Erkki

Damn, Killing of a Sacred Deer didn’t fit into my festival schedule, but I hope it will be in cinemas later.

It's amazing how what started from this little game grew into such a huge franchise. I think I might mostly agree with the Polygon raking, except I stopped playing after Black Flag. To me that game was really a pinnacle of what this series could reach after Brotherhood. I rank both Brotherhood and Black Flag very highly, but they are very different games. Black Flag is actually held back by being an Assasin's Creed game, most of the missions resembling the other games felt like an obstacle on the way of this amazing pirate game, as did the modern day episodes. But I guess there's no way this game could have happened if it were not part of the series. And then Brotherhood to me is the best example of what the original Assasin's Creed idea could be. Yes, maybe Ezio wasn't that great of a character in it, but this game was more about the gameplay than the narrative. But seeing that the Origins, while considered somewhat of a reboot, is still ranked lower than what I consider the two high points of the series, I think I will give it a pass since I would really have to drop some other things to play such a huge game nowadays.

Well, maybe not exactly, but the general normalization of trolling is really bothering me and I think it's somewhat very connected to gamer culture. In Russia the government is actually paying people to troll other countries. Actually it's a bit weird to consider that this kind of Russian manipulation that is now seen in US elections, Brexit, Catalonia, has always been present and successful in Estonia. The biggest and probably most corrupt party is in power in the capital somewhat thanks to Russian connections. Unfortunately all other parties are just mostly ignoring the local Russian population, so it's not only the Russian meddling that is helping them votes, but also that they are mostly the only ones who actually represent the local Russians somewhat. But still, I don't think I can even remember a time when Russia hasn't been trying to sow misinformation. But it never had as big an effect as now. Anyway, I think it's a sick world if the western world has to deal with stuff like Brexit because we can't agree that Russia is an actual fucking enemy that is actually fighting us every day.

I pretty much play only a few small indie games a year now. I’ve been thinking lately about the time when in the 90s and 2000s we were laughing at some lawyers and various people who wanted to blame video games for real world violence and how we never believed them. But now after gamergate and trump, it seems like maybe gamers and gamer culture in general had an even worse effect on the world. Whenever someone now speaks of gamers, I think gamergaters. I think that event almost completely put me off gaming as such and I don’t really want to be associated with it a lot any more. I don’t hide that I still play some games, but I’ve definitely stopped identifying with gamers. But maybe the same would have just happened without gamergate as I just gradually played less and less

It’s probably well known to most of you but I just saw Scarface for the first time, and there was a lecture about its influence on pop culture. It’s definitely good, and now I understand much better why the GTA games are like they are and where that all comes from.

I just counted how many of the PÖFF 2017 movies I already bought tickets for are directed by women and was pleasantly surprised that it's even as high as 8/26. (It's also 8/32 though if I count some next ones I might buy). I didn't deliberately pick films by women, except in a couple of cases, and not sure of the overall ratio at the festival. So anyway, during the next 3 weeks, I might add some more to this list.

Actually now I'm thinking that it's the same dress, just appears like that to the camera or after encoding when the pixels-per-dress decreases.

Damn, after googling I think this was deliberate?

Just spent almost the whole day adding my local Film Festival as a list of lists to Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/t4ffer/list/poff-2017/ I wish there was an easier way of doing it and better way to present it on Letterboxd. Also that all the submitters would already add their film to IMDB and TheMovieDB. I haven't added anything to IMDB because I never tried and don't know how hard it is, but I did have to add about 20 films to TheMovieDB because that's what Letterboxd uses for importing films. Also a lot of trouble with that importing. I think it somehow expects the data to "settle" before it works really well, but since I'm going list by list, I only start adding the movie to the DB if I'm already going through the list and find that it's missing. Then I add some essential data, and go to the import URL in Letterboxd. But usually some data ends up missing, like language, director, year, poster. And I have no idea why that is, except that I think if I waited some minutes before importing, it worked better. But I don't want to do that while editing a list, because then I have to use some buffer to remember where to add this movie once it's been imported. Maybe I should report this to letterboxd... Also I wish TheMovieDB imported some things from IMDB since you usually enter the IMDB id as a first thing anyway...

I think I'm with you, Problem Machine, mostly. I do get the comedy reading, but I think it was more of a really over the top Polanski's Apartment Trilogy movie - a psychological thriller. And then it finally descended into a blurry phantasmagoria, a free-for-all mayhem. I liked the movie a lot, but I do think the ending kind of betrayed what the first half was. I don't begrudge it that, but I'd like the version where this is the fourth movie in The Apartment Tetralogy. Did anyone else think (during the first half at least) that the Ed Harris character was the husband's secret (to Grace) gay lover? To me that was the only way it made any sense until nothing made any sense. I'm from a country where the bible is not really a thing for most people, besides the story of Jesus, so I didn't pick up the biblical stuff at all. Now that I think back, the baby was an obvious biblical reference, though, and the other things too.

I agree that the series has found it's identity now and practically everything else you said, Ben. It definitely doesn't feel like it's copying specific movies this time, but yes it is full of tropes. And this time it also felt more coherent. About the first season I said that it felt like different genres depending on who's perspective we were seeing. I didn't specifically pay attention to that with season 2, but I got the feeling that it had a more unified style for all perspectives this time. I loved the use of lighting, and I think Mario Bava would have approved of the cinematography in this show. Although maybe the influences can't be traced back to him directly, I did draw some comparisons especially with the colored lighting, after seeing a lot of Bava movies in the past two months.

Ok, so Kusturica might not be for me. I saw When Father Was Away on Business and it had some good moments, but most of the movie had me yawning. I will also watch Underground, as that seems to be the highest rated one, and probably skip the others... I have downloaded Arizona Dream a while ago so might see that some time later. [edit] confirmed that most of Kusturica is not for me. I didn't really enjoy Underground a lot, although it is his highest rated work and objectively I can accept that it may be an important movie, especially for viewers from former Yugoslavia. There are definitely some amazing moments in this film, but most of the time I found the scenery dull and two-dimensional (maybe I've been ruined by Bava now?), and the movie doesn't really justify it's length to me. There were several spots where I thought it could have ended, but it kept going for another hour, and maybe rather pointlessly.

Also I just found that Deniz Gamze Ergüven Was the woman who directed Mustang (2015), a really good movie about some Turkish girls basically held prisoner at home by their relatives until they are married off.

Sorry for resurrecting (I found it when searching for Kusturica), but holy crap, how'd you do that? I just checked Letterboxd and Godard made over a 100 movies. Or you meant you saw the main ones and found it exhausted for you? I personally still have to see Histoire(s) du Cinema, but I'm not sure if I want to see anything else because the only one I've liked so far is Le Mepris (Contempt). On a totally unrelated note, there's an Emir Kusturica week going on in my favourite cinema and I just saw my first Kusturica movie: Time of the Gypsies. It was kind of interesting in a way, but also not. I'm not sure whether I want to keep on seeing the other movies. Anyone recommend anything particular from Kusturica? The other movies are: When Father Was Away on Business (1985) Arizona Dream (1993) Underground (1995) Black Cat, White Cat (1998) Life is a Miracle (2004) Maradona by Kusturica (2008)

Post-apocalyptic drone graveyard where you have to puzzle together what happened from found footage. [edit] wait, I confused a movie with a computer game CD-ROM

Interesting. I'm going to find my stats as well... I think mine might be skewed towards the top since I only started rating movies recently and only as I watch them, and I've been going through various top films lists. ★★★★★ (72) - Psycho, Rear Window, Nashville, Harakiri, Man with a Movie Camera ★★★★½ (130) - The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Taste of Cherry, Mirror, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Raise the Red Lantern ★★★★ (177) - Embrace of the Serpent, Black Sunday, The Long Goodbye, A Swedish Love Story, Fish Tank ★★★½ (171) - The Love Witch, Clouds of Sils Maria, Lady Snowblood 2, The Motorcycle Diaries, Amarcord ★★★ (93) - Gummo, I Don't Feel Home at This World Anymore, Get Shorty, 28 Days Later, Theeb ★★½ (35) - The Strange Colors of Your Body's Tears, Kubo and the Two Strings, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, In Order of Disappearance, Blue in the Face ★★ (26) - The Isle, It Happened One Night, Noroit, Alice Sweet Alice, Near Dark ★½ (8) - Blade Runner 20XX shorts, November, Roukli, Tremors 5, Hugo ★ (12) - Suicide Squad, Weekend, The Searchers, GoodFellas, The Trouble with Harry ½ (1) - Fifty Shades of Grey

I just finished watching it. It did make me think of The Exorcist, but it's a long time since I've seen that and I can't remember anything specific. I haven't seen enough horror films of the period to tell how original it was, but I think it might have influenced later movies like The Babadook, and maybe even The Shining? Or am I wrong in thinking that? I kind of liked it, but the dubbing was distracting me, wish I had seen the Italian version. On the other hand, with Erik the Conqueror, it was an additional minus hearing the Italian dialogue - something you never associate with Vikings/The English. BTW. I think I've never been as obsessed with one director so much. I've seen 11 of his movies (if I Vampiri counts) during a month and a half and only 2 have disappointed - Erik and I Vampiri. I can't even pick a favourite... Black Sunday, Kill, Baby, Kill, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, The Whip and the Body, Blood and Black Lace are all amazing. And I expect I will like Danger: Diabolik and Planet of the Vampires also.

"I thought one nipple was enough!" - Onibaba from the sixties (spoiler contains image of nipple, NSFW?) [edit] Just realized maybe I should hide the actual nipple in a spoiler just in case.

I don't think we had a thread about rating movies, maybe we can talk about it here, since that's a big part of Letterboxd (for me, at least). Basically my movie rating scale is currently defined by The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears as a center point - that movie gets ★★½, because it was kind of incomprehensible besides having some amazing visuals and a really memorably weird premise, and it's a bit too graphic for me - so to get 2.5, a movie has to have at least something really memorable in it that sets it apart from worse movies, but it still has numerous flaws, probably. I am fully expecting to give The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears a higher rating some day in the future when I understand more, but currently that's how it is. Below this score are movies I would probably not watch again, although there could be exceptions, because sometimes movies that I rate quite lowly are considered some of the best movies by others and I might be willing to watch them again for educational value: Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, It Happened One Night, The Searchers. ★★★ is an average movie that has a really strong central idea that I can understand (although exceptionally I can also rate highly something I don't understand that well, like Persona), but maybe not that well executed or has just too numerous flaws to get a higher score. ★★★½ is a movie that does a really good job presenting it's understandable central idea, and that I would definitely watch again Another fixed point is Embrace of the Serpent, which I thought was a great movie with a sucky ending. It gets ★★★★ and this score is kind of my high limit for a really great movie that has some obvious flaws distracting from the enjoyment. For example I would also put Mario Bava's Black Sunday here because the second half has some bad plot mistakes that probably had to be left in due to shooting budget. A really good genre movie is generally at this level. Above that are already masterpieces, maybe slightly flawed but really strong in presentation and probably have something meaningful to say about the human condition.

I realized that The Evil Eye is The Girl Who Knew Too Much. Watching Erik the Conqueror now and this is my first real Bava disappointment (after Bay of Blood growing on me somewhat). Clearly Bava is not in his element in the genre of historically themed adventures. This is as generic as can be, with ridiculous costumes, bland story and characters, dialogue as explanation instead of showing things - Somebody on a ship taking part of a battle actually shouts something like "the ships are drifting apart" instead of the camera showing that happening. As if this were not enough, the shots are often badly focused and the entire look has a very low dynamic range at least in the FilmStruck stream. [edit] I have to say that some of the action and battle scenes were quite well done, though, and Bava's skill is still occasionally seen in this movie, but I'm giving it ★★. [for some reason I wanted to explain my rating system here, but it turned out too long - basically 2/5 means nothing special].

There are tons of movies without such "movie logic", but then again I think my brain has evolved to ignore stuff like that. I didn't realize the original Blade Runner had so much of it.

Wow, looks interesting. I personally got pretty far into TIS-100 and SpaceChem, but not quite to the end if I remember correctly - it just became WORK near the end. And Infinicatory I didn't find interesting for some reason, but this looks very cool. I also missed Shenzen I/O - will probably get both in the next Steam sale or something, to add to my ever-growing backlog.

FilmStruck is featuring 11 films of Mario Bava Black Sunday Black Sunday (international version) Erik the Conqueror The Evil Eye The Whip and the Body Black Sabbath Planet of the Vampires Kill, Baby, Kill A Bay of Blood Rabid Dogs Shock I think I will watch Erik the Conqueror, The Evil Eye and Shock there.

What kind of a crazy deal is this? Steam link for about 1€ (ok +15€ shipping for me, but I still bought it just to have a back-up) http://store.steampowered.com/bundle/5025/ICEY__Steam_Link_Bundle/

Bay of Blood was my first Bava disappointment. It's a mediocre film for me, I just don't see anything interesting in these killings. I guess the plot of Blood and Black Lace wasn't much better, but it made up with incredible atmosphere. In this one even the eponymous bay seemed more like a pond. [edit] Actually I'm warming up to it a bit, and I think I'm calling it above mediocre, but not great, for me personally, because I'm just not a fan of the slasher genre. After watching some of the additional material (which was poor, though) on the Blu-Ray, I'm kind of seeing more what they tried to do with all the different ways of killing and . But it may be that this kind of black humour is not really for me. Although the two are very very different films, I really disliked Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry and I could draw some parallels to the kind of humour here. Another thing is that I dislike dubbing and I accidentally watched the English version, without realizing that an Italian version was available - all the other Blu-Rays had done the language selection quite differently in the menus and I always picked the Italian versions before. Also, Twitch of the Death Nerve... man, what a title.