Repeat Performance

Directed by Alfred L. Werker, Written by Walter Bullock and William O’Farrell

Film

A somewhat compelling “backstage drama” with a splash of fantasy I have never seen before in the general, and an oddly fatalistic outlook. The cast did their jobs well and camera work was passable. This was an okay time I probably won’t think about too much.

The Third Man

Directed by Carol Reed, Written by Graham Greene, Orson Welles, and Alexander Korda

Film

Loved this. One of many films that I watched when I was younger, probably around 2015-16 maybe?, and enjoyed but didn’t follow or get the most out of. Now with much more film under my belt, and a fascination with Orson Welles in particular, this definitely is one of the best noir type films out there. The expected noir shadows are elevated by consistently unconventional, at least for the time, angles and often even the brightest of sets are given plenty of interesting details, such as eye catching statues in the mid-ground or highly textured painting collection. And all of that is to say nothing of the stellar visual identity of the finale that even my baby cinema brain remembered in astonishing detail. I should stop watching such good films or people are gonna think I’m just handing out 10’s like candy

The Investigation

Stanislaw Lem

Ah Lem! Despite, if memory serves, being the best selling non-English language science fiction novelist – if not now then definitely in his time – basically his entire legacy is Solaris and its film adaptations. While loving the Tarkovsky version there is far much more to his bibliography than just that. Enter the Investigation, a strange quasi-police procedural mystery novel that is not, as far as conventional genres are concerned, science fiction in the slightest – though whenever I get around to actually writing that dang piece on the “heart” of science fiction and stuff you’ll all see how it slots in nicely. I’m not going to sit here and lie by saying I was fully on boar with what he was going for at first, but as the work develops(and with the help of some handy quotes indicated by pencil marks in my used version) it comes into its own and becomes much much more interesting. I can’t go too much further into it, but it’s well worth the read. Please read more Lem people, starting with The Futurological Congress :)

Neglected comics as of late. This will be rectified tomorrow, by reading my newly received kickstarter comics.