Two more to go
Jul. 19th, 2007 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaGhosts of Cité Soleil: some of the best cinematography and editing I have seen in a documentary, which is impressive considering it's about armed gangs in Haitian slums (chimère, the ghosts of the title) immediately before and after the fall of Aristide in 2004, when the country went to Hell in a fast-moving handbasket. Basically the filmmaker picked up a camera and followed two of these inner-city gang chiefs around for months, documenting their dreams, loves, feuds, family, music, politics... The miracle is that he managed it without stopping a bullet with his body. It's beautiful, insane, and insanely-beautifully moving.
It was a head trip to read half of The World Is Flat, then go and watch a film in which an Uzi-toting Haitian gang leader who styles himself '2pac' calls up Wyclef Jean in his kitchen, on his cellphone, to spit freestyle accompanied by his jeep radio. These guys are trilingual - in French, Creole, and gangsta rap. Thug life! None can deny, that is how they roll. XD;; They're whip-smart, too, enough to see the big picture, but out of options from beginning to end.
13 Beloved: working stiff with an aged mother and an overdraft loses his girlfriend, gets his car repossessed, and is downsized to boot. Then he gets a call from a purported reality game show offering him an astronomical sum of cash if he can successfully accomplish thirteen tasks. The first task is to kill a fly; after which it descends rapidly into dangerous, disgusting, and morally murky territory. There's a guiding principle to the seemingly random tasks as well, which doesn't come entirely clear until the end.
Very dark, thought-provoking, extremely hilarious. As a bonus, contains the first remotely believable server-hacking scene I have seen in the cinema. Highly recommended if you like films like Fight Club, though considering it's a Thai flick, the chances of a Hollywood remake are considerably higher than of it making its way to a multiplex near u. ^^;
It was a head trip to read half of The World Is Flat, then go and watch a film in which an Uzi-toting Haitian gang leader who styles himself '2pac' calls up Wyclef Jean in his kitchen, on his cellphone, to spit freestyle accompanied by his jeep radio. These guys are trilingual - in French, Creole, and gangsta rap. Thug life! None can deny, that is how they roll. XD;; They're whip-smart, too, enough to see the big picture, but out of options from beginning to end.
13 Beloved: working stiff with an aged mother and an overdraft loses his girlfriend, gets his car repossessed, and is downsized to boot. Then he gets a call from a purported reality game show offering him an astronomical sum of cash if he can successfully accomplish thirteen tasks. The first task is to kill a fly; after which it descends rapidly into dangerous, disgusting, and morally murky territory. There's a guiding principle to the seemingly random tasks as well, which doesn't come entirely clear until the end.
Very dark, thought-provoking, extremely hilarious. As a bonus, contains the first remotely believable server-hacking scene I have seen in the cinema. Highly recommended if you like films like Fight Club, though considering it's a Thai flick, the chances of a Hollywood remake are considerably higher than of it making its way to a multiplex near u. ^^;
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Date: 2007-07-20 01:22 pm (UTC)