Apichatpong Weerasethakul

it seems like marker is one of the people he would make reference or even homage to though. fwiw it seemed like the "black hole"/air con scene in syndromes was a nod to kubrick but it can definitely stand on its own.

This guy.

Like the rest of his movies, Uncle Boonmee has dead spots and moments where whimsy, mystery, quietness, and erotics intermingle like nothing else -- maybe ever.

boonmee

man I really gotta see Boonmee

its on netflix streaming. i loved it.

gotta see it again. have a p dope poster of it in my dining room

love it so much. this guy's the greatest.

I thought it was boring, I'm obviously a philistine.

gotta see it again. have a p dope poster of it in my dining room

― funny-skrillex-bee_132455836669.gif (s1ocki), Saturday, 7 July 2012 06:42 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is it the chris ware one y/n

I thought it was boring, I'm obviously a philistine.

― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Saturday, 7 July 2012 15:59 (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

aw!, this is him at his most diverting, i think; the vignette structure, the oscillation between recognisable, familiar present and less specific, unfamiliar (to me) other places. there is that funny line about each segment being shot in the cinematographic style of a different decade. i've still got around to catching that mysterious object & probably a bunch of non-feature-length worthy small things before rewatching this, but it was great. weird remembering & reading the discussion of the cave scenes upthread; the images still exist like dark sacred tableaux in my head.

^otm about the cave scenes!

this movie rules

ooooh i didn't know there was a chris ware poster - love that ozu poster that ware did

i think blissfully yours, of the ones i've seen, is still my favourite - captures languid heat lust better than p much any other movie.

http://images.nymag.com/images/2/daily/2011/02/08_uncleboonmee_560x824.jpg

& wow, that ozu's nice, sure. the criterion art too.

co-sign on blissfully yours, even as a more restrained example of the thing-he-does. so patient and tender. tropical malady's probably an easier catch-all because it has a little of that & a little of his out there side.

Yeah I really treasure these movies because they really capture a specific mood--reminds me of late summer afternoons in Houston. Beautiful and oppressively hot and humid and very still. The air hums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGVXnvgxseE

report from set of his latest

The 44-year-old director expects the film to represent a turning point in his oeuvre. “I’m at a stage where I doubt a lot about career and country. This movie is like a farewell. I have to make a movie to get away from old memories and try to build anew, maybe in a different country, maybe in a different form of filmmaking,” he said. “I’m sick of this place and this movie is a manifestation of this thinking.”

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/on-set-with-apichatpong-weerasethakul

can't wait

Me too.

Saw this last night... a "spiritual" movie with an expected element of political allegory. Due to my awful sleep-deprivation-related drug regimen i did nod off some in the last third, but Dennis Lim read a note from Joe before the beginning of the film which said that was OK.

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-nyff-2015-apichatpong-weerasethakuls-cemetery-of-splendour

Interview in last month's Cahiers is excellent and includes lots of making-of stuff for his latest.

will check that out.

Cemetery of Splendour showing at MIFF in a month.

showing at NYC IFC in March

they appear to be doing a retrospect too
http://www.ifccenter.com/series/mysterious-splendors-the-films-of-apichatpong-weerasethakul/

Saw it last saturday. Boy is it strange. I almost dozed off myself, might be the most tiring film I've ever seen. The soundscape could be from a sleep box at times. Looking forward to seeing it again, think it might work a lot better once you know what's coming.

Oh, in case it isn't clear, it's pretty unique and a must-see.

love me some joe

Frederik with another balanced "narcotizing" / "must-see" review!

love me some joe

― Cornelius Pardew (jim in glasgow), Monday, February 1, 2016 12:38 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Frederik's mini-review makes me want to avoid this one like the plague ("I fell asleep! Five Stars!"). Is there any "slow cinema" you dont like?

It's quite literally a film about falling asleep, so I think it's warranted here.

is it a film I can mop the floor to?

;)

mopping allowed. no vacuuming, please.

i absolutely have slept at least partially through every apichatpong film i've ever seen and I still would call him one of my favorite filmmakers

That's happened once with Tsai.

I'll admit I closed my eyes once to the new Akerman one today. I caught when a new scene came on, as the sound changed, and opened them back up.

In general I like 'slow cinema'. I dislike plenty of films for being too slow though. But when an image is particularly stunning, or a soundscape meticulously constructed, I don't mind having time to take it all in. And the imagery in Cemetery of Splendour is stunning, as is the soundscape.

but methinks you needed coffee time.

hearing about how sleepy something is. but stunning and meticulous. from a laptop in fred's mom's apartment. kill me now.

The film is about a sleeping disease, and I watched it at Gothenburg film festival, and you're an asshole.

Artwork is key in the film. What’s the significance of the use of religious sculpture?

The whole temple, with the sculptures and the signs, was always preaching Buddhism and the karma and reincarnation. And this sculpture is part of this cycle of suffering, and I think of certain periods when I feel that living here seems very depressing—being governed by this law that constantly teaches you, as if you are a student all the time living in Thailand. And also in school, we always have this propaganda, texts and poems. That’s how we grew up: the kids are taught [to be] very, very religious.

How did you choose shooting locations?

It was in my hometown. So I know all the places, and mostly I based it off of my memory growing up with this hospital, and the cinemas, and this school. I tried to combine the three elements in the film. And during preproduction, all the lake script-writing I shifted to my hometown because I felt that the story was getting more and more personal.

There is a mural of one of our prime ministers of the most brutal regime, yet people still worship him because of all this propaganda. Khon Kaen, our place, my hometown, is the home of his statue because he is considered the one who brought development to the region. But for me it’s quite shocking to see his statue and all the murals of him.

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/apichatpong-weerasethakul-cemetery-of-splendor/

I found it marvelous, and my attention didn't flag. Fairly conventional for him in parts, thanks to the dialogue scenes. There's a moment between Jenjira Pongpas and two goddesses in the flesh that as creepy-funny as anything in Lynch.

Koresky:

At times, it seems as though the film is hypnotizing the viewer. Cemetery of Splendor exists in an almost constant state of tranquility, its deliberate pacing and frequent stretches of silence acting as a kind of cocoon. Only Apichatpong Weerasethakul could make a movie that features ghosts, a slowly rising erection from under a bed sheet, and an actor literally shitting in the woods on camera and still make it seem serene and entirely disinterested in disruption or shock.

oh yeah, the erection! that got some titters at the NYFF.

this was incandescent and surprisingly narrative! More plot and character focused than most of his other films. lots of shots that developed into miniature stories like the dinosaur sculpture roaring at impotent rage at a parade of schoolchildren or the strange musical chairs on the lakeside or the men and women jogging in place on perpetual motion machines or the multilevel cinema as an escher sculpture of inception into the multicolored lights of the hospital cemetery.

my takeaway was that the simple technology of the world we live in is far more impossible than true magic. the final shot, with the nurse staring wide eyed at children playing football on the graves of kings and trying valiantly to wake up from the waking dream of life, underlined the point nicely i thought

yeah I don't remember so many dialogue scenes in other Apichatpong films.

the tate modern in london is doing a 14 hour all nighter of his work next month. would love to do it, but dont think i can manage it :|

that all-nighter is so fkn stupid

it could be a cool experience. if it was an all dayer, i would def do it.

http://taildom.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/cat-plays-ping-pong.jpg