A Grand Quiet

Sundays are for painting your nails while a movie plays in the background, you know they’ll start peeling in a few days but the action is therapeutic. Well, that and soaking up some delicious content, like a big sponge on an oil spill.

Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper is never incoherent, too talented for that, but all the ideas within don’t always cohere.

She is gifted with the front door keys to her employers’ city apartment, but at the same time her employer is never home. What is the meaning of this gesture then, she leaves bags, shoes, jewellery on the kitchen counters to be found at some later time, clothes are hung up in a walk-in, still in their garment bags. What does the space become then, personal, public? The characters themselves do not seem to know, while together they never quite get the chance to talk, and even apart they do their best not to meet. >>more>>

Paul Verhoven’s Elle is a commanding film that always seems a bit too sleazy to stay above suspicion, a mood which seems purposeful.

It wanna be provocative, I get that, and its depictions of assault are flat out terrifying, but any argument you hear about it being exploitative, is an argument to be considered. I’m honestly not too sure where I fall on the line myself, as the flick starts playing its hand, revealing the inequities of its world, it toes closer and closer to being a bit gross, and the closer the frame gets to Huppert’s tortured face the explicit sexual violence, I get like, ‘You sure you ain’t enjoying this, film? It sure seems like you are.’ >>more>>

In my most thrilling article yet I look at the mechanical design of two 15 year old games.

This rapid invention, the innovation in these two instalments had a detrimental effect on the games themselves however. Trying to design for these new modes and methods of interaction left world designers struggling to keep up with the mechanics. >>more>>

Roger Goldby’s The Time of Their Lives is a stark warning against filmic conservatism.

Goddamn old people and their shitty movies. The Time of Their Lives is a wastebag of a film, as poor as the photoshopping on that dreadful poster. Perhaps it’s not their fault they are no longer able to have original ideas; that they are so inured to the way things used to be that the furthest steps take them to banality. The film’s idea of a feminist statement is that a woman should not have to put up with an abusive husband. >>more>>

Finally I looked at how patriarchy expresses itself in the Margaret Atwood novel, A Handmaid’s Tale

There is a link between participatory media and consent. Unless you’re in a Clockwork Orange type situation the audience always has the option of disengaging with a work of art. We can put down the book, walk out of the theatre, turn off the television. By making the active choice to continue engaging with a work we are giving it permission to work within us, enact itself upon us. Our minds are vulnerable things, especially when we give them permission to be. The instincts that allow us to fantasise are the same that let our minds open to attack. >>more>>

Over the next week there’re too many films coming out: Life, Power Rangers, Smurfs: The Lost Village, Chips, The Lost City of Z, Aquarius, The Age of Shadows, and The Eyes of My Mother. I’m not even gonna promise which’ll be posted.

Again, like on facebook, follow on twitter, share and subscribe if you’ve anyone close to you who might enjoy some of this work, and thank you all for reading.

-E

This week I’ve been listening to Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, My Love!” because anything else is a mistake.