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Packing for India: A Life of Action in Global Finance and Diplomacy
Book
David Mulford has witnessed and participated in dramatic changes in the world economic system - from...
Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture
Book
The relationship of architecture to the human body is a centuries-long and complex one, but not...
From Deep Space with Love: A Conversation About Consciousness, the Universe and Building a Better World
Mike Dooley and Tracy Farquhar
Book
From Deep Space with Love gives readers the chance to listen in on a fascinating conversation...
DJ
Double Jeopardy: Combating Nuclear Terror and Climate Change
Book
Humanity faces two existential threats: nuclear annihilation and catastrophic climate change. Both...
Historic Documents of 2016
Book
Published annually since 1972, the Historic Documents series has made primary source research easy...
Aurora recommended track A Seated Night (with Moby (Richard Melville Hall)) by Moby in Wait for Me by Moby in Music (curated)
LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Untraceable (2008) in Movies
Sep 21, 2020
𝘜𝘯𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦. Wants to be a 𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘮𝘣𝘴 x Saw hybrid, ends up being 𝘍𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘋𝘰𝘵𝘊𝘰𝘮 with most of the fun stuff subtracted, and if it were a piece of tacky CBS cybercrime dross. There's some real heat to the torture porn here but it's undercut by the fact that they consciously choose to rarely show it at all and overedit it to hell and back when they do (both fronts offended even worse than 𝘏𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘭: 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘐𝘐) - instead opting to be a rote procedural where everyone dumps heavy bouts of cheesy exposition about things that it's clear no one actually knows what they're talking about, until its final moments where it takes a dumbass pivot where it decides to be a preachy, hypocritical, defanged commentary about technology which is about as non-knowledgeable as your average "Black Mirror" episode. Diane Lane gives it an honest try but it saves absolutely nothing from this lifeless white noise. One of the only positives is that it's unpredictable, but only in the sense that there's nothing to predict. At least it's one of the precious few of these things to make realistic online comments - and Lane very seriously repeats the full acronym for 'rofl' during a live snuff film. Still sucks though.
LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated S1m0ne (2002) in Movies
Sep 21, 2020
The trifecta of flatness: a comedy with next to no laughs, a satire with no bite, and a drama without sufficient emotion. Yet another technophobic dud that fires on zero cylinders and has nothing to say - try to picture if 𝘏𝘦𝘳 was one of the (many) shittier "Black Mirror" episodes. Besides Rachel Roberts' perfectly realized, fittingly mysterious performance (which, of course, is underused) nothing else shines through here - has zero depth beyond a few performative quips and has that rush-through-everything-of-any-importance pacing + structure that I detest. Here we have what could have been a poignantly interesting film about a disenchanted director whose only authentic relationship is with a synthetic A.I. as well as a boiling satire about the state of celebrity, the objectification of women in entertainment, technology, etc. But instead we're left with such a rote, surface-level, come-and-go boilerplate narrative about this thinly-written 'failed director' trope having to hide an obviously fake woman from every idiot on the planet. Skimps out on where it counts, the brief spoof arthouse movies in these are more intelligent and watchable than the actual movie - which ironically feels as insincere and fakey as its central character. Also I miss Jay Mohr.
LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated District 9 (2009) in Movies
Sep 20, 2020
Not thought-provoking or challenging in the slightest, but as always my boy Sharlto Copley saves this from mediocrity (he single-handedly doubled my rating for it). I'll happily stand alone in being glad this went for loud, beastly body horror over the broad, half-finished, overly obvious metaphor that it introduces but refuses to interrogate in favor of conventional genre trappings at the end. But thank LORD this doesn't get preachy about how an innocuous use of technology is the death of society or some bullshit, like these realist-dingy-future films usually tend to do. Super messy (not only can it not decide when to use its gimmick nor what its purpose is, but why even film half this stuff?), hard to find a shot that lasts longer than five seconds and overall it's pretty polluted both visually and audibly for this to make much sense (the editing... hoo boy). That being said, this is totally lovingly grisly and it ends with an extended segment of Copley in an alien mech ripping random government dudes to shreds and chunks of bloody human meat. Also design-wise - as tends to be the case with Blomkamp - it's a knockout... when we can actually see it.
LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Onward (2020) in Movies
Sep 20, 2020
This could have been the whole game, instead just feels like a fetch quest. Gotta say, (sarcasm incoming) really love the idea here to get two once-charming actors who have since had most of their personality sucked dry by the Marvel beast to lend their hardly descript vocal talents to a hardly descript movie of hardly descript characters. Did we just collectively decide against actual voice acting anymore over dry celebrities practically voicing themselves? Ends with a complete cop-out and its breathtaking animation is clouded by either murk or oversaturation seemingly deliberately. Not to mention the character design is ass-ugly. Can't entirely hate it though, not without some charm and handful of okay moments - but whose idea was it to set up this gold mine premise of magic being systematically pushed out of the world by technology for nothing more than simple convenience... and then do fucking nothing with it while setting it in this bland suburbia of normalcy? Potential brilliance in storytelling through an epic, gorgeous video game-esque Disney film is squandered for another antiseptic, indifferent retread of the most basic themes from the company. Not even funny, either. Had more fun with it than I'm probably letting on but I simultaneously loathe what this represents.