I saw Moonlight this afternoon. Very moving, excellent film.

Saw Arrival last night and loved it. It really lives up to its "intelligent science-fiction" billing.

David Bordwell has written a good piece about the depiction of time in the film. It also includes some information on the differences between the story and the movie, and why those choices were made. Of course, it's spoilerific.

[link]

I'm working on some stuff about film adaptations as the moment, and one of the ideas I've found most helpful is actually not to think of it as adpatation from one medium to another. Instead, if you think of them as different artistic languages, adaptation becomes translation, which works much better, and is also rather appropriate for Arrival .

Not sure why this just popped into my head, but in Arrival, why didn't the aliens learn English? Or at least a human writing system?

Because the point was to get humans to understand Heptopod and so be able to access the new way of thinking it involved, not the other way around. Actually, their learning a human language would probably even have slowed things down .

Edited for spelling....

The whole point of coming here was to teach us their language, Heptapod B. Maybe if they had bothered to learn our language the whole thing could have gone down easier, but who knows? hand wave.

It feels to me like having a common language would have made things easier, but maybe she wouldn't have gotten the magic brain effects that way? hand wave.

In the book Louise spends a lot of time thinking (and explaining to the reader) about why simultaneous awareness doesn't mean you just get to skip ahead to the end. So the fact that the Heptopods are aware of the future in which they know the human languages acquired in the film already doesn't give them a shortcut to going through the process of learning.

I guess that would have helped. Not that I'm actually that pressed about this!

I went to see Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women last night. I'd never seen a film by her before, although I've heard good things about Wendy and Lucy and Meek's Cutoff (to be totally frank, the description of those two films made them seem like giant bummers). Certain Women is a triptych of three extremely loosely-connected stories with female protagonists, starring Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, and Kristen Stewart, respectively. I liked the Dern segment -- it was both pointy and had low key dry sense of humour. The Williams segment, I found more opaque. But the third segment with Stewart and this newcomer called Lily Glastone completely knocked my socks off. It was like the most perfectly calibrated, delicate short story about voiceless longing and search for connection. There is a scene featuring a nocturnal horse ride that was so ravishing, so perfectly poised between heartbreak and hope, I basically had a mini meltdown in the theater. (2016: in which Vonnie cries ALL THE TEARS at the movies. It's a sign of the times, I guess.)

If it's playing near you, go see it if you can. I guess I should go watch Reichardt's other films (but not if the dog dies in Wendy and Lucy, oh God.)

I guess I should go watch Reichardt's other films (but not if the dog dies in Wendy and Lucy, oh God.)

The dog does not die.

Wendy and Lucy is well made and Michelle Williams is excellent in it, it just wasn't for me. I preferred Meek's Cutoff.

Looking forward to Certain Women. I believe Lily Gladstone won a LA Film Critics award this weekend for her performance.