(no subject)

Watching Equilibrium at the moment, which is very much a rendition of Huxley's story, combined with Zamyatin and Bradbury. The visuals are gorgeous, very stark lines and odd lights. I'm told they had no budget, but they've managed to conceal that quite well. The fight scenes in this are pretty damn spiffy, even without the benefit of a fancy camera. I'm rather impresssed with them.

It ends strangely.

Work was excrutiatingly slow last night. I had to tell a lead that some day shift fellow was looking at porn. Really. I'm sorry, how dense does one have to be to think that looking at porn at work is a good idea? I'm annoyed because this guy will probably lose his job over that, and he shouldn't have been such an idiot.

Now that I've been staring at this entry for an hour, I should probably just post it. I feel extremely lazy today. Eight thousand things I should be doing.

more eloquent musing on Equilibrium

I wish I had seen this in the theater. How did I miss it? Ergh.

Director's commentary is fantastic. Kurt Wimmer speaks quite avidly about the film, about shooting, sets, actors, the story and a number of other things. He's articulate and interesting.

I'm blown away by the choice of Beethoven as the music that breaks into Preston's head, because Beethoven is one of the few pieces of music that makes me feel a connection outside of my head. A very personal thing for me, but I think other people might get it just because Beethoven is known as one of the greatest composers ever. The Mona Lisa is used for the same reason.

The work they did to get around having no money and little equipment... damn. Talking about how camera batteries failed, brute force solutions to not having certain equipment. They use some strange places for shots, all around Berlin, left over relics from World War II, and the references to Nazi Germany are pretty clear.

References a lot of other films, everything from Triumph of Will to Gattaca. Everything from numbness by self medication, hate crimes, socialism, minimalism, media saturation, facist architecture, memory, the burning of film, the dangerousness of ideas and feelings, geometry... It's a surprisingly well done thing.

The casting choices, both intentional and not so intentional, are good. He waxes poetic on Sean Bean's performance and choosing Christian Bale because he makes for a sympathetic character for does evil things.

I like the modified Berettas. Nice guns. And the firearms version of martial arts, and the development of gun fights in Hollywood and Hong Kong cinema. He invented it in his yard apparently. So amusing. It's great cinematic fiction.

The alternation of color, how everything is grey until a person is a sense offender, and then color enters into the scene.

I'm going to have to watch this again.