cinematic contortions

we’ve been seeing a lot of movies this week, suddenly realizing that our window of opportunity to go out is quickly coming to an end. just this week we caught a couple of barbara stanwyck films at the pfa, paprika, and werner herzog’s new flick (infamously produced by la clipper elton brand) rescue dawn.

which one was my favorite? surprisingly enough it wasn’t the restored version of baby face, although it was was the best film, replacing the do-good morality schlock with the film’s original directives from Nietzsche: “woman is most powerful of all! she has the power to get whatever she wants! you must take it!” really, who can beat a young barbara stanwyck as she lays waste to men left and right as she sleeps her way up to infamy and fortune?

it was actually paprika, believe it or not. i hardly could, as i’m not really a big satoshi kon fan. i didn’t really dig any of his other movies (perfect blue, millenium actress, tokyo godfathers), although i did enjoy the paranoia agent tv series. what made this movie for me was twofold: 1. it was actually pretty interesting, almost what ghost in the shell 2 should have been, and 2. snapper jones was squiggling and wiggling throughout the whole movie. i spent an entire hour of it feeling her bop around.

that’s the best special effect i’ve ever seen.