So it turns out we’re far from done with the films of the French New Wave and this one was a specific recommendation from our cinephile friend. Though this isn’t as incomprehensible as Adieu au Langage, this is easily the craziest of the films we’ve seen yet by Jean-Luc Godard.
This was a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards though it ended up winning neither of them. I was intrigued by a Broken Forum member describing its premise as a science-fiction mystery novel. Unfortunately the premise is the best thing about the novel. Though author Mur Lafferty sets up the mystery beautifully, the way it plays out wasn’t satisfying to me as the plot revolves around a single malefactor whose identity can easily be predicted by the reader but is pieced together by the characters only at the end of the novel.
This marks the third film we’ve watched by director Lee Chang-dong though it’s of his earliest works. It’s a bit of a coincidence that the same Gwangju Uprising that was covered in A Taxi Driver we’ve seen only recently is also a key event here but it makes sense that such a pivotal moment in the history of modern South Korea appears frequently in the country’s creative works.
So this is the film adaptation of the famous novel made by the famous director Stanley Kubrick. I have neither read the novel nor watched any adaptation, but Lolita is very much part of the cultural background everyone is familiar with so there’s nothing very shocking or surprising here. While this is a solid film and the material itself is extraordinary, I found this to be a straightforward, uninspired adaptation that has few signs of Kubrick’s usual genius.
It’s that time of the year again when I do a round-up of the winners of the scientific Nobel Prizes. If nothing else, writing these posts helps me remember and understand what they are for. This task is a little more difficult this year as the prizes for so many categories are split into two fields that aren’t really closely related. But let’s get on with it.
We’ll begin with the prize for Physiology or Medicine as it’s closest to being the same research topic. It goes to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation. Researchers have long known the immune system, in particular a type of white blood cells known as T-cells, are regulated by accelerators and inhibitors to ensure that they attack only foreign microorganisms. Allison studied the T-cell protein CTLA-4 which serves as a brake and wondered if using an antibody to block its function would release the immune system to attack cancer cells. Indeed it worked and would eventually be developed into a new treatment for skin cancer.
This was a recommendation from our cinephile friend and I only realized later that it was directed by Peter Greenaway whose wonderfully named The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is very famous and something I’ve always meant to watch. Though the title for this film is less impressive, it’s still a very odd work that is very hard to classify, skirting as it does between being a stage play that is captured on film and a film that is about a stage play being performed for an audience.
I’ve actually run into mentions of this New Zealand film more than once, on at least one occasion about how it is a realistic depiction of how a person’s personality can suddenly and shockingly shift under the influence of alcohol. This was director Lee Tamahori’s debut feature and he later went to make many well known commercial films in Hollywood but I don’t think that any of them has quite the impact of this one.