Yeah, ok, I know, it's corny, but it's still true: these days it really is getting harder and harder to impress.You've got movies with jaw-dropping 3-D special effects that cost more than WWII to make. You've got cute kittens, juggling otters, and incredible street performers on youtube. You've got prime-cut political spectacles like Christine O'Donnell, Rand Paul, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a nonstop parade of bizarreness coming out of North Korea that would be genuinely hysterical if it didn't scare the shit out of you. And 24 hours a day you've got pundits screaming at each other on cable, bloggers predicting the end of the world on teh interwebs, genuine economic catastrophes, terrorism, environmental disasters, sex scandals, new planets being discovered, The Military History Channel, and other assorted random relentless wtfage.
How the heck you gonna compete with all that? How do you even get freaking noticed? And, once noticed, how do you actually manage to do anything that is able to capture and hold the attention except at the crudest level of base instincts and feral emotionality?
And then along comes something like Ink. If you haven't seen it, don't worry, I'm not going to reveal what happens. But I will reveal this much: for the first portion of the movie you might find yourself wondering, alternatively: (1) what is happening?, (2) what just happened?, and (3) is anything going to happen? But you also will not be able to look away.
Just see it. OK?
Linkage:
- Official website.
- Official Ink Store.
- Interview with the makers of Ink.
- Wikipedia.
- Imdb.
- Rotten Tomatoes.
Movies I would put in the same exalted category as Ink:
- Waking Life
- Dersu Uzala
- Irma Vep
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Tideland
- Closetland
- The heart is a lonely hunter
..
| Directed by | Jamin Winans |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Jamin Winans Executive Producer: Kiowa K. Winans Associate Producer: Laura Wright |
| Written by | Jamin Winans |
| Starring | Chris Kelly Quinn Hunchar Jessica Duffy |
| Music by | Jamin Winans |
| Cinematography | Jeff Pointer |
| Editing by | Jamin Winans |
| Studio | Double Edge Films |
| Distributed by | Double Edge Films |
| Release date(s) | United States January 23, 2009 |
| Running time | 106 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$250,000 |
I love, love, love this movie - and it's great to find someone else who does as well. I really wish more polytheists would see it. They go on about Charmed, the Craft and Harry Potter - but this is much more what real magic, myth and mystery are like.
ReplyDeleteAlso in full agreement with your other recommendations, particularly Tideland which is one of my all-time favorites. Speaking of which, have you seen The Fall, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus or Neverwas? They're all great examples of magical realism and are totally mind-bending like Ink to boot.
The Imaginarium was already on my list. I have now added The Fall and Neverwas as well. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHarry Potter, imo, is in a whole different league from Charmed and the Craft. As far as I am concerned, J.K. Rowling is both a literary genius and a genuine Witch (although she, quite understandably, denies the latter).
I've never been that into the Harry Potter books. I tried reading the first one and was bored to tears by it. Then everyone started writing creepy and inappropriate fanfic (there's just something wrong about middle-aged housewives writing explicit erotic fantasies about teens) and that sort of turned me off of the whole series. However, the movies were certainly enjoyable bits of fluff and eyecandy and I'm certainly impressed by the huge impact it's had culturally and how it inspired a whole generation of kids to fall in love with reading. For that alone Rowling deserves to be honored.
ReplyDelete