Smiles of a Summer Night

Written and Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Film

Kicking off this whole logging daily project funnily coincides with me kicking off another one: making it through the massive Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema box set I recently received. This will be a massive undertaking but I’ve decided to go at roughly one disc(1-2 films) a week, on top of whatever else I watch.

Kicking off the collection is 1955’s Smiles of a Summer Night, a comedy-ish(described in the booklet as more wit than laughs) focused one four couples. I know I just said on twitter a few days back that I don’t understand how people can find relationship issues engaging to watch and it took merely a few days, and one of cinema’s most acclaimed directors, to prove I was over-exaggerating as usual. Once you get past some slimy age issues, granted it makes more sense in the turn of the century setting, you have a biting comedy on the nature of love and relationships. It would take me too long to properly articulate the perspective it takes, but suffice to say I am very swayed by his argument.

The cast was quite good, each being given their chance to shine in the quite striking composed sets. I have now run out of steam to use words but this is a great film, and its success has been attributed to the freedom he was given in the future to pursue his visions more fully. Next up are his first two films that I can’t remember the name of and I’m not going to look up, but that’s for next weekend.

We Stand on Guard

Writen by Brian K. Vaughan, Drawn by Steve Skroce, Colored by Matt Hollingsworth

Comic Mini-Series

A kind of blandly interesting concept, one that makes you go “huh cool” but not much more, a hundred years in the future the US invades Canada and follows a resistance group of sorts. As expected, it hits the immediately obvious commentaries on American Imperialism, particularly in the early 2000’s, that one would expect from this kind of “nearest neighbor” attack: torture, false pretenses for invasions, drones, material needs of the US being placed a premium, etc. But given that these criticisms have been made more clearly and with better timing elsewhere I don’t think it ends up with a stand out perspective. It also vaguely gestures at First Nations, given its Canada, issues but in a way that almost feels more out of obligation than having a substantive point. A core thematic element running through it involves a sense of identity/connection to the nation of ones birth/raising – a concept that I still cannot fathom after years of trying – as if the successful invasion of the country runs as a direct attack towards the national character of Canda, as opposed to an attack on the lives its citizens and land first and foremost. But enough waffling about the structural stuff which I apparently had nothing nice to say on.

The art is interesting, with some stand out designs for the mechanical monsters that reminded me of Wolfenstein: The New Order. The layouts of the dialogue was mildly infuriating, making me second guess the flow of conversations multiple times unnecessarily. Given the amount of characters and the short 6 issue length the personalities are more or less one note and in my usual fashion I couldn’t remember any of their names. The Nature of the dialogue did not really help, too much needed to be conveyed in too little time, backfilling motivations and crucial information at the very moment they were most needed in a way that really rubs me the wrong way. (For another example of this look at Klaus by Grant Morrisson, couldn’t stand it)

I sound pretty negative and that’s because there was so much more potential to be wrung out of the concept, particularly the torture sequences, and even if it didn’t end up delivering on the thematic goals that I would have wanted from it, it was still cool to see the big almost mech things. First miss from Vaughan for me, but it was a near miss that I had an okay time with but probably won’t think of again.

Logic: A Brief Insight(DNF)

Graham Priest

Non-fiction

I read a previous title in this “series” of brief insights, Mathematics you’ll be shocked to hear, so I went into this with fairly high hopes and unfortunately this just did not grab me. Of course, as I realized I am not the target audience, having too much formal logic training to learn much from the concrete details, and not having enough patience for the more philosophical logic sections later. Dunno really what else to say but it was worth a shot and I hope the other 1-2 ones in the “series” align more closely with the previous one I read.

Actually I’ll gush about the the Mathematics one for just a little bit, I adore it for refusing to get bogged down in the “what’s the point” of whatever subject the given chapter is on, and dives straight into the joy of learning the consequences of seemingly innocuous decisions. The classic example being of course i, the square root of -1, or if you’re Rene Descartes ruining math communication forever ’the imaginary unit’, instead of asking “what is i” or “what would it even mean to take a square root of a negative number” he rushes into the beautiful mathematical results that emerge from it. God I love math.

Kill Me Again

Directed by John Dahl Written by John Dahl and David W. Warfield

Film

A middling semi-noir that features Val Kilmer and the most strangely one sided sexual faking of a crime scene I’ve ever seen. I don’t know really what to say. Male gaze-y in places but also almost completely devoid of nudity, despite numerous attempts towards it. Looking forward to more satisfying (neo-)noirs this Noirvember but it kept me relatively engaged throughout the runtime.

Thus ends my first day of media logging stuff, this felt really good. I’m probably going to write less in the future but who knows. Anything I finish after posting wwill be rolled into the next days, as I might relax with a comic after I upload this. Hope this glimpse into the cavernous pretentious of my mind was worthwhile.