This one is an Indian documentary that is a little obscure so I’m rather happy that I managed to find it at all. It was the director Rahul Jain debut film and it has no narration and indeed very little dialogue at all. There are a few very succinct interviews and that’s it. Jain for the most part allows the images to speak for themselves in a manner that is very similar to Tie Xi Qu.
Continue reading Machines (2016)
Partway while working through this batch of renders, Blender 2.81 actually dropped but the most important improvements are in sculpting which I don’t really do anyway. I spent a lot of time over the past couple of months working on this one scene, rendered in Eevee here. Nothing really new here in terms of technique but it stands out simply because of the sheer amount of detail present and that involved modelling each and every one of the small objects present in the scene. I think it represents my best work so far but it really did take a long time to do.
Continue reading Most Complex Blender Scene Yet
So we watched the first season of this a while back and only now made time for the second season. There’s a third and final season already out but I think we’re done with it. As Marvel Comics fans will know, Legion refers to David Haller, the super powerful son of Charles Xavier and who appears most often as a villain. I’m amazed that so esoteric a show was allowed to be made. I’m even more amazed that it amounts to an exercise on how to present psychosis in a visually interesting way.
Continue reading Legion
This marks the last of Stanley Kubrick’s films that I have yet to watch. I was reminded of its existence only due to Filmworker as Leon Vitali got his start with the grandmaster director here with a supporting role. As always I am astounded by Kubrick’s ability to make masterpieces of completely different genres and this is indeed a beautiful film on multiple levels. Still though it proceeds at a sedate pace, this should be considered one of his more conventional and approachable films.
Continue reading Barry Lyndon (1975)
Due to director Bong Joon-ho’s track record alone, we would have gotten around to watching this eventually. Yet I am still struck by how successful this has been, both critically and commercially. Many critics have named it the best film of 2019 and it has been so talked about that it has become a meme. It’s quite an extraordinary achievement for a foreign film to gain such a cultural foothold in the US. For myself, I don’t quite see where the greatness lies. It’s a good film, of that there is no doubt, but the widespread acclaim it has garnered has made it feel overrated to me.
Continue reading Parasite (2019)
So I finally finished the third book of Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy and it really took some effort as it is far longer than the previous two books. This is a true epic in every sense of the word, with a prelude that takes place before the previous two novels, covers events in parallel with them, and then picks up after them until what amounts to the heat death of the universe. It’s by far my favorite of the three books and lays out some genuinely terrific ideas.
Continue reading Death’s End
As I’ve mentioned on Broken Forum, Ne Zha can be thought of as China’s current best answer to Marvel and Pixar. It predictably sold well in China but performance outside of it has been lacklustre. Non-Chinese audiences probably found the title mystifying and I have to say that its trailer looks unimpressive as well. I was prepared to critique this heavily but ended up being rather surprised at how decent it is.
Continue reading Ne Zha (2019)