Roblog

Ryu Spaeth ponders the depiction – or lack of one – of Japanese people in the film Oppenheimer, an omission he finds strange given the historical intertwining of the two nation’s fates:

“The legacy of the bomb, however, is more specific and concrete than Oppenheimer’s final vision of a world engulfed in nuclear fire. At the very same instant that the bomb created modern Japan in a burst of light, it also gave rise to the America we know today – America as superpower. Two new nations were born from this expression of the bomb’s divine power, and the cost of this transformation, like some ghastly blood sacrifice, were those 220,000 human beings who were either incinerated or succumbed to radiation poisoning, human beings Oppenheimer said were necessary to target to show what havoc the weapon could really wreak, which is to say that the inauguration of the American century would not have happened without the Japanese.”

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Anton Corbijn’s new film, about legendary album cover designers Hipgnosis, looks great.

“Thorgerson and Powell were very different individuals, but that difference worked perfectly. Corbijn explains their dynamic: ‘They loved making things,’ says Corbijn. ‘One with great ideas and one with the technical skills to execute these ideas.’ He knows first-hand how demanding it is to deliver album design in its entirety: ‘I have done a lot of record sleeves in my life, but I’ve not designed that many. I may have taken the photo on the sleeve. Hipgnosis however, did everything. It’s amazing they came from nothing in a way. Neither of them were educated in the visual sense. They found ways to do the impossible.’”

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A charming new film from Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate, that’s out in cinemas now. From Mark Kermode’s review:

”While subjects as dark as separation and death may be faced head-on (a reading from Philip Larkin’s The Trees had me in tears), there’s a comedic quality that reminded me of Aardman’s sublime Creature Comforts animations – a joyous juxtaposition of quotidian, vérité-style dialogue and fancifully inventive visuals that hits a tragicomic sweet spot.”

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A documentary, directed by the artist Michael Dweck and the cinematographer Gregory Kershaw, that follows a group of truffle hunters in Piedmont, in northern Italy.

The hunters, all in their eighties, face intruders on their patch, a spate of dog-poisonings, and their own age and infirmity. But they go out each day regardless, driven by their relationships with their dogs, their love of the hunt, and – you can’t help but feel – a total lack of desire to do anything else. The film is sparsely shot, without narration or interview, and lets the hunters speak for themselves or to each other.

The result is visually sumptuous and, on a human level, fascinating. It’s on iPlayer (linked), if you’re in the UK; if you’re not, I recommend seeking it out. #

Leo Robson thoughtfully pulls apart Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest:

“The latest film from Paul Thomas Anderson has various things in common with his work of the past fifteen years, an unignorable run… Like its predecessors, Licorice Pizza takes place at a carefully presented historical moment (Southern California in 1973), and derives key details from an existing source, the early life of the producer Gary Goetzman, here given the surname Valentine… Yet for all the continuities, the recourse to dependable methods and motifs, what defines the new film – and makes it such a monumentally frustrating experience – are properties not previously evident in Anderson’s body of work: obstinate optimism, conceptual muddiness, and a near-total lack of stakes.”

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A lovely extract from the memoirs of Alan Cumming that’s a paean in its first half to Stanley Kubrick, and in its second to the Spice Girls:

“So, that summer running around London, laughing, and frolicking with five girls who were at the very zenith of their pop princess potency, being taught the dance moves of the Spice Girls’ songs by the Spice Girls themselves, was golden for me. I felt at home, I felt happy, I was carefree. Every day was an adventure, and anything seemed possible, and that’s how I want all my life to be.”

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An innovative looping video about looping videos, by Marcin Wichary, delivered live at the Ignite conference. #