Primer

Anyone seen the new one yet? Upstream Colour? Sounds good. Carruth seems pretty damn serious about being an actual bona fide autuer in terms of doing EVERYTHING himself.

More than auteur - he's even distributing it himself!

Bloody hell.

we have a thread for the new one UPSTREAM COLOR, a new film from Shane Carruth (Primer)

oh, I've got time for this movie. it's got so much dallas/houston in it... bright, blown out, no shadows, empty hallways and office parks, grassy nowheres, roads always in the background, fever dreams of august or september. and the escalating hostility and paranoia that never comes to a head. oh yes.

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Wednesday, April 10, 2013 9:22 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a labyrinth of open spaces

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Wednesday, April 10, 2013 9:23 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nice! also the close-knit (so to speak) claustrophobia of them always being in work attire, buttoned up, with the ties still tied even in the garage after hours adds to the heat impression.

watching this movie now for the first time. i like the matter-of-fact way it deals with the subject of time travel, as the accidental discovery of two burnt out looking engineers. that said, the plot is really confusing... at least the first time around. it's paused now, with seven minutes to go, and i am not too proud to admit that i am LOST

Yeah, anyone who says they have all the threads of this sorted after one watch is full of it IMO. You're not alone.

This film should have hardcoded subtitles really.

There are multiple plausible interpretations, and once you accept that the last 20 minutes were edited from inadequate footage to highlight the confusion, ala Aronofsky's Pi but on a still lower budget, you can just let it wash over you as a tale of some hectic lost souls who've lost their past and are piecing together a future from scratch.

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z108/btbrian14/PrimerTimeline.jpg

I remember some talk a way back from SC about Abe & Aaron's identities, personalty traits and eventually lives slowly swapping over being more important than untangling the who-the-what-now, but recent interviews seem to indicate the opposite.

jesus christ those timelines. lol. i really liked this movie just on the level of the minimalism of the acting and cinematography. someone above talked about the texas location and "fever dreams of august" and i could feel that with this movie. on this netflix stream at least there seemed to be a lot of browns an yellows in the shots filmed during the daytime. i liked how the switch from the characters seeming in control of things to feeling totally out of control was so subtle that you, like the characters, cannot place precisely when it happened.

I just got the sense that a clearer explication was part of the script, and left on the editing floor when Carruth decided tighter pacing made up for the film's emotional voids.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/stills/132078/Film_199w_Schizopolis.jpeg

I don't think he left anything out, I'm sure on the commentary track it's mentioned that because the stock budget was so tight they knew exactly what they were going to do with each scene, rehearsed it til it was tight and did only a couple of takes maximum, apart from a scene where Abe and Aaron are discussing something after locking up the Garage - SC kept fucking up a line. There were no scenes filmed that didn't make the cut, it was totally bespoke.

I love the movie, I don't really care for the timeline aspect. I guess because of the way he comes across in interviews you could assume that his obvious wherewithal demonstrates that he has the deal all sown up, Primer is flawed in a lot of technical ways and (imho) the idea of a knotted, opaque time travel film shot through with ellipsis is a bad one.

do u guys call it pry-mer or primmer

Pry-mer

it's got so much dallas/houston in it

otm, watched last night with a friend, and after 5 mins I heard a "ya'll" and wondered if they might be in Texas, just going by the way their house looked and the lighting. When I saw a 972 area code in another scene, I practically squealed

Upstream Color might have benefitted from a similarly strong sense of place to ground it. If it was shot in Texas it feels like he went to greater lengths to make it anonymous.