... about programming, growing up in the 1970's and 80's, games, science fiction, working in a charity book shop, films, spending too much time watching television, living in Basildon and Essex, and whatever else emerges from my fevered imagination. If you're reading this, it's your fault you clicked on the link: I am not responsible for your actions.
Iranian film director Jafar Panahi travels around his home city of Tehran in a taxi, recording conversations with his fares.
A surprisingly engaging movie, somewhat staged. Panahi's fares include a midget bootleg video dealer; two old dears trying to get to a sacred spring to release some goldfish; Panahi's precocious niece and a woman taking roses to a political prisoner on hunger strike.
Panahi is not allowed to make movies by order of the Iranian censor, so the film is also a bootleg, of sorts. Recommended.
Among the latest films from my Amazon DVD subscription was this documentary about corruption in the NYPD's 75th Precinct (Brooklyn) in the late 1980's, centred on Officers Michael Dowd and Kenny Eurell.
This is an excellent documentary, both harrowing and comical, as Dowd and Eurell relate their gradual slide into criminality from robbing drug dealers to protecting them and their business (shades of the "New York's Finest Taxi Service" in The Usual Suspects), to eventually dealing themselves, all the while being documented by a Federal operation into corruption at the precinct. Highly recommended.
An update on my latest movie viewing, first up is a German language film given to me a few years ago by my mate John.
The Baader Meinhof Complex
Interpreting a death of a protester at a rally and an assassination attempt on a left-wing leader as government crypto-fascism, Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) and Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) form the Red Army Faction (RAF) to hit back.
The movie tries to be as even-handed to the protagonists as it can while not disguising the horror perpetrated by them (and, to some extent, to them), but can't help but paint Baader and Ensslin as a kind of left-wing Bonnie and Clyde, with Meinhof providing the ideology. The RAF dissolved in the late 90's, but a recent attempted bank robbery has been linked to some former members.
Hitman: Agent 47
A sequel to Hitman, which I blogged about a couple of years back, this has Rupert Friend in the title role, taking over from Timothy Oliphant, who obviously got a better gig elsewhere. Trying to find her father, Katia van Dees (Hannah Ware) becomes a target of two mysterious organisations.
Although an inferior remake of the original, it's also not a half-bad pizza movie, mostly due to Zachary Quinto as the antagonist. And it could have been worse. It could have been Pixels.
Lone Star
Made in the 1990's and written and directed by John Sayles, this is one of my all-time favourite films. Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) investigates the death of one of his corrupt predecessors, Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson), while rekindling a romance with a former flame (Elizabeth Peña).
Told mostly in flashback as Sam tries to establish how much his father, played by Matthew McConaughey, was involved in the death of Wade, the film is only a whodunnit on the surface and at it's heart centres around the unfinished romance between Sam and Pilar. A rare and beautiful film and highly recommended.
