“Within Two worlds” offers another impressive take on a philosophical and cinematographic idea explored in Koyaanisqatsi and “Terra Sacred Time Lapses” — specifically, the idea that unrecognized aspects of reality and nature, including astonishing patterns and motions of beauty, grace, and symmetry, become visible when time lapse photography allows us to view the world at speeds…
Tag: short films
O (Omicron) (SHORT FILM)
As with “Sight,” the short science fiction film that we highlighted as one of last week’s video offerings, the best way to watch the wonder that is “O (Omicron)” is probably to go into it “blind,” as it were, without knowing anything about it in advance. Both visually and musically, it’s a dazzling and overwhelming…
The Fruits of Dystopia (SHORT FILM)
The present cultural prominence and popularity of dystopian fiction and film, including the newly minted subgenre of young adult dystopian novels (c.f. The Hunger Games), underscores the fact that we’re living in what can reasonably be characterized as dystopian times. Or perhaps, to be more accurate, we’re living in a real-world manifestation of an anti-utopia,…
Crossover (SHORT FILM)
Is it a fable or parable, perhaps? About ecology or religion, maybe? If it’s the latter, is it a symbolic statement about the means by which organized/institutional Christianity has historically been disseminated to, and often forced upon, “primitive” peoples? Whatever it is, it’s a fascinating piece of work that has drawn a lot of attention,…
Parasite Choi (SHORT FILM)
For one of this week’s film offerings, we’ve chosen a short piece whose fusion of post-apocalyptic horror, beauty, starkness, and surreality is guaranteed to fascinate and disturb. And that’s not even to mention the astonishing brilliance of the visual effects and sound design, nor the even more astonishing fact that “Parasite Choi” is a collaborative…
“Mossgrove / Bed of Moss” (SHORT FILM in 2 parts)
In distinct contrast to the surreal metaphysical/ontological grunge and horror of “Metachaos,” our other cinematic suggestion for today, here’s a linked pair of positively lovely short films, set to beautiful solo piano music and focusing on certain aspects of the natural world that usually go unnoticed by us humans. The paired title is “Mossgrove/Bed of…
“Metachaos” (SHORT FILM)
For the first of this week’s Cinema Purgatorio offerings, we’ve chosen a short, surreal experimental film that is, hands down, one of the most challenging, engrossing, and overwhelming cinematic experiences on multiple levels — visceral, emotional, aesthetic, philosophical — that we’ve come across in ages. Like so many other items that we’ll be featuring in…
“Metamorphosis” (SHORT FILM)
This post will launch our Cinema Purgatorio feature, wherein each Wednesday we’ll share one or more finds from the Internet’s rich trove of cinematic fascination. Whatever else may be true of the current state of our digital media-driven way of life — which flirts in so many ways with dystopian disaster — it’s a golden…
“Reincarnation”: An entrancing experimental video
Find a quiet, solitary environment free of distractions, turn up your speakers or put in your earbuds, and let this thing unfold in full-screen mode. I was mesmerized myself. The music, not incidentally, is Black Sabbath’s psychedelic and hypnotic “Planet Caravan,” representing a style that is pointedly not what the band is most widely remembered…
A Lovecraftian tragedy? ‘Prometheus’ may have finally killed del Toro’s ‘At the Mountains of Madness’
The sad news is currently sweeping through the fantasy/SF/horror community and the movie-oriented corridors of the Interwebs: Guillermo del Toro has publicly announced that his long-anticipated adaptation of Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness is really and truly dead. What’s more, the (unintentional) culprit is Ridley Scott’s forthcoming Prometheus. Say what? I wrote a recent…