The Atomic Cafe 2

Not much different from last week. Some of the video was pretty shocking, namely when the soldiers walked into the mushroom cloud. Oh and the scene at the end I thought that was very well done. They combined a bunch of images to make it look like a bomb was launched and went off. I felt this movie expressed the atomic hype especially in showing that there were so many places and things that were shown as atomic [insert place/object here].  Anyway over all it was a good look at what the government said and what people thought compared to what was actually happening.

The Atomic Cafe

We have only watched about half of it but so far it is pretty good. Personally I like the propaganda cartoons they are pretty funny. But anyway the lack of voice over for a documentary is pretty refreshing. It allows you to think for yourself and it helps you better form your own opinion about the issue. However, it keeps the slant toward the atomic bomb not being a great thing so it accomplishes what the voice over would do. When there isn't a specific clip of someone speaking the music fills for the voice over. It is period music often about the bomb so it shows that it even influenced music. Anyway it has been pretty interesting so far.

Also I have been thinking of getting Dark City and I probably will.

Dr.Strangelove

Good movie pretty funny. Not much to say about it though compared to some of the movies we have previously covered. Personally I question the title or at least the first part of it. Dr Strangelove doesn't seem to capture the film. The character himself comes in relatively late and just doesn't seem as important as other characters. But maybe that is just me. The other thing I REALLY liked was the ending. It is so ironic to have such a calm song while there are a bunch of nuclear explosions. In the end they will meet again in 100 years after the radioactivity is gone. Anyway great movie. 

Dark City (Another Similarity)

I didn't really want to mention this before but whatever.
Another similarity is in the Yu-Gi-Oh card game. While yes there is the similarity of tuning that really isn't all that important. There is one card in particular. That one is appropriately named "Dark City". The card art is of well a dark city where the only light is the window lights. This is quite reminiscent to the movie. Even stranger the building appear to be flat and fake which like in the movie the entire city was created by The Strangers. So this might just be a very strange coincidence or the person who drew the card art saw the movie who knows. But I still thought it was cool. 

A Simple Plan

Well not too much to say about this one. I personally liked it.  Jacob really didn't seem to smart at all throughout the beginning but as it went on his intelligence shown through.  I personally liked the isolation in winter setting. Barren snowfields are excellent examples of isolation. In fact I used this idea during my college search. I wanted to spend my next 4 years in near total solitude. So when this idea was mentioned in class I felt like I could relate. In the end Hank was ultimately alone in everything even though he said that they were all in it together.

Merry Christmas everyone... Tomorrow the Island might be a winter wasteland haha.   

Memento

Hm that was a surprising movie. The first day it gave me a headache but after I started writing things down it became much more understandable. Anyway the movie was pretty strange. The organization of it was particularly interesting. It seems like what the director was trying to do was simulate memory loss by playing the movie in reverse. The viewer wouldn't know what was happening 5 minutes in the future which in the time line of the story is 5 minutes in the past. Though I thought adding other scenes and connecting them at the end was not the best way to go with it. Maybe thoughts from the past would have been better than story line going forward. Anyway not as great as Dark City but still pretty good.

Also I got that long coat I mentioned in the last entry.

Dark City!!!

I think Dark City has become my favorite movie of all time.  It really makes you think about what reality is. On occasion I have pondered what it would be like to loose a memory or have different memories than to what actually happened. It probably wouldn't be so bad considering that is what you think always is, was and will be. What if we all have missing memories of things that happened to us? What if the life we are all experiencing is a lie? These are all very deep questions that I believe this movie is trying to portray.

One thing I instantly noticed is how many aspects were strikingly similar to those of several of my other fandoms which cross a wide array of media. I will talk about two of them.
 One thing I noticed in the movie was the spirals. In the beginning they seemed to play a large role but then it just kind of dies. We see them on the murdered bodies, Eddie drawing them on his walls and the images of fingerprints. The motif of spirals (especially in the scene with Eddie) reminded me of a Japanese horror film based on a manga titled Uzumaki (spiral in English). First of all why spirals! They never explain this during the movie anyone might think that if they were only seen during the murders they would would think it was only a gimmick that Murdoch would have used (if The Strangers were successful). However, we see Eddie drawing them later. In Uzumaki many people and eventually the town are "cursed" by spirals which eventually drives them to madness. I think spirals don't only signify Eddie's madness but also the confusion that many of the characters are experiencing such as Bumstead with his investigation and Murdoch with the loss of his memories. It could also signify Bumstead and Murdoch going deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the city throughout the course of the movie.
Another similarity is to the game Persona 3. In the game there is an element called "The Dark Hour" which is pretty much a hidden hour after midnight, similarly to the movie. Much like during the Tuning all electronics and cars stop however unlike it people turn into coffins for some reason rather than falling asleep. If that wasn't enough during the dark hour buildings grow from the ground in a similar fashion to the movie. But anyway I digress.
Finally this movie has made me absolutely sure that I want a long coat. haha