I know nothing about this except that it's notorious and that Justin McElroy has seen it at least seven times, it's --

#322, or #2284, 2001 Henry Selick picture "Monkeybone."

My argument is that the fundamental problem with this one is the insistence on doing the Dark Phoenix Saga at all, it's --

#323, or #2285, 2006's "X-Men: The Last Stand."

It’s the movie that gave the most boring person you know a Halloween costume for at least five consecutive years, leaving now to go see —

#324, or #2286, 2008’s “The Dark Knight.”

While working, at @Lady_Noremon ’s suggestion, watched —

#325, or #2287, 1936’s “Murder at Glen Athol.”

🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFPcpIeRYAY

The movie that dares to ask, what if there was a night of the living dead, the living dead went away for a while, and then there was --

#326, or #2288, 1985's "The Return of the Living Dead."

Sneak Preview? Sneak Preview.

Leaving now. #327, or #2289.

Filing one (1) guess: Hoping for "Bugonia," because that's one that would be: Funny to spring on the Sneak Preview crowd.

For a few years now my contrarian hot take has been that this is the best of these three movies, let’s walk through a storm to find out if that take holds up, leaving now to go see —

#328, or #2290, 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises.”

It's the movie that dares to ask, what if Emma Stone bald, leaving now to go see --

#329, or #2291, 2025's "Bugonia."

Remember “The Black Phone,” a movie about a haunted landline that also wanted to be about the Grabber, a kidnapper who wears a mask, but didn’t really do anything to really connect those two ideas besides the landline being in the Grabber’s basement? Yeah, I know.

Anyway, leaving now to go see —

#330, or #2292, 2025’s “Black Phone 2.”

Let's wrap up Selick so next month I can start Danny Boyle fairly cleanly, it's --

#331, or #2293, 2022's "Wendell & Wild."

I guess I should get a little more horror in before Halloween, it's --

#332, or #2294, 1936's "The Walking Dead."

Time to figure out how in Hades I'm gonna Post my way through --

#333, or #2295, 1982's "Koyaanisqatsi."

Here's my understanding of 1982's "Koyaanisqatsi."

* 86-minute video poem. No dialogue, just images and a Philip Glass score.
* Title means "life out of balance," a theme it tries to sell you on by juxtaposing footage of nature with footage of life in cities etc.
* Title fun to say.

koyaaaaaanisqatsi

It is, I understand, well-liked, and sort of iconic as an 80s experimental documentary, but people have yet to describe the premise of 1982's "Koyaanisqatsi" to me in a way that doesn't sound like 2020 humanity is a virus dingaling shit to me.

Really, I'm only watching this because Blank Check have done it.

> if blank check jumped off a bridge etc

well they're not likely to cover the experience of jumping off a bridge in a way I can log on letterboxd are they

koyaaaaaanisqatsi

the sped up cloud footage reminds of witches' cauldrons. helicopter footage over rolling mountains under its spell.

Hard to read the transition from rolling landscapes to humanity-altered landscapes, as the music becomes first doom-laden and then frantic, as anything more nuanced than "this is bad."

Here's the thing. A lot to be said for, yes, a lot of industrialisation and technology is bad. Certainly the nuclear bomb, on screen now, not a fan of it. Skyscrapers, I dunno if we need those. We could stand to take our time with travel instead of flying everywhere.

But technology also means that, say, the world is my oyster as far as making friends goes, so, you know, machines bad versus infinite potential for connection, the jury's not out in /my/ house.

A lot of the stuff depicted is genuinely beautiful to me. Planes, skyscrapers, are genuinely awe-inspiring victories over our limitations. Highways, for all that I hate car culture, are an incredible feat of infrastructure.

Tanks can fuck off, though.

These shot of New York where you can't see the sky are really good and oppressive.

Anyway, it should be in the going too far that we have a problem. Skyscrapers fine if we use them productively, skyscrapers problematic if we fill our cities with them. Cars should be supported by constructions like 15-minute cities where most things are in walking distance.

What does the picture want me to make of row upon row of abandoned, desolate apartment buildings, which are then destroyed? Does it want me to think the apartments are bad in themselves? That we should all live in the suburbs? Or is it the destruction that's its problem. Is it that we put something there only to then destroy it again?

It's also hard to take this American-centric 1980s perspective on oh look at the absolute state of the world today particularly seriously when I live in this, the Year of Luigi.

The score sure makes people walking across these big city streets seem like a real problem, but you know, none of these people have Twitter on their phones, so who can say.

Lights in skyscraper offices going on and off. I think there's something so beautiful about all of these lives stacked on top of each other.

Every light on the sped-up highway is at least one life, at least one person who was born and lived and has probably died by now, at least one somebody who had friends and family and hobbies and liked doing things and had opinions about cats, and every single one of those lives is driving home and coming home and being home and having dinner and conking out on the couch.

And who knows, maybe they have passengers.

So much of life is so beautiful, so wonderful, so magnificent to get to behold. Life is jazz and the audience is the band.

Was really very ready to have a bad time with this, to be annoyed by it, but I'm not.

heck yeah pac-man

*lumiere brothers voice* people leaving factory

It does occur to me this is peak Kuleshov effect, of course.

if you made this today you'd do it on your phone, it'd look like shit, and would disappear on youtube

koyaaaaaanisqatsi

eos, yeah, okay, I really disagree with the idea that what this was showing me was "life in turmoil," "life out of balance," "life disintegrating," or "a state of life that calls for another way of living."

does the picture want us all to return to farm life? is this all not life beautifully persevering?