Anti-Climacus

Adventures in Cultural Consumption:

American Graffiti: Car porn. [pause] More seriously, this film should indicate the limits of fastidious recreation of someone else's experience, particularly when that experience is shrouded in nostalgia: if the experience resonates, it will mean a lot to you. Otherwise, there's nothing in the experience to bring you in. In this respect, I'd say it's different than that other totem of Boomer nostalgia, The Big Chill. Whereas I'm not sure American Graffiti can resonate unless you spent a large part of your life in slavish devotion to cars and (sometimes literally) chasing women, The Big Chill is dedicated to a larger experience, the process of gradually finding out that you're actually an adult, and isn't that a little scary? So the references are all Boomer references, but the experiences are more universal.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams: I usually don't care for documentaries. This one had the best narrative framing device I've ever seen: we have only a very limited time to shoot this film, so capturing every detail becomes incredibly important. Generating real tension out of the drawing of a woman, part of which is out of view of where the cameras can be, is impressive: no one's seen this in perhaps tens of thousands of years: is the crew really not going to figure out a way to get a shot of it? The ending was hokey, but what can you expect?

Pitch Perfect: exactly as good as everyone says it is, which is very good.

Wings of Desire: it had me at "Peter Falk plays himself." Gloriously done.