A criminal comedy version of Alice in Wonderland, with rabbit holes of convenient truths and lies. (By the way, the film is also known as The Lost Illusion, and it was based on Graham Greene's short story titled The Basement Room.) The narrative from the naive eyes of the boy protagonist, Philippe, adds to the comedy part and turns critical moments in the story into laughable episodes. These boy's eyes do not stop at making the audience laugh, but also ridicule what we adults are used to in terms of trivial details of truths, or lies. The director, Carol Reed, is nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards. However, he would win it only twenty years afterwards with his work in Oliver!.
Omar (★★★¾☆; IMDb—7.6/10; Rotten Tomatoes—91%) was the Palestine entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards. Omar features great delivery from several young actors. (Omar is the first feature film for Leem Lubany, who plays the leading female character, Nadia.) There could have been many choices of ending to the narrative, and the actual ending is undoubtedly the most thought provoking. The ending also says a lot about the current situation of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
Tale of Tales (★★★¼☆; IMDb—6.4/10; Rotten Tomatoes—79%) is the first English-language film by Matteo Garrone, who also directs Gomorrah and Reality. Tale of Tales deviates from the director's past films in both the topic and the style. The film seems to miss the chance to bring together interesting conflicts that could have happened between characters in each of the three plot lines.
Look Who's Back (★★★☆☆; IMDb—7.1/10) is adapted from the novel of the same name. I do not agree with critics stating that the film (as well as the novel) “glamorizes” Adolf Hitler. On the contrary, the film, being satirical, accurately points out how close we might be from a historically repeated scenario similar to the years before the Nazies took power in the 1920s and 1930s. However, as a movie, the characters are not very well thought out, and the lengths between different episodes and events are not well balanced. I do not know whether this is an issue in the novel or not.
Sunset Boulevard (★★★★★; IMDb—8.5/10; Rotten Tomatoes—98%) is almost always listed toward the top of the lists of best movies. It boasts one(s) of the most interesting characters in any movies, with accordingly suitable plot lines and narratives. The performance delivered by Gloria Swanson is hailed as one of the best, winning the actress her third nomination for the Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Sunset Boulevard is also second to the last of Gloria Swanson's appearance as a major role in a Hollywood film. The similarity between Gloria Swanson and her character in Sunset Boulevard is unmistakable, given the facts that Gloria Swanson also debuted in the silent era and that her appearance in Sunset Boulevard came nine years after her previous appearance as a leading role.
Reality (★★★½☆; IMDb—6.7/10; Rotten Tomatoes—80%) is directed by Matteo Garrone. The film has a much simpler plot line than Gorrone's pervious film, Gomorrah. The story makes an Italian version of “American Dream,” with modern elements in a setup around the fictional reality show, “Grande Fratello (Big Brother)”. Reality draws a parallel to (but, surely, is dimmed by) Sunset Boulevard. Aniello Arena, who plays the protagonist in Reality, has served life in prison since 1991 for a murder case, and was sought by Gorrone to appear in the previous Gomorrah but was denied permission by the prison at that time.
Charlie's Country (★★★½☆; IMDb—7.3/10; Rotten Tomatoes—94%). The story itself is linear, and does not provide too much a surprise in the context of aboriginal Australians. However, David Gulpilil's performance is outstanding, and realistically portrays the daily life of an aboriginal Australian. Both set in deteriorating aboriginal societies and said to have photographic cinematography, Charlie's Country reminds me of Embrace of the Serpent. I would recommend the latter more than Charlie's Country, though.
You, the Living (★★★★½; IMDb—7.5/10; Rotten Tomatoes—97%) is the second installment in Roy Andersson's trilogy, preceded by Songs from the Second Floor and followed by A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. It is yet another amazing demonstration of Andersson's bizarrely intriguing world, and examplifies the stereotypical, almost deadpan, Scandinavian dark comedy(, which probably has the same cultural origin as the Nordic noir[7]). The compilation of relatively long but seemingly discontinuous scenes is well done, and it is not hard to realize that Andersson himself started his career directing commercials and short films. The actors in You, the Living, being mostly amateurs, deliver solid performance that fits well into the gray tone of the film.
Yumeji (★★★★★; IMDb—7.3/10; Rotten Tomatoes—80%) is the long last installment of the loosely compiled (and not explicitly intended by the director, Seijun Suzuki) Taishō Roman Trilogy, preceded by Zigeunerweisen and Kagero-za. At this point, one would more clearly understand why the three titles form a trilogy, and although each film is amazingly finished on its own, any intent on watching all three of them should follow the chronological order. And again, the film is deeply rooted in Suzuki's perception of dreams and life/death. It serves as a complete ending to the trilogy, and more than the other two titles in the trilogy, the dream and the death are explicitly presented as the main topics in Yumeji. The cinematography and the setups are well done, and create an atmosphere likely rooted in Japanese folktales. Highly recommended.
Kagero-za (★★★★★; IMDb—7.2/10) is the second installment of Seijun Suzuki's Taishō Roman Trilogy, and also the boldest reminder of Japanese Shunga among the three. Again, bizarrely amazing. Highly recommended.
Zigeunerweisen (★★★★★; IMDb—7.2/10). The first installment of Seijun Suzuki's Taishō Roman Trilogy, and an intriguing introduction to the trilogy. Even though the visual representation might not be as bold as the other two titles in the trilogy, the cinematography is just as impressive. Highly recommended.
The Lobster (★★★¾☆; IMDb—7.2/10; Rotten Tomatoes—90%) Many have criticized this film for its failure to touch on the social component of its fictional world. However, as a dystopianromance, it is exactly the decision not to detail the imaginary society that makes it stand out. Rather than categorizing it as yet another dystopian movie, the film is more of an “absurdist” romance set in a dystopia, which makes it perfect to almost cruelly expose the ridiculous elements in modern love experience. In fact, The Lobster seems to me a different take on the same topics in Michael Haneke's Amour (and Haneke's other titles, too). The yellow-gray tone of the movie hits my sweet spot. Solid delivery from Colin Farrel and Rachel Weisz compensates where the plot takes (small but sure) missteps.
Mountains May Depart (★½☆☆☆; IMDb—7.0/10). To me, this film marks the down going of Jia Zhangke, with loosely composed plots and huge failures in telling what could have been at least a good story. The second part of the movie, though well motivated, becomes an awkward epilogue to the fine first half, because of Jia's incomprehensible decision to deploy too glittering a CGI to make what is supposedly Australia in 2020s. (Jia is also the writer of this movie.) A disappointment after Jia's highly received A Touch of Sin(, which I recommend). The score would have been worse without strong delivery from the cast, notably including Zhao Tao and Sylvia Chang. Not recommended.
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